I am going to marry a serial killer
JAMES BUDD, THE SUN, 7 SEPTEMBER 2014
We are almost at the end of our journey into the mind of sadomasochistic serial killer Joanne Christine Dennehy but before we finally arrive at our destination perhaps now is the time to reflect on our trip thus far along this particular ‘Murder Road’.
We have established that female serial killers working alone are very rare individuals. In the UK there have been less than a handful of such women since Victorian times, the last being Beverley Allitt. Two of these women used toxic substances to kill by stealth, another used a ligature to strangle babies.
In the US female serial killers acting alone without assistance are also few and far between. However, aside from Aileen ‘Lee’ Wuornos – who used a firearm – they have all poisoned their victims for various motives in one form or another. Therefore, unless I am proven wrong, Joanne Dennehy would have become the first female serial killer in UK and US criminal history to stab three men to death without an accomplice at hand. And remember the statement made by prison inmate Anna Chambers, who said: ‘She [Dennehy] didn’t like it when people said she killed three people. She liked to boast she had killed five and did not like it when people said she had failed.’
However, examples of females working with men to commit serial homicide are all too frequent occurrences around the world. Criminal history is littered with them. Female serial murderesses usually have an accomplice, frequently a male partner in crime – Ian Brady and Myra Hindley, Frederick and Rosemary West, for example – although female serial killing couples are not unknown, as we have seen with Cathy Wood and Gwendoline Graham in the United States.
This draws me to the inevitable conclusion that although Joanne wants to take the credit for becoming one of the first female serial murderers working as a single entity in UK history, she most certainly is not. And the police have discredited the claim, made by Dennehy, that she has killed more than three men. Therefore, in serial homicide terms as far as her self-proclaimed exclusivity is concerned we can take this with a pinch of salt for, as I have previously suggested in this book, might Dennehy not have become a serial killer without perhaps Gary Stretch aiding and abetting her? In the eyes of the law this might have made him an accomplice in two homicides and, therefore, was he technically as guilty as she?
With what sparse information available to us concerning Joanne’s formative years up to early adolescence we can only rely on her sister’s few words published in the national press to provide some sort of picture. Throughout Mr and Mrs Dennehy have remained resolutely silent. Obviously protective of her parents, Maria allows us a glimpse of Joanne enjoying a happy childhood, sitting in a back garden tree singing songs to Maria – a chocolate-box formative years scenario, and probably true. But then Joanne flipped. Why? Prior to this event there is nothing in Joanne’s nor indeed the Dennehy family’s history that could be construed as indicators or predictors red-flagging any tendency towards antisocial behaviour just over the horizon. Here, it appears, was a perfectly normal young girl who, like a train running smoothly along its tracks, suddenly derails with no warning.
In 1996, aged fourteen, Joanne Dennehy ran off with a fairground worker who was four years her senior, and it was at this point in her life that she was introduced to sex, skunk and hard liquor. In her Daily Mail article of 15 February 2014Maria admits, ‘Our parents were very protective. Perhaps they were a little too strict,’ and no doubt when Joanne was eventually brought home there was hell to pay. Skunk, as we now know, has been linked to the causation of mental illness and there can be no doubt that having used it frequently along with alcohol, this may have seriously affected Joanne’s still-developing brain and impacted on her problem-solving skills for the drugs and drink started to control her. The more she was reprimanded, the more she rebelled against her teachers’ authority and she also developed a spiteful, vicious streak towards her parents. This was the perfect storm and it carried on until finally she walked out of the parental home to be with John Treanor.
At this point in her life there could be no going back. Not only was she running away from home, her family, schooling and a promising career in law, she was also fleeing from her responsibilities and from herself. From that day on, every time she held up a mirror she would see the once respectable teenager much loved by her family, who had thrown everything away. This, I believe, was the beginning of the terrible rage that would continually boil inside her, eventually culminating in brutal serial homicide. Subconsciously she hated herself for what she had become and she would exact her revenge, not only through self-harming but by hurting society as a whole.
Quite frankly, in absconding with Joanne Dennehy, twenty-one-year-old John Treanor really should have known better but he had no job, no money nor commonsense. He had known that she had run away from home several times before but there he was, effectively abducting an underage girl and moving her into a property owned by a drug dealer and infested with addicts, a place where cheap booze and drugs were readily available. Had he had possessed any moral backbone he would have contacted the Dennehys and explained that their daughter was in dire straits, but he didn’t. Instead he shoplifted with her to put food in their mouths and to pay the rent. He then got her pregnant, with all the toxic substances she introduced into her body affecting the foetus throughout the term.
