BIRSTALL, England — British police on Saturday charged a reclusive gardener with murder and other offenses in the slaying of a popular Labour Party lawmaker, Jo Cox, as evidence emerged the 52-year-old had decades-old ties to a neo-Nazi movement and an interest in anarchist weapons literature.

Detective Superintendent Nick Wallen of West Yorkshire Police said that Thomas Mair will appear at London’s Westminster Magistrates Court later Saturday.

Matt Dunham/Associated Press Tributes to Jo Cox, the British Member of Parliament stabbed and shot to death in northern England this week, are placed outside the House of Parliament in London on Friday.

Mair was charged with murder, grievous bodily harm, possession of a firearm with intent to commit an indictable offense and possession of an offensive weapon, Wallen said.

As detectives questioned the suspect for a second day, authorities confirmed they were focused on his alleged links to white supremacists and history of mental illness as they sought a motive for an act of violence that has shocked Britain.

Prime Minister David Cameron joined the stunned citizens of Birstall in paying tribute to Cox as they placed flowers and handwritten notes on a memorial and struggled to comprehend how one of their own could have so viciously killed her.

“Today our nation is rightly shocked,” Cameron told a crowd that included witnesses to Thursday’s killing and many of Cox’s friends and colleagues, including lawmakers from both Cameron’s ruling Conservative and Cox’s opposition Labour parties. He urged the British people to drive intolerance and division “out of our public life and out of our communities.”

President Barack Obama phoned Cox’s husband from Air Force One and offered his condolences on behalf of the American people, the White House said in a statement Friday night.

Police crime-scene tape blocked off street market stalls that just a day earlier were bustling with lunchtime trade as Cox arrived to field concerns from her constituents.

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