This place is a dump. The food is crap.

JOANNE DENNEHY, TO ANOTHER INMATE AT HMP BRONZEFIELD, APRIL 2014

They say a picture paints a thousand words, but it would be irresponsible of me, and my publisher, to include in this book the graphic photos taken of the decomposing dead bodies of Lukasz Slaboszewski, Kevin Lee and John Chapman, in situ in the ditches, or at autopsy. Indeed, even if one were permitted to publish these pictures, I would not do so for this would serve no purpose other than to bring additional heartbreak to their next of kin and indeed also to the parents of Joanne Dennehy, who are innocent victims of their daughter’s heinous crimes, too. Besides, we all wish to remember a lost loved one as he/she was in life, not in death. Added to which so disgusting are the photos of the deceased Kevin Lee, the trial judge and the sentencing judge ordered the pictures be photographically sanitised in a certain area.

My Canadian friend, the award-winning actor and novelist, Alan Scarfe, aka Clanash Farjeon, writes in his book, The Autobiography of Jack the Ripper: ‘The murders [of Jack the Ripper] were variously described as “ferocious butchery, virulent savagery and beyond comprehension”’. He adds: ‘People always say “beyond comprehension” when they cannot bear to admit that they comprehend all too well.’ And to me this perfectly sums up Dennehy’s murders.

Since being incarcerated Joanne Dennehy has risen through the inmate ranks and has now attained the lofty position of cleaner in the segregation unit (The Block) at HMP Bronzefield, Surrey. As might be expected, she claims that she is top dog there, bragging in badly spelt notes to a pen friend:

So why am I including this letter here and what significance is it to us in trying to understand Dennehy’s mind? In fact it deserves to be included for the note signifies a great deal since her correspondence to me is well laid out. Written with a good hand and an eye for detail and punctuation, she uses perfect grammar and there is not a misspelling anywhere. Then, when we compare this to her letters to Gary Stretch and her lesbian pen friend, we see the flip side for Joanne Dennehy is a literary chameleon. This manipulative woman puts on a different persona to impress whosoever she is dealing with at any given time.

Jean Elliott is a graphologist and she analysed Dennehy’s writing in the Daily Mirror (Friday, 21 March 2014):

I agree with some of this, however, in Dennehy’s mail to me I see no ‘bumping letters’ and there is space between the words, although the script is admittedly somewhat juvenile. I cannot say any of the halfwits involved with Dennehy had any telepathic receiving device in their heads – far from it, I would suggest. That Dennehy prefers to follow orders does not resonate with me either: sociopaths do not follow anyone’s orders, they issue them.

Jean Elliott is also at pains to report that in her experience: ‘her [Dennehy] inner nature is introverted with her spontaneity curbed but there are times when such writers find comfort by behaving in an unconventional way.’

However, Elliott says: ‘This lady, [author’s italics] however, is reluctant to allow her emotions free expression and can use control to the point of cold-heartedness’, none of which I can truly understand. A ‘lady’ she most certainly isn’t! Nevertheless, Elliott suggests the left slant of Dennehy’s handwriting shows ‘a protective attitude towards herself and she has taken the ideals and values from her mother figure.’

Elliott concludes her analysis with: ‘the writer is very self-involved, which can border on conceit, an individual who is self-centred and makes great issues out of trivial things. The personality is self-absorbed, dwelling on past experiences rather than looking forward to the future – which often frightens her. The danger to this person is boredom and confinement in her own self-centred world.’

But I digress. Having seen the note to her pen friend, I wrote to Joanne asking for an explanation to which I received this curt reply: ‘The lies being told about me, about the things I’m meant to have said or done are too numerous for me to care about. Prime example: My views on Bronzefield.’

Before her sentencing, and while on remand, Dennehy had plotted to escape after being rejected by Anna Chambers, a lesbian inmate, with whom she became infatuated. Twenty-nine-year-old Anna is serving a prison term after attempting to hold up a petrol station with a knife in 2013.

A former inmate who does not wish to be named said: ‘Anna was just nice to her [Dennehy]. But Joanne wanted Anna to be her girlfriend, but she told her “no” as she has a girlfriend on the outside. As soon as she said she did not want to be with her, that was it. Jo said that she would kill her [the girlfriend on the outside].’

