PC broke lover’s neck ‘forcing her out of car’ after she threatened to tell wife about affair

A ‘man-wh**e’ married police officer strangled his long-term lover after she considered revealing their 10-year affair to his wife, a court has heard.  

Timothy Brehmer, 41, a constable with Dorset Police, strangled Claire Parry, 41, a nurse, with such force that he broke a bone in her neck before she died in hospital the next day, prosecutors said. 

The officer, of Hordle, Hampshire, admitted causing her death but said he was just trying to ‘robustly’ force her out of the car they were in at the time of the attack, which took place in a pub car park in Dorset on May 9.  

Richard Smith QC, prosecuting, told Salisbury Crown Court that the 41-year-old defendant, described as a ‘womaniser’, had been having an affair with Mrs Parry for more than 10 years.

In the days before her death, Mrs Parry had started to believe her marriage to Andrew Parry, also a Dorset Police officer, was coming to an end as well as her relationship with the defendant.

Mr Smith said a note written two days before her death was found on Mrs Parry’s phone, addressed to Brehmer’s wife Martha, also a police officer, in which she told the woman, ‘your husband is a man wh**e’.  

He said she had carried out research using an alias on Facebook into Brehmer and became convinced he had had at least two other affairs.

Mr Smith said she was in contact with a police officer called Kate Rhodes, who told her she had an affair with Brehmer in late 2011, and made Mrs Parry see him ‘in a very different light’.

The prosecutor said: ‘Claire Parry had recently been led to believe the defendant had indulged in other affairs with other women and he was something of a womaniser.

‘Claire Parry was facing what she might have thought was the impending end of her marriage, and the realisation that the man she had been having an affair with for years was perhaps not the man she thought he was at all, and not a man who was likely to set up with her.’

Mr Smith said a note written two days before her death was found on Mrs Parry’s phone, addressed to Brehmer’s wife Martha, also a police officer.

It said: ‘Dear Martha, what I am going to say is likely to come as no surprise to you. I am figuring you have always suspected but tried to ignore, there is no easy way to say it but, put simply, your husband is a man wh**e.

‘Myself and others have fallen victim to his words and charms, his promises of being in a loveless marriage to only staying for the sake of your children.

‘He sucked me in years ago and made me believe he and I had a future until he realised you were pregnant.

‘He didn’t tell me about you at first, that he was married, and when I found out he told me he was going to leave. I have since realised I was not the only one he has weaved this story to, there are at least two more.

‘He tells us that we are special, that he has fallen in love with us.’

Mr Smith told the court that Brehmer met Mrs Parry in a car outside the Horns Inn in West Parley, Dorset, where, after an argument, he strangled her with such force that he broke a bone in her neck.

Mrs Parry, from Bournemouth, was taken to Royal Bournemouth Hospital but died the following day.

The prosecutor said the defendant admitted causing her death but claimed he had not intended to strangle her, and ‘was simply robustly trying to get her out of the car’.

Mr Smith added: ‘What the prosecution say is what the defendant did is to angrily and deliberately take Claire Parry around the neck, strangling her to death, that the Crown say this is a case of murder, not manslaughter.’

Brehmer, who at the time of the incident was seconded to the National Police Air Service based at Bournemouth Airport, denies murder. The trial continues.