PCSO ‘bludgeoned to death with iron bar’
Fatal attack seems to have been random, court told
POLICE community support officer Julia James was beaten to death with an iron bar in an apparently random attack, a court heard yesterday.
The suggestion was made as Callum Wheeler, 21, appeared
Mrs James, 53, was found dead with head injuries on April 27, after setting off during the afternoon to walk her dog in the fields behind her home. Wheeler, whose home is two miles from the murder scene, did not submit a plea to the murder charge.
Dressed in a grey T-shirt and jogging pants, and wearing a black mask, he was sitting in a chair at Belmarsh prison in south-east London as he appeared on a screen at Maidstone Crown Court in Kent. Wheeler spoke only to confirm his name, and that he could hear the judge.
The court heard that there was no apparent motive for the killing.
Since Mrs James’s body was found, police search teams have flooded the woodland between the grandmother’s semi-detached home in the Kent hamlet of Snowdown, and the neighbouring village of Aylesham, where Wheeler’s family have a detached house.
Wheeler was arrested last Friday, charged on Monday, and on Tuesto
‘Extremely violent attack’
day appeared in person at Medway Magistrates’ Court.
Prosecutor Martin Yale told the court yesterday that ‘a number of forensic inquiries’ remain outstanding, including in relation to the iron bar believed to have been the murder weapon.
He described the fatal assault on Mrs James as ‘an extremely violent attack’ which ‘seems to have been completely random’.
No members of her family were in court but police officers sat in the public gallery.
Judge Philip Statman set a trial date for November 29, with Wheeler being invited to make a plea on June 8.
Wheeler’s counsel, Lesley Manley, did not make an application for him
be freed on bail. The judge remanded him in custody. Kent Police are still appealing for witnesses.
Earlier this week the force staged a reconstruction of Mrs James’s last known movements, featuring her Jack Russell, Toby – who loyally stayed by his owner’s body until she was found – and an actress wearing identical clothes to those Mrs James was wearing when last seen.