Christopher, it is no secret that I do not regret my actions but I have refused to give motive or make excuses [for the crimes].

I have maintained my guilt throughout.

JOANNE DENNEHY, LETTER TO THE AUTHOR, 24 FEBRUARY 2014

Who really cares whether or not Joanne Dennehy refuses to give us her motive for killing? But she has generously spared us the earache of hearing any mitigation; none of this bad potty training, or, ‘I fell off a swing and bumped my head, it damaged my frontal lobe’, malarkey from Jo. Even more graciously, she has left God out of it altogether. No orders from Him to kill some chappies, thank Heavens.

Proof of motive is never necessary in the proof of the crime. Absence of any discoverable motive is of little consequence in deciding whether or not the prisoner committed the crime, for even the most brilliant jury is helpless in deciding the mental processes which actuate the criminal.

His Honour Mr Justice Christmas Humphreys, MA, LLB (Cantab), author of Seven Murderers, published by William Heinemann Limited, London, 1931

Most serial murderers revel in keeping secret their motives and Joanne Dennehy is no exception, for her fields of interest are narrow, her ego over-inflated to the extent she may consider herself important. She takes it as her right that others will adapt to her ways, which several men did in becoming accomplices in murder. However, now that she is under lock and key, and when most of this controlling element is stripped away, she can only fall back on denying us her motive for murder – her last power trip. So, we should not concern ourselves that a fragment of her needing to control us mere mortals, whom she regards as simpletons, still exists within Dennehy’s warped mind and her anger and incandescent rage will always radiate from her like hot coals in a kitchen stove. And, I am sure that she will commit murder again for she has nothing to lose. Someone in that prison will upset her, and she will watch and wait until the time is right, then kill once more.

As Professor of Applied Psychology David Canter, the UK’s most celebrated offender profiler, wrote in the foreword of my book co-authored with Robin Odell, Ladykiller was devoted to the emerging serial killer John David Guise Cannan, responsible for multiple rapes, also most probably of the murder of Sandra Court (May, 1986, Christchurch, Dorset), and the sex killings of estate agent Suzy Lamplugh (July 1986, London), and Shirley Banks (October 1987, Bristol):

So, Joanne Dennehy will always remain enigmatic, at least to herself, for now she has the remainder of her time behind bars to reflect on her life and crimes. Yet she still cannot see the wood for the trees, for her ‘secret’ motives, like pearls of wisdom for committing homicide, she has already given to us without even opening her mouth or putting pen to paper. Over my years of interviewing serial killers I have come to realise it is not what these people say, or write, it is what they refuse to say, or have a convenient memory loss about, that is equally important in understanding their psychopathology.

During my time working with the serial killer Kenneth Bianchi, I constantly asked for the five missing pages from his interview sessions with police that he’d sent to me. Bianchi claimed to have lost them. He told me he couldn’t understand where they had gone and apologised for this error. However, I arranged for his cell to be given a shakedown. Lo and behold, he had these five documents all along, and they proved crucial to my research into understanding his warped mind.

Dennehy says she murdered Lukasz Slaboszewski because he flirted with her, and nothing else. Then she told Julie Gibbons in a 2014 letter that had she killed all three men out of vengeance.

She says she murdered Kevin Lee because he was not paying her for redecorating some of his properties, or that she knew that he had told his wife about Lukasz’s death, or more likely is the case that she thought that Kevin would call the police on learning that a second man had been killed in another of his bedsits. A highly unlikely scenario as Lee was up to his neck in trouble, anyway.

Dennehy says she murdered John Chapman because he had momentarily spotted her having a bath – the case more likely being she was to be paid by Kevin Lee for Chapman’s eviction, which she would do ‘by any means’. Then she changed her story and attributed the murder to Leslie Layton. ‘Les killed John in a pathetic bid to impress me,’ she wrote in a letter to Julie Gibbons.

She attempted to murder Robin Bereza and John Rogers solely because she wanted to steal their dogs, allegedly.

Perhaps the real motive was that she was simply a sadist who loved the sight of blood. When I put all of this to her eventually she replied in a letter dated 8 June 2014: ‘My motive is mine alone just as is my punishment is mine and mine alone. You have a knack of winding me up. You are getting my back up.’

During her trial a consultant forensic psychiatrist gave evidence that Dennehy had been diagnosed as suffering from paraphilia sadomasochism, where sexual excitement is derived from inflicting pain, humiliation or bondage on another. She herself has admitted this, going further by confirming that she enjoys receiving the same. Like all perversions this condition tends to become increasingly extreme and violent over time as it is repeatedly re-enacted. Dennehy became hooked on causing pain and suffering. As psychoanalyst Coline Covington eloquently puts it: ‘At the heart of violent crimes there is a powerful unconscious fantasy that is being played out in reality by the perpetrator. The fact that the fantasy is deeply rooted in the killer’s psyche also means that its enactment is unlikely to be ultimately satisfying. The reality of the past remains unchanged in the unconscious. This is what often leads to crimes being repeated.’