Knowing Joanne Dennehy as we now do, one gets the impression that having a baby would have been the last thing on her mind. Self-centered and selfish, she valued her freedom too much.
While Treanor insists that he loved Joanne very much, in no way did she reciprocate his feelings. Indeed, secretly she despised him for being so weak. He became her first lapdog and she could do what she liked, when she liked and come and go as she pleased. She could, and did, treat him like dirt – sleeping with other men, and women, sometimes while he was present without fear of any real protest. Then, when their first daughter was born, she withdrew all maternal love and subjected the child to a home where bedlam reigned supreme. There were days, even weeks, when she would run off with someone else and then when it suited her, she would return to Treanor. When things got completely out-of-hand he would run back to his mother with the child in tow, only for Dennehy to whistle and back he would go again.
Aged twenty-two, Dennehy now had the bit firmly between her teeth. At this point in her life she was in trouble with the police for assault and had also been sectioned under the Mental Health Act. She was diagnosed as having a psychotic disorder, being ‘emotionally unstable and prone to unpredictable behavioural explosions’. All predictors pointing towards further antisocial behaviour and the beginnings of fully emerged psychopathy.
Yet, armed with all of this knowledge including the fact that the highly-manipulative Dennehy went back to her parents as part of her parole conditions and had messed that up by destroying their new conservatory, Treanor took her back and got her pregnant a second time around, knowing, or at least he should have known, that she’d treat their next child with the same contempt as she did the first, and himself likewise. It was only when she plunged a dagger into the floor of their home and screamed, ‘I wish I could fuckin’ kill someone!’ that the penny finally dropped and he left for good. She was now twenty-seven and he was thirty-three.
Details of the period between 2009 when Treanor finally dumped Dennehy to when she resurfaced with Gary Stretch in early 2013 are rare. We know that she served several prison sentences, at least one of them for assault occasioning actual bodily harm, but considering what would soon follow these amounted to ‘minor crimes’, as Mr Justice Spencer and the police have pointed out. We don’t know when or where she met Gary Stretch in the town of March, Cambridgeshire, but they were both out on parole at the time. It is thought they met either in 2010 or 2011, and they kept in touch until late 2012 or early 2013, when they joined forces and came to Peterborough, seeking lodgings through Quicklet.
What we do know as fact is that Stretch fell in love easily. Physically a car wreck, he had the mental age of a teenager – and not a bright one at that. It would also be fair to say owing to the size of his body combined with the small size of his brain and a mouth full of rotten teeth, women were not queuing up to throw themselves at his feet. Therefore, any attention Dennehy gave him was akin to rewarding a dog with a pat on the head and giving it a bone. Little wonder the much younger, quite pretty and well-spoken Joanne was able to manipulate him so easily because he wanted, indeed he had to believe, every single word she said to stay within her orbit.
Joanne told him that her parents had kicked her out of the family home when she was just fourteen years old. She said her father had sexually abused her when she was just a kid and explained that John Treanor had taken her daughters away from her. As Julie Gibbons has said, this would have resonated with her with Stretch. He would have believed every single word that passed her lips.
Like Treanor, Stretch was besotted with the manipulative sociopath. He would do anything she asked of him. Stretch effectively became her minder on the promise of a future consensual sexual relationship with Joanne, all the while knowing this would never happen. To her, he was just another tool in her box and not a sharp one at that.
There came a time – and again we may never know precisely when – that Kevin Lee and Joanne Dennehy hit it off sexually, also becoming partners in dodgy eviction deals. Both arrangements went hand in hand, it seems to me, but Joanne had already tuned into Lee’s roaming eye from the outset. Here was a married man of property, with money in the bank. Someone she could exploit and use for her own ends. If she played him right, he would become, like Treanor and Stretch, yet another nodding dog. Dennehy was sure about it, and she was certainly correct for she had sensed that Lee was ego-driven from the day she first walked into his office.
To begin with, Lee had gone against the wishes of his office manager, Paul Creed, in giving Dennehy and Stretch lodgings. Lee actually believed Joanne when she told him that she had served a considerable prison term for murdering her father because he had abused her as a young child. In overruling Creed, Lee was keen to prove his machismo; effectively, if he gave Dennehy accommodation then she would be required to return the favour. She did this in spades to eventually kill him.
