Transcript: 9. The Peterborough Ditch Murders (Joanne Dennehy) | England

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Our cases have been researched using open source and archive materials. It deals with true crimes and real people. Each episode is produced with the utmost respect to the victims, their families and loved ones. 


When father of two, 47-year-old Kevin Lee, did not come home for dinner on Good Friday, 29 March 2013, his wife Cristina immediately sensed that he was in trouble. They had been married for 17 years and no one knew him better than his wife. Kevin was a creature of habit. Every night he would come home, have his dinner, watch television with his wife and kids. 


But on that Friday night, Kevin didn’t show up and when Cristina tried to call him, his phone was off. His phone was never off. This was highly unusual as Kevin was the owner and landlord of a couple of properties, which meant that he was on call 24/7 in case one of his tenants needed him.


Frantic to find her husband, Cristina Lee asked Kevin’s business partner to help her by supplying a list of addresses of properties Kevin was renting out and physically went around to knock on every door, looking for Kevin. But nobody had seen him.


His wife knew that something tragic had happened. It was completely out of character for Kevin to skip a family dinner, especially at Easter, without letting her know. At 10:40pm, she went to police and reported him missing.


What she didn’t know at this time, is that Kevin’s burnt-out, light blue Ford Mondeo had been found on a farm road in nearby Yaxley, about two hours before. Passers-by had called 999 and the burning car to Triple Nine and. Fire crews arrived within minutes to extinguish the fire. They knew that this was no accident –- the fire had been deliberately lit. The damage was extensive and ruined the entire car. In searching the car and the surrounding area, there was no sign of a body.


Where was Kevin Lee?


>>Intro Music


Kevin Lee owned a business called Quicklet, letting homes to homeless and vulnerable people. Most of his properties were in the Orton Goldhay area in Peterborough, England. It was mostly former council housing, which he renovated himself, with his experience as a builder. 


Typically, people who were looking to the council for help with accommodation were referred to Kevin’s business, Quicklet.


Kevin was a family man who loved watching Formula One racing. He even named his son Dino, after a Ferrari race car. As Dino grew up, Kevin took him karting most weekends. And Dino was very good at it, in fact he made it all the way to the British Karting Championship.

Kevin was positive and kind and wanted to give people a chance in life. He liked helping his tenants out. Sometimes he wouldn’t insist on a deposit and was always available to do repairs and maintenance to his properties. 


When a woman with a prison record came to Kevin, looking for a place to stay, he found her a spot in a shared apartment with a common kitchen and bathroom. The woman was 31-year old Joanne Dennehy. 


Dennehy was released from prison after serving 14 weeks for theft. But the story she told Kevin Lee was that she’d been in prison for eight years. She said she was sent to prison, because she had killed her father after he had raped her. She also confided in him that she had killed two other people in a house fire and ran two other people over in a car, but she was never suspected for the other murders.


Kevin was able to look past Dennehy’s sordid past, he wanted to help her. In fact, before long he developed romantic feelings for her, he became quite infatuated with her. He let her stay rent-free in his bedsits and bought her gifts. In return, Dennehy went around to Kevin’s other tenants and threatened them if they hadn’t paid rent. She was somewhat of a debt collector for Kevin who was usually mild mannered and kind to his tenants. 


Kevin’s wife noticed that his behaviour had changed and felt uneasy about his friendship with Dennehy. On March 20th 2013, he confessed to her that he was, in fact, having an affair with Dennehy. Cristina was devastated, but the couple decided to try and work things out. 


When Kevin didn’t come home that night, despite their problems, Cristina was convinced her husband was in trouble. Kevin had told her days before that Dennehy had said she wanted to kill again. Alarm bells were ringing for Cristina. Something wasn’t right and she was certain Joanne Dennehy had something to do with Kevin’s absence.


Together with police, Cristina went around to Kevin’s properties yet again. She noticed that one of the bedsits she had been to earlier, had its light on. Earlier it was off. She gave police permission to enter the property, which they did. Once inside, the strong smell of bleach was undeniable. Apart of blood evidence on the floor and the sofa there were no signs of a struggle or violence. Police cordoned off the area and treated the bedsit as a crime scene.


For the moment, there was nothing much police could do. With no trace of Kevin at the car wreck, there was still the very slight chance that he could be alive. Cristina went home, waiting anxiously for more news, until the morning when she would go out and look for Kevin again.


On Saturday morning, March 30th 2013, Kevin Lee’s body was found in ditch off the motorway at Newborough by a man walking his dog. Kevin was wearing ladies’ clothing – a black sequined dress - and was deliberately left in a humiliating position: face down with his buttocks exposed. 


