Update: Thomas Mair has been given a whole-life sentence after being convicted of murdering Labour MP Jo Cox.
Thomas Mair was told he would never be released after killing the mother of two as she arrived at Birstall library in West Yorkshire for a surgery on June 16, a week before the EU referendum.
A far right extremist has been convicted of murdering Labour MP Jo Cox after the jury in his trial took just an hour and a half to reach a verdict.
Thomas Mair, 53, shot and stabbed the mother-of-two as she arrived at Birstall library in West Yorkshire for a surgery on June 16, a week before the EU referendum.
Mair, who shouted “Britain first”, had a stash of neo-Nazi material at his home and had collected a dossier on his 41-year-old Remain campaigning MP, the Old Bailey heard.
As the verdicts were read out, Jo Cox’s parents Jean and Gordon Leadbeater clasped their hands together and nodded.
Jo’s husband, Brendan Cox told the Old Bailey he was not there for “retribution” and felt “nothing but pity for” Thomas Mair.
He also described the far right killer as “cowardice personified”.
In a statement he said: “The killing was in my view a political act and an act of terrorism. An act driven by hatred which has instead promoted an outpouring of love.”
Mair was also convicted of stabbing 77-year-old retired miner, Bernard Kenny, who tried to save the MP.
In a statement Mr Kenny described Mair’s actions as a “pure act of evil”.
He said he would do the same thing again as it was “the right thing to do”, even though his actions were not enough to save Mrs Cox.
After the verdicts were read out, Mair, who had refused to enter a plea and did not put forward a defence, said he wished to address the court, but the judge refused to give him permission.
At the conclusion of the prosecution case, Mair’s lawyer Simon Russell Flint, QC, called no evidence on behalf of the defendant, of Lowood Lane, Birstall.
In his closing speech, prosecutor Richard Whittam QC told jurors: “At 13.48 on the 16th of June in Market Street outside the public library in Birstall, the democratically-elected MP for Batley and Spen, Jo Cox, was murdered as she carried out her duties on behalf of her electorate.
“The sheer brutality of her murder and the utter cowardice of her murderer bring the two extremities of humanity face to face.”
Mrs Cox was a hard-working MP and mother of two young children.
Mr Whittam said her attack “brought out the best of the people who were with her” – the two members of staff and Birstall residents who came to her aid.
They came from all walks of life, he said, including a taxi driver and a 77-year-old man who was wounded as he tried to intervene.
Mr Whittam had suggested in his opening address that Mair’s assault was “cowardly”.
He told jurors: “Now you have heard the evidence you may have no doubt that it was.”
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