Unknown Gender History: Joanna Dennehy, English Serial Killer of Male Strangers “For Fun”: 2013

UPDATE, November 21, 2014: As of today, Dennehy's murder victims number 4 rather than 3. John Rogers finally succumbed to injuries caused by being stabbed 40 times.

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Lesbianism:

Joanna Dennehy told friends she was a lesbian. During her trial a CCTV (dated 2012/04/02) recording was played which showed Dennehy flirting with a female cashier. [See: Hugo Gye, “Caught on CCTV: Chilling moment serial killer Dennehy flirted with a female shop assistant before going out in search of more victims,” Jan. 21, 2014]

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On November 18, Joanna Dennehy, 31, of Bifield, Peterborough, Cambridgeshire surprised her own defense attorney by pleading guilty to three murders, two attempted murders and three counts of preventing a lawful burial.

“I’ve pleaded guilty and that’s that,” Dennehy told the judge at her arraignment hearing. When her attorney requested a delay in order to advise his client she interrupted him saying “I’m not coming back down here again just to say the same stuff. It’s a long way to come to say the same thing I have just said.”

Dennehy was arrested April 3, 2013, the day after she was spotted in Hereford in the act of randomly stabbing two men, Robin Bereza and John Roger, in broad daylight. Both were seriously wounded yet survived. Police of several municipalities jointed together and tracked down the stabber quickly, her green star tattoo under the right eye making her easy to spot. Dennehy’s boyfriend, Gary “Stretch” Richards, one of the tallest men in England at 7’ 3”, was arrested with her. “Stretch,” along with two other men, are charged with assisting Dennehy in disposing of the bodies of the three men she stabbed to death, whose bodies had been discarded in two cases in the countryside. All three men suspected of assisting Dennehy following her crimes denied charge of being accessory to the murders and to denying the lawful burial of the corpses and to perverting the course of justice.

The three murdered men were Kevin Lee, 48, who died of multiple stab wounds, killed on March 29 and whose body discovered March 30; Lukasz Slaboszewski, 31, who was stabbed in the heart sometime between March 19 and 29; John Chapman, 56, who died from multiple stabs in neck and chest on March 29.

Dennehy had previously been convicted of crimes, but police withheld the details.

~ Trial ~

Ms. Dennehy’s accomplice Gary Richards testified in court on January 21, 2014, that in April of the previous year she had asked him to accompany her in one of her forays in search of a stranger to stab to death, that: “I want my fun. I need you to get my fun.”

Another accomplice, Mark Lloyd described to the court how Ms. Dennehy went about getting the fun she sought: “She [Dennehy] takes a knife out of her left pocket with her right hand. She strikes him like in the film Psycho, just like that. Thrusting and putting her whole weight behind it... Gary is seeing exactly what I’m seeing and there’s just no emotion from him at all.”

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FULL TEXT: Serial killer Joanna Dennehy plotted to cut off guard's finger to escape jail. She hoped to use the finger to beat the prison’s biometric security, a source claimed. But the plot – detailed in a written plan by Dennehy – was thwarted when two fellow inmates got in touch with the authorities.

Dennehy plotted the prison break while in segregation at Britain’s most secure women-only jail – HMP Bronzefield, in Ashford, Surrey. The source said: “With the help of another lifer, she was planning an escape. What came to light was how she was going to do it, which was extremely vicious.

“It involved killing a prison officer and also mutilating another. “This was for biometrics, to cut off her finger for the print. Two prisoners grassed her up and told the officer what was happening. “There was a lockdown and the Home Office was notified.”

The serial killer was sent to HMP Bronzefield after her arrest last April. The category-A jail is the largest women’s prison in Europe.

It has housed some of Britain’s most notorious inmates, including Rose West – who got a life term in 1995 for murdering 10 girls – and Karen Matthews, who faked the kidnap of her daughter Shannon and was released from jail in 2012.

Dennehy is believed to have started planning her escape in early September, but prison officers were alerted before anybody was attacked.

A Prison Service spokeswoman said: “In September, vigilant searches by staff at HMP Bronzefield uncovered intelligence which could have been interpreted as an escape plan.