Terry Palmer, the 68 year old man who found Kevin’s body said:


“I never would have found it if it weren’t for my dog, you couldn’t see the body from the road. At first I thought it was a dummy, it was lying face down in the dyke. But then I noticed there was blood on the man’s sleeves and I decided to call police straight away. The location is very isolated. Only dog walkers like myself ever come up here.”


It was very hard for police to find witnesses or monitor which vehicles were passing by in the area. Kevin was left in the middle of a field, next to a motorway. There were no CCTV’s or buildings nearby. 


The discovery of Kevin Lee’s body sparked an investigation and detectives launched Operation Darcy. 


Armed with information about Joanne Dennehy provided by newly widowed Cristina Lee, police followed up on this woman who had reportedly said she had killed before and she wanted to kill again. 


Joanne Christina Dennehy was born in St Auburns, Herefordshire in 1982. She had quite an ordinary childhood. Her mother Kathleen worked in a supermarket and her father Kevin worked as a security officer. She had a younger sister, Maria, and they had a happy and wholesome upbringing. 


Joanne’s mom describes her as a loving and sensitive child with good reports and polite manner. She played netball for the school and loved music. Joanne had high aspirations and wanted to become a lawyer, a career choice that would have made her parents very proud. 


But once she hit her teens, trouble started. She skipped school often and lied to her parents. When she was 14 years old, she met a man called John Treanor in a park while he was out walking his dog. 


“She approached me. She had a thing for dogs – it just went from there. She’d fallen out with her parents and she was a bit of a free spirit but I liked her – in fact I loved her.”


The two were taken with each other and started dating, despite the six year age gap between them. John remembers that when he met Joanne, she was already out of control, burning books, ditching school, drinking and doing drugs.


Her parents pleaded with her to end her relationship with John and finish school, but she wouldn’t have any of it . At the age of 15, Dennehy dropped out of school and left her family home. 


Neither Dennehy’s nor John Treanor’s parents would let them live with them, as they were opposed to the relationship. Dennehy’s parents kept their hopes up that the relationship would not last and that their daughter would come back home. But she never did. In 1997, Dennehy and John lived rough for a year: their home was a tent, sometimes they would sleep at bus stations. John knew she could handle herself: she could bring a grown man to tears, only by using her sharp tongue.


John was never a drinker but he did smoke weed. By his own admission, he was no angel, but he had things under control. But not his fiery girlfriend. When Dennehy drank, it would bring about a drastic change in her behaviour. She wasn’t the same person and that brought about many arguments. 


In 1999 the couple settled in Cambridgeshire and things were looking up. At the age of 17, Dennehy was pregnant with her first child and stopped drinking. John enjoyed this time and saw a nicer side of his girlfriend. But once their daughter was born, Dennehy didn’t want to have anything to do with her. Alcohol binges became a regular thing and she wasn’t involved with the baby at all. 


When the baby was two years old, they rented a council home. Neither of them worked and Dennehy spent her benefit money on alcohol and drugs. John was furious and tried his best to keep the family together. But there was no motherly kindness or care coming from Joanne Dennehy.


A neighbour remembers:


“Jo was forever drunk and on drugs, even when she was out walking with her daughter. On one occasion she shaved the little girl’s head until she was completely bald. She told us it was because she had nits, but nobody was convinced.”


Another neighbour said she saw an argument in their back garden which ended with Dennehy picking up a cricket bat and battering John as he desperately tried to shield himself.


When John found out about Dennehy’s affair with a cocaine addict neighbour, he took their daughter and moved away to King’s Lynn in Norfolk. But she tracked him down and promised to rein in the drinking, so John took her back. 


For a short while things were okay. Dennehy even found a job, working as a day labourer on vegetable farms in the area. Then her drinking escalated again. She stopped working for cash and agreed to be paid in whisky and vodka. When she came home from work she would be drunk and aggressive. Once she almost pushed her three year old daughter down the stairs in a drunken rage.


When Dennehy didn’t come home after work one night, John was quietly relieved. She disappeared for a year and a half and John was left to raise his daughter alone. In this time he had no contact with her, but he had heard rumours that she was working as a prostitute to bank-roll her addictions.


When she returned she told John that she had spent time in prison and in a psychiatric unit. He hoped that this time things would be different and gave her another chance. They moved to Wisbech in Cambridgeshire in 2003 where Dennehy managed to keep her drinking under control for the next three years. In this time, the couple’s second daughter was born. 


