High-Flying Helicopter Cop Brought Down To Ground After Killing Lover
By: Andy Killoran
Tags: Crime, Extra Marital Affair, Police, True Crime, Manslaughter

High-Flying Helicopter Cop Brought Down To Ground After Killing Lover

Former PC Timothy Brehmer — Image — Dorset Police

The Dorset Constabulary Police Officer, Timothy Brehmer, was 41-years-old when he got into an argument with his long-term lover. It was about 3 pm on May 9th, 2020. Claire Parry, had been looking through his phone, purportedly looking for messages from another woman who she thought Brehmer was sleeping with (and she was right — there were others). She was taking the opportunity to text “I’m cheating on you from Brehmer’s phone to his wife, Martha, who was a detective officer in the same force as her husband.

Police Constable Brehmer and Nurse Claire Parry sat in his Citroen C1 car, in the car park of a pub, the Horns Inn at West Parley, Dorset. Brehmer had told his wife that he was going out to buy steak for a barbeque dinner they were planning, but he was secretly going to meet his lover.

When Brehmer found out that Mrs Parry had sent that message, they struggled, and in the tussle, he killed her. Brehmer had choked her to death. Before the Police and Ambulance arrived on the scene, Brehmer stabbed himself several times in the arm. He later claimed that Mrs Parry had stabbed him.

In Court, the jury accepted that Brehmer had killed Mrs Parry but that he had not intended to do so. They found him guilty of manslaughter but not guilty of murder.

Who is Tim Brehmer?

Brehmer was born in Zimbabwe but grew up with his mother and her husband in Hampshire, the next county to Dorset. Brehmer started work as a Police Officer in 2003, where he began as a beat officer. Brehmer was assigned to the Traffic Division until a work injury meant he was unable to drive police cars. His senior officer had more recently posted Brehmer to the National Police Air Service, where he worked on helicopters as an observer and assisting in navigation.

Brehmer, his wife and their nine-year-old son lived in a village called Hordle, situated in the New Forest, a national park. The New Forest was created as a hunting place by English King William in the eleventh century. Newspaper reports said his wife Martha had not seen or spoken to her husband since the afternoon in May 2020, when he left the house supposedly to buy steaks for dinner.

Brehmer admitted manslaughter but denied murder. Former colleagues of Brehmer have expressed surprise at his conviction for manslaughter rather than murder. The picture they paint is of a confident, cocky individual, known to be a sexual predator and with a reputation for pursuing vulnerable women working in the emergency services.

The Court heard he had had at least three extra-marital affairs. Colleagues who knew him well said that he could ‘turn on the charm’. Former colleagues said the smooth-talking officer, who was married to a detective in the same force, told each woman “you are the only one for me” and sent song lyrics and sexualised messages to ‘suck them in’.

Andrew Parry, husband of the victim in this case and himself a serving Police Officer, did not believe the account Brehmer gave in Court, saying that Brehmer was a well-practised liar with years of experience. Mr Parry described Brehmer as a ‘womaniser’.

The victim’s husband said that he thought that Brehmer claiming to have been stabbed by Mrs Parry, stopped his wife getting medical attention earlier. He thought earlier intervention might have saved her life. As it was, the ambulance crew spent some time examining Brehmer before they looked at Mrs Parry.

Mr Parry said: “I am incredibly disappointed at the verdict of this trial. I believe Brehmer’s account of that day to be inconsistent and untruthful.

“As the murder trial heard, he conducted a factory reset on his mobile telephone which has hindered the police investigation and leaves us with an incomplete picture of events on that day.

“I feel we will never truly know exactly what happened.

“What we do know is that Brehmer used such force against Claire that she suffered fractures to her neck, lost consciousness, went into cardiac arrest and eventually died.

“Having used that amount of force, he has failed to render any assistance to her, which could have saved her life. As a trained police officer, he would have had the ability to do this.

“Instead, he chose to tell lies from the moment he was discovered by witnesses, stating that Claire had stabbed him.

“He has since admitted that this was a lie and that he inflicted those injuries on himself.”

Mr Parry is left to bring up the couple’s six-year-old and eight-year-old children alone. Mrs Parry was a nurse practitioner at a medical centre in Bournemouth, Dorset.

Although the Court heard that Brehmer had used enough force to fracture Claire Parry’s neck in three places, jurors in Salisbury Crown Court decided he had not intended to kill her. Sentenced to 10 years and six months in prison, the judge told him he would have to serve two-thirds of his sentence before he could apply for parole. This tariff will include time served in remand whilst awaiting trial.

The Chief Constable dismissed Brehmer without notice from Dorset Police following a disciplinary hearing.

