A British duke with family ties to Princess Diana and Winston Churchill is accused of strangling the same person three times in less than two years. The 12th Duke of Marlborough, Charles James Spencer-Churchill, previously known as Jamie Blandford, is accused in the separate attacks in Woodstock, alleged to have taken place between November 2022 and May 2024, Thames Valley Police said. The 70-year-old aristocrat was arrested that May. He's expected to appear before Oxford magistrates on Thursday to answer to charges of non-fatal intentional strangulation, per the BBC.
Spencer-Churchill, who was named duke in 2014 after the death of his father, is "known to have had a long history of drug addiction," per the Guardian. Living in the Marlboroughs' ancestral home of Blenheim Palace, the largest private residence in Britain, he is a first cousin, three times removed, of Churchill, who was born on the estate, and is also distantly related to the late Princess Diana through the Spencer family. The Blenheim Palace Heritage Foundation, which owns and operates the estate, declined to comment on what it described as matters of the duke's private life.