After the birth, the old pattern repeated itself and Dennehy’s drinking took precedence over everything else in her life. She was drinking up to two litres of vodka a day, not counting the strong lagers she served herself for breakfast. In her drunken tirades she would often commit self-harm by cutting herself with razor blades on her arms, neck and stomach.


By 2009, living with Joanne Dennehy was pure torture. John was scared for their kids as their mother’s violent behaviour increased. One night she arrived home, severely drunk, when she pulled a six-inch dagger from inside her black knee-length boot and said that she wished she could kill someone. 


John kept a close eye on her and went to his daughters to protect them. Joanne was so drunk, she went to sit on the floor and pegged the knife into the floor where it stayed. The next day, when John took his eldest daughter to school, Joanne wasn’t far behind. She had a carry bag full of booze and made a huge scene at the school gates. That afternoon, John fetched his daughter from school, packed only bare essentials and abandoned their home. He knew he had to take his daughters away, somewhere where Joanne Dennehy would never find them again. 


Dennehy cut her losses and moved to the nearby Peterborough. 


Drinking was part of her existence and she prostituted herself to earn money to spend on alcohol and drugs. Her life was spiralling out of control as violent behaviour escalated. She kept landing herself in trouble with law enforcement. 


In 2012 she received a 12 months community service sentence for assault and owning a dangerous dog. Then she was imprisoned for theft for 14 weeks.


When she was released from prison, the then 29-year-old Dennehy was admitted to hospital for mandated psychiatric treatment. There was concern regarding her history of self-harm and she claimed to suffer from depression. She was diagnosed with obsessive compulsive disorder and a series of psychopathic and other anti-social disorders. She did not receive any counselling or treatment and was released soon after being diagnosed.


It is important to note that Dennehy was never diagnosed with mental illness. Her disorders were all conditions and she showed no remorse for her actions. She did whatever she wanted to do and was not concerned about the consequences. To top it all off: she was a world class pathological liar. She could fool anyone: sounding literate and educated in one instance, but turn on her rough side for the next.


And it’s this skill that she used when she met Kevin Lee when she told him that she killed her father because he had raped her. None of this was true. Joanne Dennehy was never interfered with as a child, especially not by her father.


Once she was settled, intimidating Kevin’s tenants in exchange for living rent-free, she was pretty much as happy as she would ever be. She loved using her dangerous magnetism to invoke fear into people and Kevin Lee once mentioned that she reminded him of Ume Thurman in Kill Bill.


In this time, Dennehy was often seen with her friend, Gary Stretch. Standing 7ft 3in tall, he changed his name from Gary Richards to Gary Stretch. The 47-year-old blamed his height as the main contributing factor in him being a bad burglar. He was identified and reported after a burglary he had committed not far from his home and jailed for two years. 


In jail, he was accused of playing a part in killing a fellow inmate at HMP Peterborough. Brian Haynes died of heart failure after a physical attack. Stretch’s part was to be look-out while others launched the attack. In the end, no charges were laid against Stretch.


Out of prison and on parole, Dennehy arranged for him to live in one of Kevin’s properties at Rolleston Garth. She was a master manipulator and Stretch was her all-too-willing follower. He knew she went around with other men, but he was only too happy to have her in his life, even if it only made him her henchman. 


Dennehy lived with two other men, a retired NAVY veteran called John Chapman and petty thief Leslie Layton. Kevin had already handed eviction notices to both men and Dennehy’s presence inside the bedsit was supposed to intimidate them enough so they would leave. 


It wasn’t long before Dennehy had the 36-year-old Leslie Layton under her spell – he fell hook line and sinker for her charms. However, their other roommate was a different story. Dennehy could not stand John Chapman. And neighbours were aware of the fact that he was petrified of her. He called her a ‘mad woman’ after she threatened to get him out of the house ‘by any means’.


Friends of John Chapman’s couldn’t understand where the animosity towards him came from. He was an alcoholic but known as a ‘friendly drunk’. He liked to drink and then talk about his time in the NAVY. Other than that he minded his own business and no-one had anything bad to say about him.


Dennehy literally made a career out of scaring people. Together with her friend, Gary Stretch, they would go around to Kevin Lee’s tenants, shake them up if they didn’t pay rent and intimidate them enough to leave once they’ve received eviction notices.


The bedsit Stretch was living in, was in the process of being cleaned up and painted – a job Kevin would pay him and Dennehy to do. Dennehy floated between properties and where she slept probably depending on how much she had had to drink or who she was sleeping with.