The trial — a woman scorned

Brehmer told the Court that he was angry with Mrs Parry. She had confronted him about his previous affairs. He was trying to push her out of the car, but Clare Parry was refusing to go. He said she was in a ‘push-up’ position and he was behind her. He said his arms went around her and he said he must have got his arm in the ‘wrong’ place against her neck and used too much force.

Brehmer was in tears as he said to the jury: “I absolutely did not want to kill her or cause serious bodily harm. I didn’t intend to kill her.”

Mrs Parry died the following day in the hospital. The pathologist told the Court she had a catastrophic brain injury.

Andrew Parry, her Dorset Police detective husband, had discovered her relationship with Brehmer. Initially suspicious, he had hidden their daughters’ phone in Mrs Parry’s car and then used tracking software to see where Mrs Parry drove the vehicle. Eventually, Mr Parry had confronted his wife about his suspicions, and she had admitted sleeping with Brehmer. Also, the Parrys had attended couples counselling, Mr Parry had accepted that his marriage was over.

In his evidence, Brehmer told the Court: “Never for one second did I ever intend to hurt her, we’d been seeing each other on and off for 11 years, I can’t say that I loved her, but I definitely cared for her.”

Salisbury Crown Court heard Brehmer had at least three affairs outside of his 14-year marriage.

Another former lover (and also another officer from the force), Detective Constable Kate Rhodes, described Brehmer to the Court as a ‘man whore’.

DC Rhodes told the jury she ‘quickly fell in love with him’ after they met at work in 2011 but that she finished the relationship once she discovered he was married. Senior officers took no action about Brehmer’s affair with DC Rhodes and others. Despite colleagues knowing he was chasing women, colleagues and superiors regarded him as efficient and generally viewed him favourably, which perhaps gave him some protection.

Years later, in 2016, Brehmer contacted her again, calling her a ‘dirty bitch’ and proposing that they meet for sex. Ms Rhodes, who was on holiday with her boyfriend when these messages came through, said that his approach to her had made her feel like a piece of meat. She did not meet up with him.

For 11 years, Brehmer and Mrs Parry had been communicating with each other secretly. They had slept together as often as twice a week and had been together for sex only days before Brehmer was to kill her.

Mrs Parry was unhappy that there was another woman in Brehmer’s life — other than her and his wife. Claire Parry was looking for a way to punish Brehmer, and she decided both to expose his infidelity to his wife and to also expose Brehmer to HMRC (the British IRS) because he was earning a second income and not declaring it for tax.

Mrs Parry set up a false social media profile and used it to reach out to Kate Rhodes, the only other lover of Brehmer about whom she was aware. They concluded that there were most likely other women Police officers or other women from the emergency services that Brehmer had been or was seeing. Clair Parry told Kate Rhodes that she was planning Mr Brehmer’s downfall and said “hell hath no fury (like a woman scorned)”.

Brehmer said in Court that Mrs Parry had been threatening to tell his wife about the affair and he knew that her marriage was breaking down.

On this particular day, he left the house on this supposed mission to get steaks but drove to the car park of the Horns Inn when he met Clare Parry. He said he really wanted to dissuade her from telling his wife about them sleeping together and disrupting the pleasant ‘little bubble’ they had.

Just after 3 pm that Saturday afternoon, she got into Brehmer’s Citroen C1 car and the pair began arguing, with Mrs Parry asking for his phone so she could look through his social media apps and see who else he had contacted.

After sending the message to his wife, he said she had refused to leave his vehicle. He tried robustly to force her out. So forceful was he that he had broken a bone in her neck. A passer-by found her. Her upper body was hanging out of the car, the lower part still in it — one of her legs trapped behind the gear shift.

Passers-by saw a shoeless Brehmer walking around the pub car park or sat sobbing, covered in his blood. He said Mrs Parry had stabbed him and he asked for help.

Brehmer said he was severely depressed and also that he planned to take his own life.

He told Police officers who attended that Mrs Parry had stabbed him, although he was later to change his story on that. He also said that he had killed Mrs Parry, but that he had no intention of doing so and it was just an accident.

What did the judge say at the trial?

The judge said he did not believe Brehmer’s evidence that he had not realised Claire Parry was dying. Further, the judge must base his sentencing on Brehmer’s loss of self-control. The judge said he thought the application by Brehmer of significant force to Mrs Parry’s next must have been deliberate, causing the severe neck injuries that the pathologist described.

The judge said that Brehmer was a trained Police officer and character witnesses had told the Court how we would help people, but there was no evidence that he had tried to help Claire Parry. Brehmer must have known from his experience that Mrs Parry was not breathing.

The judge continued, to Brehmer: “In evidence, you said you did not realise she was poorly. I consider that you appreciated that she was much worse than that.

There was a significant mental and physical suffering caused to the deceased who must have appreciated that her life was being taken from her and who, on the evidence of the bruising to her body, must have fought hard against you, if only for a short while.”

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