I say that Lee was ego-driven because behind his wife’s back he had bragged to several of his mates that he had a bit on the side; that she was kinky and every man’s dream when it came to sex, to the degree that he boasted that he would wear one of Joanne’s dresses because it turned them on so much. What he didn’t know, because his ego forbade it, was that the very act of sex was of no consequence to her at all. It was just something she needed to do to achieve whatever ends she needed. In fact sex left her stone cold.
Psychopaths/sociopaths are control freaks. Subtle and cunning, their true nature is concealed beneath a mask of normalcy. I suggest that Joanne wanted the now-besotted Kevin Lee completely under her thumb, with the added bonus that with Stretch she could fulfill her terrible goal of killing someone, as she had told John Treanor while in a drunken rage. She has admitted this much to psychiatrist Dr Farnham; she enjoyed doing the murder. With the brutal stabbing of Lukasz Slaboszewski she realised this nightmarish dream and now she had taken the first step towards becoming a serial killer. Then, to finally have Kevin Lee under her complete control, the ever-confident psychopath that she now was knew that he would do anything to help her cover up the murder.
For his part Gary Stretch was himself no stranger to murder. He had witnessed the killing of thirty-three-year-old prisoner Brian Haynes several years earlier in Peterborough Prison, and certainly I do not think that Dennehy could have murdered Lukasz Slaboszewski and Kevin Lee then disposed of the bodies without, perhaps, the cooperation of Stretch acting as her accomplice when the murders were committed. He was, indeed, the enabler and was present when she attempted stabbing to death the two Herefordshire men. I would suggest that his modus operandi was, therefore, established.
But I would also hazard a guess that Lee didn’t owe Dennehy a penny, and this submission of mine is supported by the fact that had he been sexually harassing her, she must have been a willing party to his attentions in this regard. Lee sent her an Easter card, bought her two CDs and about an hour before his untimely death boasted to his pal, David Church, that he was going to pop round to 11 Rolleston Garth, put on one of her dresses and have kinky sex with her.
To Stretch, the words from our manipulative Dennehy telling him: ‘Kevin owes me money and he is sexually harassing me,’ would have struck a nerve. He would have recalled Joanne’s tale that her father had sexually molested her as a youngster. Being the doting, though totally irresponsible father to their children, as Julie Gibbons has claimed, Kevin Lee – much in the way that Treanor allegedly previously used and abused her – was now pestering his Joanne. To this simple-minded, love struck man, these were all complete truths despite the fact that they were lies. To keep Dennehy, Stretch had to believe in her; he had to comply.
Stretch’s modus operandi is now well established. This is evidenced by the attempted murders of Robin Bereza and John Rogers, for not only did he convey Dennehy in a motor vehicle knowing she had another murder in mind, when the attack on Bereza was thwarted by the arrival of another car he drove her to another place where he knew dog walkers could be found. This amounted to conspiracy to murder for which he was given two concurrent life sentences amounting to 19 years.
Just as with Slaboszewski, Dennehy would again use the irresistible bait of kinky sex to get Kevin Lee through the front door. Could Stretch have been waiting, hiding in another room, while Lee slipped on the black sequined dress? Then Joanne produced the lock knife and started the killing. The non-passive Lee had put up a fierce struggle. Could Stretch have restrained him until the man died? Sitting outside in the green Vauxhall Astra was Leslie Layton. Dennehy and Stretch quickly rolled the corpse into Moore’s tarpaulin and the trio humped the grim bundle into the rear of Lee’s car, after which they drove off in the two vehicles to dispose of their latest victim.
As for John Chapman, he was passive because he had been in a deep, drunken sleep. It was a killing easily accomplished by the cowardly Dennehy acting alone, but she still needed Stretch and Layton to get rid of the body.
While writing this book I sent a second letter to Gary Stretch. In it I asked if he would confirm, or deny, being present when Kevin Lee was killed. I did not receive a reply.
But why, in Hereford, was Dennehy suddenly so insistent about targeting men out walking their dogs? I think that we can rule out her ridiculous explanation of simply wanting a dog as a pet because she could have picked one up anywhere. Therefore, what was so special for her about a man who had a dog with him, and what was the link between man and dog? She claims to love dogs with a passion, yet there she was, trying to steal one such creature from the very person who fed and cared for it – its master. What follows is, of course, open to debate, but looking deep inside Dennehy’s mind I see her first meeting with John Treanor, who was out walking his Alsatian resonating here. We know how quickly she grew to despise this man because of the shocking way she treated him over a period of 12 years. So, perhaps the act of trying to murder a man walking his dog was, to her dysfunctional mind, a way of trying to kill off Treanor, too?