Covington suggests that for Dennehy the scenario acted out ‘was seduction followed by brutal stabbing to death. The victims were specifically men and, as the prosecution pointed out, humiliation was an important factor.’ She adds, ‘It is a scenario that suggests that Dennehy may have wanted to hurt – destroy – these men in the way she may have felt hurt herself in the past, i.e. at first made to feel wanted and desired and then cruelly attacked and humiliated.’ As Joanne herself explained: ‘They shouldn’t have flirted with me, here was the danger.’ But this in no way explains away the brutal, almost lethal, attacks on the two Hereford men she had never seen before and they most certainly had not flirted with her.

The question then arises, could or would Dennehy have murdered Gary Stretch, Leslie Layton or even Robert Moore? To help us find the answer, let’s rewind to her early teens, where we will find our first clue.

Even as young as fourteen Joanne Dennehy was a manipulator of people, which suited her own needs and selfish ends, and when anyone, including her own parents, were of no further use to her, or impeded her wants and wishes, she dumped them.

John Treanor was convenient to her because he enabled her to find lodgings wherever they ended up. Dennehy could shoplift with him and she had two daughters with him merely so that she could draw child benefit. This money she spent on alcohol and drugs. However, the children, like Treanor, soon became a burden to her and that is why she treated her former lover and their daughters in the repetitive and dismissive manner that she did. She exhibited all of the typical behavioural patterns of a sociopath/psychopath for they have no conscience at all. They know the difference between right and wrong, but they simply don’t care.

Clearly, towards the end of the relationship with Treanor Dennehy was becoming increasingly mentally unbalanced, progressively more violent and now murder had entered her mind. She met up with Stretch, who was also a tool she could use to good effect. Apart from his intimidating size, she knew that he was a simpleton, he’d become besotted with her and when she whistled, he would come running like an obedient dog. However, to give him some credit, it is fair to say he can just about read comics, but he does have a disability when it comes to connecting his brain to a pen, confirmed by the letters he wrote to Gibbons and Dennehy while on remand. When checking out his handwriting I noted several of these letters were almost certainly written on Stretch’s behalf by another inmate.

Without doubt, Joanne Dennehy had been itching to kill someone for years, ever since she plunged a dagger into the carpet shortly before John Treanor hightailed it to Glossop, leaving no forwarding address.

Sadly, her first victim, Lukasz Slaboszewski, was her induction to homicide. Having set a perfectly laid trap, she was cunning as a fox. This was a trial run for she was about to dip her toe into bloody waters. I am convinced in my own mind that she would not have taken on such a powerfully built man without hedging her bets. Whether or not Stretch actually participated, according to his own words he was very close by - perhaps in case things got out of hand. He would do anything for Dennehy, anything at all. As Julie Gibbons has suggested in a newspaper article: ‘She must have had him under her spell.’

Dennehy could not have disposed of Lukasz without Stretch’s help in getting the corpse into the wheelie bin, insuring and driving the Vauxhall Astra, and finding a remote location to dump the body. This, I believe, was a sacrificial murder, for she later told a psychiatrist that she had killed Slaboszewski to see if she could actually murder a man and she told him that she liked doing it. Therefore, she treated Lukasz as an item to be used, abused and disposed of. For Dennehy, Gary Stretch was an extremely valuable, no-questions-asked asset indeed, as proven by his helping her dispose of the body.

With regard to Kevin Lee, it would reasonable to suggest that he and Dennehy used each other, with Joanne coming out on top. She soon realised that like her, he had the morals of an alley cat. It is also true to say that while she appeared to enjoy sex with both sexes, this wasn’t actually the case. It was just something she did when it suited her and for no other reason. She simply went through the motions, using her sex and flirty, teasing allure to manipulate men.

Kevin Lee fell hook, line and sinker for her charms. So strong was the attraction that he would, like Stretch, do anything for Dennehy, even if that entailed risking his marriage, giving Joanne money to buy a car to dispose of a dead body, even putting on one of her dresses. He knew that she enjoyed inflicting pain and receiving it, so presumably he admired this sadistic streak in her and was even turned on by it. And, when she whistled with promises of more kinky sex, just like Slaboszewski, he came running. Kevin Lee gave her grace-and-favour lodgings in return for her tenant enforcement and eviction talents, acts in which Stretch participated by doing exactly as he was told. However, unbeknown to Lee he was rapidly reaching his own sell-by-date; he simply did not have a clue.