In this time, she met a 31-year-old Polish migrant called Lukasz Slabozewski. Lukasz had left his hometown of Nowa Sol in in the west of Poland in 2005 and moved to Peterborough. He worked locally in a DHL warehouse.


He was a known drug-user and did not have a regular address. Police believed that he met Joanne Dennehy in this environment of soup kitchens and homeless shelters.


He quickly became infatuated with Dennehy began sending her text messages. He was under the impression that the feeling was mutual. He told his friends he has found an ‘English girlfriend’.


On his last day, Slaboszewski was caught on CCTV camera withdrawing money before going to Kevin Lee’s apartment in Rollenston Garth to meet Dennehy. She lured him there with the promise of sex. He was never seen alive again.


He was blindfolded and then stabbed in the chest inside the home. Forensic evidence showed that he was probably Dennehy’s first victim, his attack started in the kitchen. Blood evidence in the living room bares evidence to a prolonged and vicious attack, with a deep stab wound into his heart.


The attack happened while Gary Stretch was upstairs sleeping. When he came downstairs and saw Lukasz’s body, Dennehy instructed him to help her dispose of the body. They placed Lukasz’s body in a green wheelie bin of the property. Stretch later confessed that he did not alert law enforcement as he was afraid they would arrest him for the murder.


Dennehy was proud of her accomplishment – she had finally committed her first murder. So callous was she, that she took a 14-year-old girl out to the bin and showed her Lukas’ decaying body.


Then she informed Kevin that a man had died at one of his properties and that she needed money for a car so she could dispose of the body. Whether she admitted to Kevin that she had murdered the man or not, remained between Dennehy and Kevin. Either way, Kevin gave her money for a car. 


Two days after Lukasz’s murder, Dennehy and Stretch went out and bought a Vauxhall Astra together, as Stretch was the only one with a drivers’ licence. Stretch insisted that the car had to be registered in Dennehy’s name. Without her knowledge he insured the car, which he referred to as ‘The Hearse’, in the company name “Undertaker and Co.” A sick joke considering why they bought the car in the first place.


On the day they bought the car, CCTV cameras recorded the green Vauxhall driving around late at night. Lukasz Slaboszewski’s body was in the trunk and they were looking for a good spot to dump his body. Eventually they decided on Thorney Dyke, close to where Stretch had lived years before. It was remote with few if any pedestrians around. Chances of the body being discovered were slim. 


Ten days later, Dennehy had the taste for blood again and kicked off Easter Weekend with the murder of John Chapman. The next victim had to be Kevin Lee as he was becoming a liability. Not only did he confess his affair with Dennehy to his wife, but he also knew about the plan to dispose of Lukasz’s body. 


Ten days later, Kevin would be dead too. On Good Friday, Dennehy received an Easter card from Kevin. Later that day, she called him and arranged to meet him at his property in Rolleston Garth – the same property where she had killed Lukasz Slaboszewski. Before Kevin went to meet her, he spoke with a friend, saying that Dennehy told him that she wanted to dress him up and rape him. Against his better judgement, Kevin decided to go. He stopped off at the music store HMV around 2pm and bought her a gift. That was the last time Kevin Lee was seen alive.


One can only speculate as to what exactly happened when Kevin arrived at the property in  Rollenston Garth. He most likely willingly changed into the sequined dress given to him by Dennehy, complying to her sexual foreplay demands. But this tryst did not end the way Kevin would ever have imagined. Dennehy’s attack on him was sudden and unexpected. She pounced, stabbing him five times in the chest, wounds penetrating both his lungs and his heart.


It was the evening of Easter Friday and Joanne Dennehy had killed two men. The body of John Chapman was still at the bedsit he shared with Dennehy and Leslie Layton in Orton Golday. The body of her landlord Kevin Lee was at a property he owned at Rollenston Garth. She needed to dispose of both the bodies, but fortunately for her, she could count on Gary Stretch and Leslie Layton to help her out.


Layton, who claimed he was operating under duress, was given the keys to Kevin Lee’s Ford Mondeo and drove to a pre-selected location, followed by Dennehy and Stretch in the Vauxhall Astra. CCTV footage, shows Kevin’s blue Mondeo pull up at a Shell service station just before 9pm. Layton jumps out and fills a cannister with fuel. The tall and recognisable Stretch went inside and paid, while Dennehy remained in the car and is never seen on the footage.


From there, it is fair to assume that the threesome drove to Yaxley where they doused Kevin’s Mondeo in fuel and set it ablaze. Passers-by reported a burning car shortly after 9pm.  