During my research for this book I came across several people who observed that Joanne Dennehy must have been an extremely angry person but this is an understatement although it did strike a chord, as it will, no doubt, to the reader. In fact Joanne hated herself for what she had become and she projected this hatred onto others as punishment in the same way as she had previously stuck pins into herself and slashed her abdomen with a razor blade, later to project this self-harming onto the stabbing and slashing of others. And it is interesting to note how this rage manifested itself and developed with each killing and the subsequent attacks. It has been argued that she enjoyed the killing for the sake of it. Maybe she did, maybe not, but it is still worthy of some consideration.
The murder of Lukasz Slaboszewski consisted of a single stab to the heart. It was Dennehy’s way of fulfilling the statement she made to John Treanor – that she wanted to, ‘Fuckin’ kill someone.’ She murdered Lukasz just to see if she could do it, and she says that she enjoyed it. ‘After that it became kind of more-ish,’ she later told Dr Farnham. However, looking back at this first murder, it is clear that it brought her no long-term satisfaction at all. Instead it proved a short-lived catharsis for the hatred boiling within her was not sated with this first bloodletting, far from it.
The murder of John Chapman, who was fast asleep, allowed full rein to her fury. She stabbed the helpless man once in the neck, severing the carotid artery, and then plunged the knife into him five more times with such force that one blow went straight through his breastbone. However, this still did not satisfy her because she had fallen short of causing him to ‘suffer’. The next time around she would really come down hard and Kevin Lee bore the brunt of it, for her rage was still there and it refused to go away.
Lee was almost a by-product of Dennehy’s desire to punish others for what she herself had become. And I think that it would not be unreasonable to suggest that he literally took it upon himself to walk into Joanne’s killing ground. The murders of Slaboszewski and Chapman had failed to assuage her inner turmoil in any way. Indeed Slaboszewski had gone down in a heartbeat, while Chapman put up no fight at all. Dennehy now knew that she could kill without a second thought or a moment’s loss of sleep (and maybe, if Stretch’s correspondence to his former partner is to be believed, with Stretch on hand to back her up), with Kevin Lee she could launch an almost ‘Jack-the-Ripper’ style attack on a man, who, to her mind, was weak, unfaithful to his wife and due whatever came his way.
I use the term ‘by-product’ somewhat clinically and without emotion, for if one studies serial killers at any length, one must leave one’s own revulsion for their dreadful deeds to one side. I have interviewed face to face so many serial killers and mass murderers – men and women – who have sat an arm’s length away from me and who have gleefully boasted, and tried to control and manipulate me with accounts of their awful killings, just to get a response that suits their warped psychopathology. That’s what they do, you see – they manipulate because that is their sociopathic calling. And when it suits me I will sympathise, agree with them; allow them to think they control me because I am now their best friend. I will convince them that they are more intelligent than I will ever be, stroke them like a cat. It is the oldest trick in any interrogator’s book, but the subject’s over-inflated ego will not permit him, or her, to see it coming.
I will offer up any bait that I think my subject will like, and then, when I have them on my hook, like any good fisherman I’ll give the line a strong tug, with a ‘So what?’ When this happens, they finally realise that they have been conned. Then and only then does the true nature of the beast reveal itself.
With all of this in mind, regarding Kevin Lee I will also use the clinical description of ‘sell-by-date’, for in the general scheme of things he had served his purpose and was no longer required by Joanne Dennehy. Indeed, considering everything, he was now a liability to them.
Serial killers use, and abuse, victims for their own selfish ends. When they have finished with their prey, they dump the bodies like so much trash in much the same way as one would handle a late-night takeaway kebab. They’ll consume the meal and then toss the carton away. Remorse is never on any psychopath’s menu, they are as cold-blooded as that.
And kill Kevin Lee she certainly did. Dennehy vented on him all the frustrations of not having been satisfied with her two previous murders, going into overkill mode. A single stab to the man’s heart could never be good enough, she stabbed him five times in the chest. Post-mortem examination of the body showed defensive wounds, indicating that he had fought for his life, during which time she enjoyed watching him ‘suffer’ – so much so that she writes to a penfriend, if we are to believe her – that she filmed the murder being committed, which again may suggest that Stretch was present, because if she was doing the killing, who held the camera? Nonetheless, police could find no evidence of this so-called claim.