If one can give any credit to Dennehy, she could certainly multi-task by scheming and luring other men into her homicidal orbit with promises of sex. She had shown Lee the dreadful contents of the wheelie bin at 11 Rolleston Garth. Then, having met Robert Moore earlier via Leslie Layton, and having ‘come on strong’ to both these hapless individuals, she opened the bin to Moore’s daughter, a fourteen-year-old whose name is subject to a s.39 Children and Young Persons Act 1933 order which protects her identity until she is eighteen. Dennehy knew that Moore would not grass her up to the police because he was in love with her. His genitalia now ruling his brain, Moore was now truly out of his depth and, like Kevin Lee, he didn’t have a clue either – nor, for that matter, did Layton.

We now turn to the luckless John Chapman, who incidentally not only shared 31 Bifield with Layton, they were drinking buddies as well. Both of these men were in the same boat. Kevin Lee had served eviction notices on them but they refused to budge and so on his instructions Joanne Dennehy moved in. Soon realising that Layton could become another tool, she started flirting with him too. Within a few days he was crazy about her, to the extent that he would turn a blind eye to anything and everything that was going on, while hovering on the sidelines was the towering Stretch to ensure that he did just that.

Having watched and studied Chapman’s behaviour for several days, Dennehy knew that he always went to bed very drunk. Indeed, during the afternoon before the morning of his murder, Dennehy had visited the Virams store, where she had generously bought John a lot more alcohol to help send him on his way. Once asleep, he was helpless. However, she was seething with anger. Kevin Lee allegedly still owed her money for cleaning up 11 Rolleston Garth.

If Lee wanted Chapman evicted then she would do just that. So, during the early hours of Good Friday, 29 March 2013, Joanne stabbed John Chapman to death, enjoying every second of the frenzied attack. Following this she bumped into Layton as she came out of the bathroom. In a pathetic effort to impress her, and Gary Stretch, Layton took a photo of the dead man’s blood-spattered body. Soon he would be helping them dump the corpse in a ditch.

Now it was Kevin Lee’s turn to get his comeuppance. For a while he had proved to be an invaluable asset to Dennehy but now he had become a liability – and very dangerous one at that. Already he knew too much for he had confessed his affair to Cristina; he had seen the body of Lukasz in the wheelie bin, allegedly told his wife about it, and had given money to Dennehy to purchase car to be used to dump the corpse in a ditch. Added to this was the fact that he apparently owed Dennehy money and perhaps thought that he could avoid paying by buying her a couple of CDs and pandering to her deviant sexual needs. To Dennehy’s Jekyll and Hyde nature this would have been a slap across the face. She would lure him round to Rolleston Garth, kill him and then dump his body in manner, which to her mind, he deserved, leaving it for all the world to see.

But was Stretch present when Kevin Lee was murdered? Was it because, to ensure the killing went off without too much fuss, no risks could be taken, even if it was only Dennehy who did the stabbing in much the same way as the couple participated in the Lukasz Slaboszewski murder? According to Dennehy’s reasoning it worked then, so why should it not work again?

We know that when Stretch, Dennehy and Layton met up shortly after Chapman’s murder, Layton was effectively told to make himself scarce so he went shopping with Robert Moore, while Joanne and Gary did a little conspiring alone. By then, Stretch already knew that Dennehy wanted to kill Kevin Lee because he owed her money and because allegedly he was sexually harassing her. He even told Gary Stretch who knew exactly where to dump the bodies. They would have two corpses at two different locations, along with Kevin’s car to dispose of, so they would need another driver and they couldn’t afford to hang about.

When Layton arrived back at 38 Bifield, he soon learned that he was about to be pressed into grim service for Stretch and Dennehy would have told him that he was now an accomplice in murder. With the pair not giving him any option, he had to go along with whatever he was told. Plans had been made and with Chapman’s corpse starting to decompose, there could be no turning back. If Leslie desisted they would kill him too, or certainly pin John Chapman’s murder on him, as Dennehy later tried to do by claiming at one time that Layton had murdered Chapman in an attempt to impress her. If anything, the only reason why Layton had not as yet become another victim was because he was still of use. One didn’t say ‘no’ to people like Dennehy and Stretch, simple as that. For Leslie Layton there was no way out and he didn’t possess the morality, or the guts, even less the intelligence to contact the police.

Therefore, perhaps the scenario surrounding Kevin Lee’s demise went something like this. Without doubt, Dennehy lured him to 11 Rolleston Garth with the promise of sex but all the while with premeditated murder in mind. Was Stretch on hand just in case something went wrong? Layton was waiting nearby, ready to assist where he could. He brought along the tarpaulin previously supplied by his mate, Moore.

With Kevin Lee now dressed to kill in a black sequined dress and also stone dead, we know through witness statements that the group – with Layton driving Kevin’s Mondeo, the body in the back, and Dennehy and Stretch leading in the Vauxhall – left Rolleston Garth and drove out to the ditch at Newborough, where his body was found the following morning. We also know that it was Layton who was driving the Mondeo before it was set on fire, after which the group returned to 38 Bifield in the Vauxhall, collected John Chapman’s body and then dumped that off, too.

