A loner who ambushed an off-duty police community support officer as she walked her dog in woodland in southern England has been jailed for life for her murder.
Callum Wheeler, 22, used a railway jack to beat Julia James, 53, to death in Ackholt Wood, near her home in the former coal-mining village of Snowdown in Kent.
Mr. Justice Wall, sentencing him to a minimum of 37 years in jail, told him: “You were there with the intention of attacking someone. I’m driven on the evidence this was not a spur-of-the-moment aberration, rather an attack that was planned in advance.”
Wheeler—who lived with his father in nearby Aylesham—was convicted of murder in May, after the jury deliberated for just over an hour, but his sentencing was adjourned for psychiatric reports….