So, was the murder of Kevin Lee enough to exorcise the demon raging within Joanne Dennehy? No, it was not, for she went even further by displaying, in a ditch, his black sequined-dressed body, buttocks exposed, with an object inserted into his rectum for all to see in the ultimate humiliation. This was Dennehy sticking two fingers up to society and, in doing so, she had rewarded Kevin with an unequivocal, ‘Don’t fuck with me’ message; one to be passed on to Cristina Lee about the true, underlying nature of her cheating husband.
But did this murder satisfy Joanne Dennehy. Not at all for she went on to Hereford, where her first attack on Robin Bereza failed because by the Grace of God, she inflicted just two wounds although any one of them could have proved lethal. When Stretch then pointed out John Rogers, she went berserk in broad daylight. Thirty stabs in all – deep wounds to his chest, abdomen and back. Two collapsed lungs. A perforated and exposed bowel, seven ribs fractured; defensive injuries to his hands and arms, and a grievous psychological legacy from which he will never completely recover. Dennehy was effectively butchering the man in the street and had she had achieved this aim, she would have made Jack the Ripper appear a lightweight – that’s how evil Joanne Christine Dennehy really is.
Our road map has been lacking in precise detail simply because at this present time there are no real details to include. Law enforcement from two jurisdictions and the judiciary agree with this.
Earlier in this book we went through the accumulative effect of forensic intelligence gathering: CCTV, ANPR and telephonic data. Then there were the DNA, blood groupings, fingerprints and witness statements – all of which, when put together, gave the police a watertight case against Dennehy, Stretch, Layton and Moore. However, let’s go one step further and use their own words: what they have written down in ink, what they have told each other and anyone else to include the police and me, for these utterances have much the same value as the telephonic data that ensnared them. Their written words are not ‘circumstantial evidence’, they are physical evidence because they exist as a matter of record and cannot be deleted.
And I will leave you with this final thought. If ever you are invited into a prison and asked to pay to watch a version of Sister Act, remember that amongst the cast could be the drug smugglers, peddlers, robbers and killers who are intent on ruining so many peoples’ lives.
DCI Martin Brunning did not reveal his views about the Sister Act performance when I told him about it. I would not have expected him to do so, but I most certainly can:
It’s an insult to all those who have suffered at the hands of these evil women. It is a damned disgrace, but James Budd, a love struck builder from Worthing, West Sussex, thinks otherwise – he is engaged to marry Joanne Dennehy, so you might wish to reach for the valium right now!
In a Sunday, 7 September 2014 Sun article written by Rob Pattinson and Shaun Wooller, halfwit Budd boasts that he and Dennehy fell for each other through letters about dogs. However, she has warned him: ‘You are declaring yourself to be the soulmate of a notorious serial killing psychopath. Lol. Not exactly the girl next door.’
But heavily tattooed Budd, who has never met or spoken to Dennehy, told the Sun that he is not afraid of her and loves her. ‘We all need someone we can lean on,’ he said.
Smitten 48-year-old Budd, who has a 16-year-old daughter, charmed Dennehy with pictures of his Staffordshire bull terrier in April 2014. ‘My best crony is my dog, a goofy Staffy, rescue dog,’ he explained in a letter, adding, ‘who thinks what’s cave is hers including my bed (sic).’
Lovestruck Dennehy replied with fond tales of her German shepherd called ‘Hitler’ – a dog she has never owned. James asked her for her hand when the relationship became serious in July. She wrote, ‘I would marry you in a heartbeat,’ and suggested: ‘You dress as Elvis and I’ll wear the canary suit. I’ll walk down the aisle to Jailhouse Rock.’ Indeed, she is already signing her letters ‘Joanne Budd-Dennehy’.
According to Mr Budd, who was convicted of GBH at Guildford Crown Court in 1990 and sentenced to a reduced term after he apologised to his victim, they plan to apply to the Prison Service for permission to wed behind bars at HMP Bronzefield in 2015. He says: ‘We’ve both been through a lot. We understand each other.’ For her part, Dennehy has told him in her love letters that she will be a ‘nagging wife.’ And, she is obviously worried about his health, for she says: ‘You need a lot of greens. If we are working on the timescale of 30 years, we need you in tip-top health,’ adding, ‘you are the one man who has breathed life into me.’
Sodexo Justice Services, which manages HMP Bronzefield for the Ministry of Justice, told the Sun that they do not comment on individual prisoners, but I can assure fiancBudd one small thing. This ex-con will never be allowed anywhere near the prison, let alone marry Dennehy within the prison’s walls.