A man has been convicted of possessing the bodies of wild birds of prey after his DNA was found on a barn owl and a kestrel that had been rammed into the door handles of a village shop in Hampshire. James Kempster, 39, a roofer and father of three from Totton in the New Forest, was found guilty of two counts under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 and will be sentenced in June, facing a maximum of six months in prison.
Attack and conviction
The conviction stems from an incident in the early hours of 15 March 2024, when three men drove a Suzuki Vitara 4×4 to the Broughton Community Shop, a volunteer-run store in a village of about 1,000 residents. CCTV footage showed two men, wearing tracksuits with hoods up and balaclavas, exit the vehicle. They dumped approximately 50 dead hares on the paved area in front of the shop, smeared blood on the windows, and left a barn owl and a kestrel wedged into the door handles. The vehicle was later found burnt out a few miles away.
Adam Cooper, prosecuting, described the scene as a “horror movie scene” that left residents unsettled and upset. The court heard that Kempster had previous criminal convictions for poaching, including a £120 fine in February 2020 for trespassing on farmland with dogs in pursuit of game. Despite this, magistrates in Southampton cleared him of criminal damage, ruling that the evidence did not prove he was the hooded man who threw the hares, left the birds, and smeared blood. A second man, a 27-year-old from Hythe, was questioned voluntarily by police in April 2024 and interviewed under caution; he remains under investigation.
Significance of the DNA evidence
The prosecution’s case relied heavily on advances in forensic techniques used to obtain DNA from animal carcasses. Kassandra Harris, an expert in DNA profiling, told the court that the DNA found on the barn owl came from two people. She said: “It’s a billion times more likely the DNA originates from James Kempster and another individual [unrelated to him] rather than two individuals unrelated to James Kempster.” The analysis targeted highly variable genetic markers, including those from saliva recovered from the carcasses, linking trace evidence directly to the suspect.
These techniques have improved significantly thanks to work in Scotland, where raptor persecution is a persistent issue. The Wild Justice Raptor Forensics Fund has supported numerous police investigations into suspected killing of birds of prey, often linked to conflicts with gamebird shooting interests. Barn owls and kestrels are afforded special protection under Schedule 1 of the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981, making their possession a criminal offence carrying up to six months imprisonment or an unlimited fine.
When interviewed by police, Kempster denied involvement in the attack but admitted he knew Broughton because his father used to keep horses there. In the witness box, he repeatedly said he had no idea how his DNA ended up on the owl and kestrel. Dagan James, a farmer who helped clear the hares and birds, told the court some had been freshly killed.
The ongoing mystery of the hares
Despite the conviction, the question of who left the 50 dead hares at the shop remains unanswered. Magistrates accepted the prosecution’s case only on the possession of the birds, not on the broader attack. Rural crime experts said that leaving hare carcasses is often used as a form of intimidation or a warning, particularly in isolated communities.
Philip Wilkinson, the police and crime commissioner for Wiltshire and a board member of the National Rural Crime Network, said he had experienced this himself. A line of hares was placed across his driveway, which he attributes to a police campaign against hare coursing. “It’s intimidation. It’s signalling: ‘Aren’t we clever, what are you going to do about it?'” He added that rural communities are vulnerable: “Our farmers and people who live in the country are being terrified by incidents like this.” Wilkinson noted that the courts do not always take such acts seriously enough, saying: “We have caught 22 hare coursers this season and the maximum penalty was £350. They are causing thousands of pounds worth of damages to crops, to fences, to gates. They are terrifying people.”
The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 has since increased penalties for hare coursing, introducing unlimited fines and up to six months imprisonment. Recent incidents in the same area suggest a pattern: in February 2024, approximately 25 dead wild animals—including pheasants, hares, and a decapitated deer—were found near a primary school in Awbridge, six miles from Broughton. Locals suspect a link to poachers sending messages.
Ruth Tingay, a co-director of the conservation group Wild Justice, described the mind-set behind such acts as depraved. “Usually the perpetrators are keen to hide the evidence and either burn or bury the corpses, or sometimes they are thrown into a river. It’s hard to get into the mind of somebody who would do something this depraved.”
