“I have pleaded guilty and that’s it.”
Joanna Dennehy, 30, a former middle-class teen who ran away at the age of 15, has pleaded guilty to murdering three men and then dumping their bodies.
According to the London Telegraph, Kevin Lee, 48, Lukasz Slaboszewski, 31, and John Chapman, 56, were stabbed within days of each other. Lee was found in a roadside ditch on Easter Sunday. Slaboszewski and Chapman were found by a local farmer four days later at Thorney Dyke, a remote location.
Standing by her boyfriend in the Central Criminal Court of England and Wales, commonly known as the Old Bailey, Dennehy also pleaded guilty to the attempted murder of two other men, leaving the courtroom and her lawyers stunned.
“The course of the arraignment is not one we had anticipated,” said her barrister, Nigel Lickley QC.
“I’m not coming back down here again just to say the same stuff,” she said, objecting to her barrister receiving more time to check her guilty plea. “It’s a long way to come to say the same thing I have just said.”
High Court Judge, Nigel Sweeney said, “She has pleaded guilty to a large number of counts, clearly intentionally, and in the circumstances if there is to be any application for a change than I will consider it but otherwise she has pleaded guilty.”
Dennehy, Slaboszewski, and Chapman were said to have lived together in a house owned by Lee, a property developer and family man.
“He was a wonderful husband, father, loving brother and son. His naturally infectious personality touched everyone who knew him,” said Chris Wilson, a friend of the Lee family. “We have no idea why he would be targeted or what has happened.”
Toni Roberts, a former tenant in the house, said that Dennehy, Slaboszewski, and Chapman had been served an eviction notice and had to be out by April 29.
Two other defendants, Leslie Layton and Robert Moore, appeared in court on Sunday by videolink. Both had previously denied helping Dennehy cover up the stabbings and hiding her and her boyfriend while the police searched for them. Dennehy’s boyfriend, Gary Richards, denied the two attempted murders and three charges of preventing burial.
image via: London Telegraph