But was this threat to escape and kill another person for real? Certainly the Prison Service thought so because they were obliged to issue the following press statement:

This may sound archaic but most right-minded folk would say that the punishment should suit the crime – an eye for an eye, that sort of stuff. Most certainly women in the US who have committed similar offences would now be on Death Row. However, this is not the case in the UK, far from it.

As West End London stage productions go, a later version of Sister Act performed at HMP Bronzefield was carried out on the cheap – if one can call 175,000 or thereabouts cheap! And, I would hazard a guess that if the internationally famous Hollywood actress Whoopi Goldberg (who starred in the original 1992 movie of the same name) learned of this, she would be none too pleased, for the Bronzefield star was none other than one Gholda James.

A former Dominican Republic Next Top Model contestant, 18-year-old Gholda James from Pointe Michel had previously been in contact with law enforcement and had become of interest to HM Customs & Excise Special Investigations and other agencies. In 2013, she was jailed for trying to smuggle 90,000 of cocaine into the UK but was now cast in the lead for Bronzefield’s version of Sister Act as Sister Roberts. I have Ms James’s criminal CV in front of me as I write and to put her into perspective, it is such characters who bring drugs into the UK, simultaneously wrecking the likes of school kids like Joanne Dennehy.

Supporting Miss James in this production, and also scantily clad in fishnet stockings, suspender belt and black stilettos, was Sarah Anderson, who is serving a life sentence for the blitz, multiple stabbing of a woman following an argument in a South London public house.

Nigerian air hostess Temitayo Daramola, incarcerated after attempting to smuggle 600,000 of cocaine on a flight to London from Lagos in the summer of 2013, unashamedly paraded herself alongside a female child abuser alongside twenty or more of the most dangerous women offenders, plus an extended cast of professional actors and opera singers, all accompanied by a thirteen-piece orchestra.

According to the media, leading Pimlico Opera designer Halla Groves-Raines had secretly created the stage without public or government financial scrutiny and professional choreographers trained the prisoners for two weeks. According to press reports, although not publicly advertised, with prison officials ordering a ban on publicity amid fears of public outrage, on the order of prison director Charlotte Pattison-Rideout the show went ahead, with tickets oversubscribed. During seven nights, between the end of February and the start of March 2014, at least 300 people attended each show, paying up to 40 a ticket to watch killers, sex offenders, drug smugglers, thieves, con-women and those due for deportation prance about in very little, all in the name of ‘rehabilitation’.

Rehabilitation for what, you are entitled to ask. A job in a pole dancing club or a strip joint, perhaps even a drugs rehabilitation clinic in Nigeria… Pull the other one! They might perhaps have been more constructively rehabilitated breaking rocks in a granite quarry, or breaking sweat through some other form of manual labour.

Absent from the on-stage cast of criminal performers was the subject of this book, namely Joanne Dennehy. She was serving teas, coffees and light refreshments to ‘distinguished guests’ – all part of her rehabilitation into a free society to which she will never return. As for Rose West… Previously, she had been secretly removed from HMP Bronzefield, having been granted ‘Rule 43’ Protective Custody at her own request after Dennehy threatened to kill her, too. To confirm or deny both of these matters I wrote to HMP Bronzefield but received no reply.

Thank you, Rose Dixon, so quite why Joanne Dennehy is complaining about the conditions at Bronzefield is unclear. Opened in 2004, housing some 527 women, the facility has three main residential units, each holding 135 female inmates in almost idyllic surroundings. Therefore, Bronzefield is perhaps the most modern of such facilities within the British Criminal Justice System, which the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) refers to as its estate.