It is not clear in which car Kevin’s body was at this point, presumably in the boot of his own car, before Dennehy, Stretch and Layton started the fire. Kevin’s autopsy revealed that he had been covered with fuel or accelerant, but never burnt. Perhaps a change of plan or difference in opinion caused them to move him to Dennehy’s car. Kevin’s body was dumped about 10 miles or 16 kilometres from his burnt out car, in Newborough.


Dennehy and Stretch dumped his body, posing it, while Layton remained in the car. 


Then the gruesome threesome returned to the bedsit in Orton Goldhay, collected the body of John Chapman, carried him down the stairs from the top floor and loaded him into the boot of Dennehy’s Vauxhall. They drove the 12 miles or 19 kilometres to Thorney Dyke where they left Lukasz Slobolewski’s body and dumped John Chapman’s body next to him. 


Leslie Layton went to sleep at the apartment where Kevin Lee was murdered earlier that day, while Dennehy went to another friend called Robert Moore’s house to sleep.


When police searched Dennehy’s shared residence on Easter weekend of 2013, none of the tenants were home. Police were looking for any clues that could help them solve the puzzling murder of landlord Kevin Lee. At the property in Orton Goldhay, police found a blood stained mattress in the backyard. There was no attempt to hide the bloodied mattress, it was left in plain sight. Blood tests revealed that the blood, however, did not match Kevin Lee’s. 


It was time to find the tenants of this Quicklet property, owned by murder victim Kevin Lee. Joanne Dennehy shared the Orton Goldhay bedsit with two men: retired Falkland War veteran, John Chapman and 36-year old burglar Leslie Leyton. There was no sign of John, but police caught up with Leslie Leyton and found a photograph of a dead John Chapman in his bed on Leyton’s phone.


Leslie Layton had some explaining to do. He had quite the rap sheet already: burglaries, criminal damage, driving offence and car theft, spanning 20 years. Had he escalated his behaviour to murder?


Layton made a statement to police in which he told them what had happened to his flatmate, John Chapman. When Layton came out of the bathroom on the morning of March 29th, he bumped into Dennehy. She told him that she had stabbed John Chapman. When he saw John’s bloodied body in his bed, he thought he would be next and feared for his own life. 


Still on a high after Kevin’s murder, Dennehy called up a friend and sang the Britney Spears song: “Oops! I did it again!”. When she saw the news report of Kevin’s death on television, she danced a jig of delight. She revelled in her infamy. She had wanted to kill someone for a long time and finally she did it. 


By the 1st of April, Leslie Layton was in police custody and all he could do was confirm that Dennehy was the one that had committed the murders and that they were currently in her car, a Vauxhall Astra, which she had bought with money Kevin Lee’s gave her, heading south.


On Saturday night, March 30th, Dennehy and Stretch knocked on the door of Robert Moore, a friend of Stretch’s. They were lying low in Peterborough, in plain sight. By the time police snuffed out Moore, the pair had already left and Moore lied to police about their whereabouts. He also managed to reach out to them and tip them off about the impending murder investigation. 


Police appealed to the public for help in finding Dennehy and her accomplice Stretch. From descriptions provided, Dennehy and Stretch would be easy to spot. Dennehy had a tattoo of a star on her face, and Stretch with his unusual height stood out in a crowd. 


A police officer in Norfolk informed investigators that he was called to a service station where a woman, fitting Dennehy’s description had shoplifted and he was able to provide vehicle registration number as caught on CCTV.


With this evidence, police could follow them as they were on the run, with the help of motorway cameras. They saw the petty crimes of stealing food and drink as it unfolded, two steps ahead of them.


When Dennehy and Stretch passed through Kington, they looked up an old prison acquaintance of Stretch’s, a petty thief called Mark Lloyd. They were hoping he could help them sell some of their stolen goods. Dennehy had a knife with her and said that she had recently killed two men and she felt like killing some more. Mark realised this was no joke and his mind was working overtime to get himself out of this situation. But he wouldn’t dare, as he could see Dennehy was highly agitated and serious about inflicting harm with her knife. In his observation, Dennehy had complete control over Gary Stretch. He did what she asked, but he still followed her instructions out of his own free will, she never threatened Stretch, he was a willing participant.


On their trip, the pair of them stole a camera and proceeded to taking sightseeing photos and many photos of themselves in ridiculous poses. There is one of Dennehy, on the front balcony of an apartment building, her top lifted so as to expose her red bra. Her scarred stomach tells the history of years and years of self-harm. The next photo is of Gary Stretch in the same spot, mimicking her pose: shirt lifted, leg kicking up against the wall. It certainly does not look like two fugitives on the run after killing three men and disposing of their bodies.


