A member of a British aristocratic family related to both wartime Prime Minister Winston Churchill and the late Diana, Princess of Wales, has been charged with strangulation offenses.
The Duke of Marlborough, Charles James Spencer-Churchill, is due to appear at a court in the English city of Oxford on Thursday, charged with three counts of intentional strangulation against the same person, a Thames Valley Police spokesperson confirmed.
The 70-year-old—also known as Jamie Blandford before inheriting the dukedom—is accused of strangling his alleged victim between November 2022 and May 2024. He was arrested by Thames Valley Police last May.
The aristocrat, who has battled a history of drug problems, is a first cousin, three times removed, of Britain’s wartime leader. Churchill’s father, Lord Randolph Churchill, was a younger son of the 7th Duke of Marlborough. Churchill’s full name was Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill, but he did not use the Spencer Churchill name.
The current Duke of Marlborough is also distantly related to Diana through the Spencer family line.
He inherited the title of 12th Duke of Marlborough from his father, John Spencer-Churchill, who died in 2014 at the age of 88.
His ancestral home is the historic Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire, around 60 miles northwest of London. The 300-year-old estate is also where Churchill was born in 1874.
At more than 200,000 square feet, Blenheim Palace is even larger than Buckingham Palace, the London residence of King Charles, the Daily Mail reported.
President Donald Trump attended a state dinner at Blenheim Palace during his 2018 state visit to the U.K. King Charles also hosted a reception at the palace for European leaders, including Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky and French President Emmanuel Macron, in July 2024.
The duke does not live at the palace and has no role in managing the vast estate, which is listed as a UNESCO World Heritage site. His father even went to court in 1994 to prevent his son from inheriting the estate.
“I think there have been black sheep in every family and there’s nothing new about that,” his father said outside court at the time, according to the Associated Press. “We have had some good ’uns and some bad ’uns.”
Blenheim Palace is owned and managed by the Blenheim Palace Heritage Foundation.
“The Blenheim Palace Heritage Foundation is aware that legal proceedings have been brought against the Duke of Marlborough,” the foundation said in a statement. “The foundation is unable to comment on the charges, which relate to the duke’s personal conduct and private life and are subject to live criminal proceedings.
“The foundation is not owned or managed by the Duke of Marlborough, but by independent entities run by boards of trustees.”
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