HMP & YOI Bronzefield is run by Sodexo, a French food services and facilities management multinational corporation with headquarters in the Paris suburb of Issy-les-Moulineaux. According to Sodexos internet web site, at the time of writing, the companys assets are circa 111.40 billion and it employs around 415,000 people worldwide, making it one of the wealthiest organisations in the world. However, during the research for this book I discovered that in August 2013, Sodexo Justice Services had previously been criticised in an official report by the Chief Inspector of Prisons for subjecting a female prisoner to ‘cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment’, something that the chief executive of the Howard League for |Penal Reform said ‘appears to amount to torture’, at HMP Bronzefield. In brief, the woman was kept segregated from other prisoners in an ‘unkempt and squalid’ prison cell for more than five years. Indeed, there have been two such inspections; the first being published by the Independent Monitoring Board’s Annual Report for the period August 2011–July 2012, and then a visit by the Chief Inspector of Prisons, Nick Hardwick, which is mentioned by Hannah Minnock writing in The Solicitor Online, 11 August, 2013. The full reports are easily available on the Internet.

Subjected to both official enquiries, it is fair to say that HMP Bronzefield was thoroughly examined and mostly exonerated by HM Inspector of Prisons, who went on to say perhaps a few improvements could be made, but it was Dennehy’s allegations about the food, aligned with the vast expense of the Sister Act production, that demanded I dig deeper. Well, it is 170,000 of taxpayers’ money we are talking about here, and since another official report also confirmed that Sodexo were not feeding their prisoners properly it was right for me to enquire how the company could afford to put up such a large amount of cash for a stage production. So I submitted a Freedom of Information Request (FOI) to the Ministry of Justice on 19 May 2014.

The reply, dated 28 May 2014, follows, and despite the apparent ‘transparency’, it leaves much more to be answered:

No UK taxpayers’ money was used to fund this stage production.

That no UK taxpayers’ money was used to provide overtime for prison staff during the duration of this show.

That HM Ministry of Justice, HM Government, or any of its agents and servants were, in any way complicit in this stage production.

So, the British taxpayer – who funds Sodexo Justice Services, a company contracted by HM Ministry of Justice – is being fobbed off here, for of course the British taxpayer was ultimately left to foot the bill for the Sister Act show. As a nation we have all contributed to prison staff overtime and the bottom line that ‘HM Ministry of Justice, HM Government, or any of its agents and servants, were not in any way complicit in this stage production’ is a complete falsehood. If the Ministry of Justice is unaware of what is going on inside their prisons, this department needs a wake-up call. But it gets worse, and I owe this much to the next of kin of Joanne Dennehy’s deceased victims.

My FOI request also made mention of the security clearance procedures carried out by Sodexo Justice Services on the fee-paying guests who attended the Sister Act show. I am talking about hundreds of guests here, each one having to comply with the National Policy covering Visitors to Prisoners (PSI 16/2011) Providing Visits and Services to prisoners, and (PSI 15/2011) Management of Security at Visits, with regard to those individuals producing the stage production.

The reply from Ministry of Justice official Roger Davis simply stated:

This applicant [Christopher Berry-Dee] for a Freedom of Information request under the 200 [sic] Act has knowledge, by way of fact, that many ticket paying guest [sic] attended this show ‘Mingled’ with offenders, having never associated with, or been known to each other. The Ministry of Justice will provide confirmation, by way of a hardcopy reply:

That Sodexho [sic], inter alia, the Sodexho [sic] Corporation, fully complied with the national policy covering Visits to Prisoners (PSI 16/2011) providing Visits and Services to Prisoners, and PSI 15/2011 Management of Security at Visits, with regard to guests attending this stage production?

Sadly, this official response to my FOI request merely confirms that apart from the fact that Mr Davis has not a clue what he is talking about, he might be advised to study the English language. Worse still, he cannot even spell the name of the company to whom the MoJ contracts out to run HMP Bronzefield. He has also completely overlooked the fact that for a person to be accepted for a prison visit takes careful vetting, not only by the Ministry of Justice but the Home Office too. Even magistrates are vetted before visits, but in this case we are talking about hundreds of fee-paying guests and the MoJ refuses to say how these guests were selected, how the show was advertised to them, how much cash was lost, or to identify the guests.

Added to which there is the matter of Joanne Dennehy serving light refreshments to distinguished guests. Two correctional officers and several inmates have told me that this is true. The MoJ neither confirms nor denies this, nor can HMP Bronzefield, who, while enjoying the British taxpayer’s generosity, has no comment whatsoever to make.