Dennehy wanted to make her way to Hereford (45 minute drive from Kington) to sell stolen goods and forced Mark Lloyd to go with her and Stretch, holding him captive with the knife she had used to kill Kevin Lee. It was a long drive: Dennehy was drinking whiskey straight from the bottle, whilst erratically telling Stretch to stop so that they could take some happy snap photos of their road trip. She made Mark drink half a bottle of whiskey and then commanded Stretch to stop at a service station so they could buy cigarettes. Their whole visit to the store is caught on CCTV camera. It appears as though Dennehy is hugging Mark, but in fact, that was just her brushing up closely behind him so he could feel the knife in her pocket. Mark remembers:


“[Dennehy] ran her hand down my back. It was like being touched by a rattlesnake.”


Fortunately the shop-stop ends without incident and they drive off, at this point Dennehy is actively prowling, asking both Mark Lloyd and Gary Stretch to help her find her next victim. She made it clear that the victim had to be male as she didn’t want to kill women, especially women with children. Her aim was to kill nine men in total, because that is how many people Bonnie and Clyde had killed before they were gunned down in 1934. Well, if you’d like to be historically correct, Bonnie and Clyde’s total tally of murders added up to 13. But no-one would have argued facts with Dennehy at this point. She was on a mission to kill nine people, chasing notoriety to become Britain’s own Bonnie. Gary Stretch – or whoever was willing to come along – could be her Clyde.



She was out of control, fuelled by whiskey and adrenaline. Mark Lloyd remembers her saying to Stretch as they were driving into Hereford:


“ I want my fun. I need you to get my fun.”


Stretch pointed out a man walking his dog. Mark – at this point fearing for his life – witnessed Dennehy walking up to an innocent pedestrian and attack him. The man was retired Hereford firefighter, 63 year old Robin Bereza. 


Robin was very close to his home, in broad daylight, in a safe area, a very public place where people took their kids to the park on Westfaling Street. It was 3:40pm when an alcohol-fuelled Dennehy approached Robin from behind. At first he thought he was being punched in the back. He heard a female voice say: 


“I want to hurt you, I want to fucking kill you.” 


Then she stabbed his arm as he tried to fend her off. He kicked and punched her, but it made no difference. He was badly injured, left for dead as Dennehy casually returned to the green Vauxhall Astra, kissed Stretch on the cheek and said 


“Thank you for that! Next man’s got to have a dog, the next man’s got to have a dog!” 


She was ready for more. 


They proceeded to drive around Hereford when Dennehy spotted 56-year-old John Rogers, walking his dog on a footpath between Golden Post and the Belmont estate. This was less than 10 minutes after her brutal attack on Robin Bereza. The car pulled up close to him and Dennehy jumped out. She casually walked up to him and said: “my boyfriend told me to do this”. Then she launched her vicious attack with multiple stab-wounds to his back and upper body as he was lying face-down. Dennehy turned him over, ferociously stabbing his chest. 


“Oh, look, you’re bleeding,” she said. “I’d better do some more.”


John could see the blood pooling around his body and felt his life slipping away. He begged her to stop. Dennehy carried on, matter-of-factly, without showing much emotion. When she was finally done, she licked John’s blood off the blade of the knife, grabbed his dog Archie, then jumped back into the car with the dog, ready for even more. 


John crawled away in a desperate effort to find help. He was stabbed more than 30 times in total. He crawled the distance of a hundred yards where a passer-by came to his aid. Thanks to quick response by emergency services, both Robin and John survived the attacks.


These attacks were random and unprovoked and law enforcement was on high alert to prevent any more. Robin was able to provide police with some information, importantly he had noticed the star tattoo on Dennehy’s cheek. 


Police found Dennehy only 19 minutes after her attack on John Rogers, seated in her Vauxhall Astra outside a row of shops on Newton Close, in an area known as The Oval. Archie, John’s dog, was unharmed and reunited with his owner. Dennehy was calm during her arrest and handed over her knife without a struggle.                       s


Stretch and Lloyd weren’t with her at the time of the arrest, they had done a runner. But police caught up with the men and arrested them within the hour. When they cuffed Stretch he said to officers:


“I suppose I am Britain’s most wanted?”