“The matter was dealt with swiftly, with no security breaches, and a prisoner was relocated to the segregation unit.” Surrey Police said an investigation into the planned prison break had been launched. A spokeswoman said: “We are aware of allegations of a planned escape from HMP Bronzefield. An investigation is ongoing but there have been no arrests or charges.”

Bronzefield, which opened in 2004, is the only purpose-built private prison solely for women. It has a 12-bed mother and baby unit and offers full-time education courses tailored to women.

[Louie Smith, “Serial killer Joanna Dennehy plotted to cut off guard's finger to escape jail,” Mirror (London, England), Feb 13, 2014]

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5 stabbings during a 14 day period in 2013:

1) March 19 – Lukasz Slabososzewski, 31, Rolleston Garth, Peterborough, died

2) Apr. 29 – John Chapman, 57, Bilfield, Peterborough, died

3) Mar. 29 – (date reported missing) Kevin Lee, Fletton, died.

4) Apr. 2 – Robin Berez, 63, Hereford, survived

5) Apr. 2 – John Rogers, 56, stabbed 40 times, Hereford, died Nov. 21, 2014

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The Dennehy case is the fourth female serial killer case (one in which there were two female perpetrators) in 2013 known to this writer. The others occurred in Colombia, France, Poland and the United States.

On January 29, 45-year-old Esneda Ruiz Cataño was arrested Ebéjico, in Antioquia, Colombia, on the suspicion of murdering thee husbands, each of them stabbed to death: in 2001, 2006 and 2010. The media has dubbed her “The Predator” (“La deepredafora”). Ruiz collected live insurance payments following each death.

On March 24, a French woman, identified only as Audrey C.,” a 32-year-old waitress in Ambérieu-en-Bugey, confessed to drowning her two newborn babies, whose bodies were found in her freezer. Yet she had murdered another newborn years earlier and had been imprisoned for that crime. In that first killing, Audrey put body of her murdered child in a bag, then convinced her own mother to discard it. Audrey was originally sentenced to 15 years in prison for infanticide, while her mother received an 18-year jail sentence. She was released from prison in 2010.

On April 10, a woman called by the court, “Lucyna D.,” 41, of Lubawa, Poland, confessed to murdering three newborn boys and keeping their corpses in her freezer because she “could not part from them.”

On June 21, Diane Staudte, 51, and her daughter, Rachel Staudte, 22, of Springfield, Missouri, USA, were charged with the poison murders of two family members and the attempted murder of a third. The elder Staudte told detectives that she chose to terminate the life of her husband Mark because she “hated him.” Her son Shawn, she asserted, deserved to die because he was “worse than a pest.” Daughter Sarah, who survived the attempt on her life, but barely, was deemed not fit to live by her mother because she “would not get a job and had student loans that had to be paid.” At first the killer mom attempted to cover up daughter Rachel’s role as an accessory. Yet ultimately Rachel was revealed to have planned and executed the crimes in tandem with her malicious mother. Antifreeze was the mother and daughter serial murder team’s poison of choice.

To date, the longest list of female serial killers (cases with 3 or more victims) was published by Peter Vronsky in 2007 in his book, Female Serial Killers: How and Why Women Become Monsters. This list contains 140 cases. Subsequent research by The Unknown History of Misandry project has turned up a total number five times this size (over 700 cases with 3 or more victims — from across the globe).

[Robert St. Estephe]

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EXCERPT: Sean Keeble who met Dennehy at a friend's house while she was on the run from police, noted that she seemed happy to see herself on TV. On asking her why she killed, she told him: "I want to murder men, I want to be a serial killer, write a book and be famous." [Priya Joshi, “Joanna Dennehy: Three Male Accomplices Obsessed by ‘Kill Bill' Serial Killer Convicted for Murders: Joanna Dennehy: I want to be a serial killer, write a book and be famous,” International Business Times, Feb. 12, 2014]

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Aug. 16, 2018 – Serial killer Joanna Dennehy is believed to have tried to kill herself in jail after apparently making a grisly suicide pact with her prison girlfriend. Dennehy, 35, is understood to have been found with her throat slit, while her lover had cut her wrists. A source told The Sun: “When the guards found them they were entwined on the floor, which was covered in blood.” [Daily Mail, Aug. 16, 2018]

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