A pilot who brutally killed his wife in their family home while their children were playing in the garden has brought a High Court challenge against a Government move to block his automatic release from prison.
It was the vicious crime shocked the nation on Halloween night 2010 in leafy Ascot, when Robert Brown fatally beat his wife Joanna Simpson, 46, with a claw hammer, after she endured years of domestic abuse at the BA pilot’s hands.
The British Airways captain beat his wife Joanna Simpson – a wealthy 5 star Bed and Breakfast owner, to death in their family home while their two young children cowered in a playroom.
MailOnline documents the chilling events of October 31, 2010 almost 14 years on.
What did Robert Brown do to Joanna Simpson?
Joanna Simpson was a very successful business owner, who ran a 5 star Bed and Breakfast before she was killed by her husband, a stone’s throw away from her two young children
In October 2010, the former BA captain brutally killed his wife Joanna – delivering 14 hits to her head as their two children played only two doors away.
According to Berkshire Live, he told the court in 2010 that he intended to discuss his unhappiness regarding the divorce but concealed a hammer inside his children’s school bags.
The local media outlet also reported that the Berkshire native, who hails from the village of Winkfield put her body into his car boot in front of his young children.
He placed her body in a box lined with plastic sheets buried in a hole he had dug more than a year before his wife’s death and the body was found five days later.
Brown also buried the the hammer, before proceeding to remove the CCTV recorder to eliminate evidence that would incriminate him.
These barbaric events came after a culmination of years of domestic abuse which led to Simpson filing for divorce, angering Brown.
What happened to Robert Brown?
Robert Brown, a British Airways captain who bludgeoned his wife to death in 2010 had his automatic release from prison blocked by the Justice Secretary but he is looking to challenge this
Following an 8 day trial at Reading Crown Court, Brown was convicted of manslaughter, on grounds of diminished responsibility, back in 2011.
Brown was cleared of murder after a trial, but admitted manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility with a psychiatric report saying he suffered from an ‘adjustment disorder’.
The former captain was sentenced to 24 years for manslaughter, and also got two years for obstructing a coroner, totalling 26 years, reports Berkshire Live.
In November 2023, Brown, then aged 59, had served half of his 26-year sentence and was up for automatic release on license.
But Justice Secretary Alex Chalk used new powers to have Brown’s case reviewed by the Parole Board rather than allow his release on licence at the halfway point of his sentence.
It came after Ms Simpson’s friends and family had urged the minister to intervene before Brown was due to leave prison in November.
Brown’s lawyers argue that the Parole Board referral was ‘an obvious attempt to seek to reverse engineer justification for a decision that was in reality prompted and obtained through conscious or unconscious political bias’.
His legal team said the risk posed by Brown had not increased and that he had been ‘subjected to a high-profile campaign through the media and with politicians that has sought to block his release’.
You can watch the series premiere of The British Airways Killer. on ITV1 at 9pm on Thursday, February 29.
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