Effectively, Leslie Layton was now surplus to requirements. With Dennehy’s bloodlust temporarily sated, Gary Stretch – just as he was soon to do to Georgina Page at her King’s Lynn flat – threatened Layton with his life should he give any information to the police, if and when they came calling. Layton knew that Joanne had killed three men, and he had seen what she had done to his former pal, John Chapman. He had watched from the sidelines as Lee and Chapman’s bodies had been thrown into ditches. By now he would have surely reckoned that he was lucky not to be lying there with them.

Layton was caught between a rock and a hard place. No wonder he was ‘wracked with guilt’, as Mr Justice Spencer remarked, over that Easter holiday weekend, but not so upset that he frequently updated Dennehy after the police twice interviewed him. As any homicide cop will confirm, Layton almost certainly did this to keep her sweet and to reassure the pair that he had no intention of grassing them up. Weak-willed Layton would save his own skin at any cost.

The final person Dennehy used in her killing spree was Robert Moore, who, like Lee, Layton and Stretch, was besotted with her. As previously mentioned Moore’s daughter had seen Slaboszewski’s body in the wheelie bin and she had told her dad, so when Layton asked him if he could have the use of a tarpaulin, like a fool he agreed to loan it. He, too, was aware that another two murders had been committed because Layton and Dennehy had already texted him. He also allowed Dennehy and Stretch to stay the night at his place after Lee was murdered, and the following evening he fed the couple as yet another sweetener before they went on the run.

So, what did Moore get out of this? Not much, not even a peck on the cheek from Joanne, who had almost certainly promised him more in one of her raunchy text messages, but he did earn himself four years behind bars. Well done, Robert, but this still leaves us with Gary Stretch. Could Joanne have killed him too? In a heartbeat, of course, yes!

At Stretch’s trial, his counsel, Mr Karim Khalil QC, likened his client to being Dennehy’s ‘Nodding Dog’, and how appropriate is that? From the moment she and ‘Gaz’ met, she knew that he would be invaluable to her. Indeed she soon came to the realisation that although he was none too bright, like a loyal pet he would come running, should she whistle. If she asked him to lie down, he did. If she asked him to snarl and bark, he would, and like any mean hound she needed a kennel in which to keep him. Kevin Lee provided such a kennel for Stretch at number 2 Riseholme, which inside, and out, was in fact so disgusting that any right-minded person wouldn’t dream of keeping a dog there.

Unfortunately space in this book for the inclusion of many police photographs is limited. Therefore, as much as I would have wanted, I cannot show you even the exterior of the property but let me just paint a word picture for you of the front aspect, if I may.

Number 2 Riseholme is relatively new in construction. It is not, as one might expect, a comfy thatched cottage with hanging baskets full of well-tended pretty flowers hanging from the porch, or enjoying a luxuriant front lawn with a pixie sitting here and there. You will not see this address featured in Country Life. The porch roof of this pink/red brick and white, double-glazed windowed dwelling has several slates missing, seemingly most appropriate because Mr Stretch, as is now obvious, has many slates missing from his own roof, too. There is a grey slab path leading to the front gate and either side of what purports to be garden, grass fights gallantly in an ever-losing battle to see sunlight.

Now, close your eyes and imagine this: collect several large builders’ skips of rubbish and delicately scatter the contents into the front garden of 2 Riseholme. Add to this a few bulging black plastic sacks of household refuse that the dustmen would never in a million years handle owing to health and safety regulations, throw in some timber, sawdust, a rolled-up urine-and excrement-stained carpet and overlay with well-thumbed porn material. Yes, that’s about it, I believe. Job done! And this is before you even step through the front door. The stench is terrible. Oh, and the taxpayer is handing out good money to people like Gary Stretch to treat what could be a perfectly decent place to live in like this.

Having done away with Slaboszewski, Chapman and Lee, and after threatening to kill Layton, Moore and Georgina Page if they spilled the beans, Dennehy used Stretch in an attempt to escape justice by fleeing west to Herefordshire. To his credit, he did have a valid driving licence and insurance – she didn’t, so Joanne could not have gone far from Peterborough without Gaz’s help, despite the fact that steering the Vauxhall car must have proved difficult for him – with his knees up to his chin!

Would they have gone their separate ways, had they not been arrested in Hereford? Maybe, maybe not, however I am inclined to believe that if at any time Stretch had posed a threat to Dennehy, or insulted or abused her, she would have stabbed him to death without a second thought. She would have bided her time and while he slept, punched knife stabs into his throat and heart until he was dead. As her previous record has adequately proven, her 3-inch lock knife, combined with demonic strength, was an ‘equaliser’, one no man caught off-guard could withstand.