Joanne Dennehy arrived at the police station, joking and laughing. She showed absolutely no respect for or realisation of the situation she was in. Less than an hour after her vicious attack on John Rogers, she was flirtatiously commenting on an officer’s distinctive eyebrows. She seemed to be enjoying the fact that all attention was on her. When she was told she was being booked for murder and attepted murder she jokingly said:


“Could be worse. I could be big, fat, black and ugly.”


To which an officer replied:


“I’m not sure how that would be worse, though.”


Dennehy listened with amusement and maintained:


“Yeah, it would.”


Police knew – had Dennehy not been caught, she would most definitely have struck again. She would not have stopped until she had reached her ideal number of 9 victims. And who knows if this blood-thirsty woman would have stopped then?


Her parents were informed about the situation – and for the first time in 10 years, they knew where their daughter was. But that is not the call any parent wants to receive. Her parents were devastated to hear what Joanne Dennehy had done. They could not understand how their kind, loving daughter could be so aloof and dismissive about her horrendous crimes. She clearly wanted notoriety. 


With Dennehy locked up the public was safe again. But the full extent of her murderous rampage was about to unfold: two bodies were found by a farmer in ditches near Thorney Dyke, 10 miles from Peterborough and a day after Dennehy’s arrest on April 3rd. Police suspected one of the bodies would be the missing NAVY veteran who shared Dennehy’s Quicklet flat, John Chapman. The second victim was Lucasz Slaboszewski.


At first the deaths were classified as unexplained, but it didn’t take police long to link the murders to Joanne Dennehy and her henchmen.


Lukasz was in the prime of his life and his family was understandably shocked when they learnt about his death. His sister Magda Skrzypczak issued a statement: 


“Lukasz was the joker in the family, always finding something to laugh about. His mom and dad are devastated by their loss and he also leaves two grieving sisters.”


Retired naval officer John Chapman’s death was equally upsetting to his loved ones. At the door of the bedsit where he lived and died, friends and neighbours paid tribute to him by lighting candles and spraying cider. On the boarded up door, graffiti reads: “RIP John” and “Justice will be done.”


His family released a statement saying:


“We are all so upset and shocked by the tragic loss of John. He was a loving brother, brother-in-law and uncle. He was much loved by all who knew him and will be missed by all his friends and family.”

Kevin’s family was broken after the destructive Dennehy unleashed a dark side to Kevin, leading him astray in the months leading up to his death. They had to remember him for who he was before he met her. Kevin was Cristina’s first and only love. He was a devoted father to his daughter Chiara and his son Dino. In their statement about losing Kevin, the family said:


“We are devastated by Kevin’s death, he was a wonderful husband, father, loving brother and son. His naturally infectious personality touched everyone who knew him.”


It was time for retribution. Dennehy and her motley crew of co-conspirators were behind bars and law enforcement were building an air tight case against them. 


With cell phone records showing communication between Dennehy, Stretch, Layton and Moore on the night of Kevin and John Chapman’s murders, circumstantial evidence was piling up. 


Police recovered blood splatter evidence from Kevin’s Quicklet apartment in Rollenston Garth. Traces of Lukasz Slaboszewski’s blood was found in the kitchen and all the way to the front door. The blood on a blood stained sofa matched Kevin Lee’s blood. Both victims’ blood dripped on the carpet and showed that their bodies were moved. Attempts were made to clean up the scene with bleach, but it wasn’t a very good job. Footwear impressions belonging to both Joanne Dennehy and Gary Stretch were also found at the scene. 


The blood stained mattress found at the property in Orton Goldhay, was John Chapman’s mattress. He was killed in his bed, as he was passed out in a drunken stupor. Clotted blood showed that he had been lying there for some time. Probably the whole of Good Friday whilst Dennehy was executing her second murder for the day: Kevin Lee. 


After his death, Dennehy took John Chapman’s cell phone to stay in touch with Stretch, Layton and Moore. 


When Stretch was arrested, there was blood on his shoes belonging to Lukasz Slaboszewski. Shoes found at Stretch’s home had blood matching Kevin Lee. 


In Dennehy’s Vauxhall Astra police found Kevin Lee’s blood and the Easter card he had given Dennehy. Dennehy’s knife was soaked with blood matching John Rogers – her last victim in Hereford.


When she was on remand, awaiting her trial, prison officials found evidence of a planned escape in her diary. The plan was to kill a guard and cut off their fingers to fool the biometric system in the prison. This plot earned her solitary confinement from September 2013 (before she stood trial) to September 2015 (seven months after sentencing). She claims isolation had a dire effect on her and caused her to self-harm, her human right had been violated. It was ruled that she was punished in accordance with the law – the nature of her offences and the risk she posed to the public if she were to escape. 


