The husband of a royal GP murdered her by hitting her over the head with an axe and then strangling her, a court heard today as he was remanded into custody.
Hannah Cain, 45, known professionally as Dr Hannah Terry, was found dead at her address near the Sandringham Estate in Norfolk in the early hours of Sunday.
Her husband Mark Cain, 45, was arrested after the incident in the village of Dersingham and later charged with her murder.
Mr Cain, an energy consultant, appeared at King’s Lynn Crown Court by videolink from prison on Thursday.
Prosecutor Steven Ball told the court Cain is accused of the murder of his wife on October 3 into the early hours of October 4 at their family home.
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He said Cain’s three children, aged eight, 11 and 13, had been upstairs and two other children, aged eight and 10, ‘were staying over for a sleepover’.
He said emergency services attended and Dr Cain was found ‘unconscious and unresponsive’.
The initial findings of a postmortem detailed blunt force injuries to her head and neck injuries consistent with compression to her neck, he said.
Cain spoke to confirm his name at the outset of the hearing.
He was not asked to enter a plea and no application for bail was made.
The judge, Mr Justice Lickley, remanded Cain in custody until a plea hearing on December 3, provisionally at Norwich Crown Court.
A provisional trial date was not set.
An earlier hearing at Norwich Magistrates’ Court was told that the ambulance service contacted the police in the early hours of October 4 and Dr Cain was ‘found in an upstairs bedroom not breathing, not conscious’.
The Fern Hill address is just over a mile from Sandringham House, one of the royal residences of the King and Queen.
Dr Cain was listed as a member of the practice team at Grimston Medical Centre.
She served in a pool of doctors who were regularly on call for members of the royal family nearby.
According to the website of a business she ran called Norfolk Sky Aesthetics, Dr Cain had been a qualified doctor for more than 15 years and a GP for eight.
Dr Cain described herself as a ‘caring and professional doctor’ who continued her work as a GP alongside her cosmetics business.
On Wednesday, her family described her as ‘kind, generous and loving’ and praised ‘the great care she took of all her patients’.
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