the times | Wednesday October 14 2020 1GM 19
News
is also a police officer. She learnt about
Brehmer’s other lovers and was threat-
ening to tell his wife about their decade-
long affair, the court has been told.
On May 9 she is said to have met
Brehmer outside the Horns Inn in West
Parley, Dorset, and used his phone to
text his wife. Brehmer is accused of
throttling her with such force that he
broke a bone in her neck. He has admit-
ted manslaughter but denies murder,
claiming that he was “simply robustly
trying to get her out of the car”.
Brehmer had married his wife in
2006 and lived with her and their nine-
year-old son in Hordle, Hampshire. Ms
Rhodes, who was a police community
support officer when she started seeing
him in 2011, said that he did not wear his
wedding ring and so she had not
realised he was married. She said: “Tim
had some sort of hold over me, when I
felt bad about myself and Tim contact-Police officer a professional
seducer, murder trial is told
Will Humphries
Southwest Correspondented me I would respond.” She went on to
work at the Bournemouth CID depart-
ment, where Mrs Brehmer also worked.
After Mrs Parry learnt of Brehmer’s
lovers she created a Facebook profile
under a fake name to speak to Ms
Rhodes, days before her death. In their
messages Mrs Parry said that she was
“embarking on a long and slow down-
fall of Mr manwhore Brehmer” and Ms
Rhodes dubbed this “project downfall”.
In the messages Ms Rhodes also said:
“He’s intensely charismatic and a real
charmer, I thought we had a future.”
The court also heard from Mrs Par-
ry’s widower. In a statement read to the
court he said that she had met Brehmer
and started a relationship before their
marriage. However, Mr Parry said that
in 2011 he had found an email from her
to Brehmer saying that she “loved him
like she had never loved anyone”. Mrs
Parry deleted it and claimed it was old.
Mr Parry said that he found Valentine’s
Day cards, Travelodge key cards, men’s
rugby shirts and “suspicious” calls on
their phone bill, and followed her, later
learning that the affair had continued.
The court was told that Mr and Mrs
Parry tried counselling but he grew to
“accept his marriage was over”. She
phoned him minutes before her death
but he was “short with her” because he
was busy. He said: “She was a passionate
and driven individual and loved to help
people whether they were family or not.”
The trial continues.A married police officer accused of
murdering his lover was described as
“Mr Smooth” by a female detective who
said he later made her feel like a “piece
of meat”, a court was told yesterday.
PC Timothy Brehmer, 41, is alleged to
have strangled Claire Parry, a nurse, in
his car after she used his phone to text
his wife saying “I’m cheating on you”.
Salisbury crown court was told that
Brehmer had charmed a series of
women and was dubbed Mr Smooth by
one because he was a “professional at
grooming them”. The Dorset police
officer, who is married to a detective in
the same force, was alleged to have told
each woman “you are the only one for
me” and sent song lyrics and sexualised
messages to “suck them in”.
DC Kate Rhodes, a former lover of
Brehmer, told the jury she “quickly fell
in love with him” after they met at work
but that she finished the relationship
once she discovered he was married.
She said that he later made her “feel
like a piece of meat” by texting while
she was on holiday with her husband,
calling her a “dirty bitch” and suggest-
ing they meet for sex. She described
him as “a groomer who has a toolkit he
uses on every woman he encounters”.
Mrs Parry, 41, lived in Bournemouth
and had two children aged six and eight
with her husband, Andrew Parry, whoClaire Parry was allegedly murdered
by PC Timothy Brehmer in a car parkWest Yorkshire, was one of a few dozen a year that overshoot mainland Europe
PAUL BIRTWHISTLE; DARREN CHAPMAN/TRIANGLE NEWSthe amount of grubs it
kept finding deep
down in the grass.”
It is not the only
unusual bird to have
appeared in England
recently. Analysis of
two feathers from a
bearded vulture that
has been touring the
Midlands and East
Anglia over the past
few months revealed
that it is a female that
hatched last year in a
wild nest in the French
Alps. The feathers
were collected in the
Peak District by David
Ball, a local birder,
and analysed by Swiss
conservationists. Thebird, named Vigo, flew
from Europe, where
there are between 600
and 1,000 pairs in an
area from Spain to
Russia. Tim Birch, of
the Derbyshire
Wildlife Trust, said: “It
brought a lot of joy to
the tens of thousands
of people who saw it.”