When Dennehy was indicted on the 18th November at the Old Bailey in London. She was charged for the murders of Lukasz S, John Chapman and Kevin Lee and the attempted murder of Robin Bereza and John Rogers. Dennehy shocked prosecutors (and her own legal team!) and investigators by pleading guilty to all charges. Throughout court procedures she showed no remorse and laughed. Her legal team had the opportunity to double check with her to confirm if she had indeed meant what she had said and she said yes.


She loved to kill and wasn’t ashamed to admit it.


When asked what he would like to say to Dennehy, the survivor of her brutal onslaught, John Rogers simply asked:

 

“Why? Why did you do it?”


There is no logical answer to that question. Joanne Dennehy is undoubtedly a very disturbed person. Years of drug and alcohol abuse coupled with a sociopathic personality make a fatal combination. Her lust for violence and blood make her a very unique kind of female killer. Also, unlike most female serial killers who follow a dominant male, she was the dominant one. She didn’t need any help in committing the crimes, only in cleaning up the crime scenes. Men like Gary Stretch, Leslie Layton and Robert Moore were easy to manipulate and she used them, because she could.


Dennehy chose to kill using a knife, a method that is violent and messy. By using a knife, she received more satisfaction in the act of killing than say, for instance she would have, had she poisoned her victims. In a police interview, she referred to murder as being ‘moreish’ and that after the first killing she ‘got a taste for it’.


On February 28th 2014 Joanne Dennehy was given a life sentence. She muttered and smirked as her sentence was passed down. She laughed when she heard that she would spend the rest of her life behind bars. Her mother feels that the world is safer with Joanne locked away for life – because she has no remorse. She was given a ‘whole life sentence’ – making her the third woman in British history to receive this custodial sentence, after Myra Hindley (known for the Moors Murders in the 1960s) and Rose West. Incidentally, Dennehy was taken to the same facility where Rose West was incarcerated. West received her ‘whole life sentence’ after bodies of several women were found at the Gloucester home she shared with her husband Fred. She was convicted of the murder of 10 women, mainly committed in the 1970s.


Within 20 minutes of her arrival at Her Majesty’s Prison Bronzefield – in an attempt to be the new alpha female – Joanne Dennehy threatened to kill Rose West. West was kept in solitary confinement for her own protection and subsequently moved to another prison, more than a five hour drive North from Dennehy’s prison in Surrey.


Stretch and Layton pleaded not guilty and claimed they were manipulated by Dennehy.

Stretch was found guilty of three counts of preventing the lawful and decent burial of a body and a two further counts of the attempted murder of Robin Bereza and John Rogers. He was sentenced to life in prison, with a minimum of 19 years to be served.


Leslie Layton, Dennehy’s former housemate received a sentence of 14 years for disposing of the bodies in Peterborough and for perverting the course of justice. Robert Moore, where Dennehy and Stretch stayed while they were laying low was found guilty of assisting an offender and received three years behind bars.


No charges were brought against Mark Lloyd who was in the car on the day of Dennehy’s attacks in Herefordshire. He is still traumatised by the events he witnessed that day, but feels fortunate to be alive.


Trial judge, Mr Justice Spencer recommended Joanne Dennehy should never be released. He also said that she was sadomasochistic and lacked the normal range of human emotions.


She proved the judge right. As she was led from the dock, she said to the courtroom:


“I want you to know I am sorry for the attempted murders. I am not sorry for the murders.”


According to a fellow inmate at HMP Bronzefield in Surrey, Dennehy loved the fact that everyone knew who she was and what she had done. The inmate reportedly said:


“She didn’t like it when people said she killed three. She liked to boast she had killed five and did not like it when people said she had failed.”


That explains Dennehy’s comment about being sorry about the attempted murders. The sorry wasn’t remorse, but rather regret that she didn’t succeed in killing Robin Bereza and John Rogers too.

The father of Dennehy’s children, John Treanor, has remarried and lives in Derbyshire, in the heart of England, with his wife and the two daughters. Like Joanne Dennehy’s surviving victims and the loved ones of those she killed, John and his daughters battle every day to forget the woman who has destroyed their family. 


If you’d like to read more about this case, have a look at the resources used for this episode in the show notes. You would enjoy The Crimes That Shook Britain’s episode covering the Joanne Dennehy case.


This was The Evidence Locker. Thank you for listening!


©2018 Evidence Locker Podcast

All rights reserved. This podcast or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a podcast review.


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