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The Dark Descent of Joanna Dennehy · 10 Minute Murder | Bingeable True Crime Stories

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Every once in a while a person comes along that has us asking whether psychopaths
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are made or if they are simply born that way. To add to that
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debate is Joanna Denahe. Joanna was born in nineteen eighty three in St Albans,
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England, to loving and kind parents. Her mother was a shop assistant
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and her father worked in security, and together they a happy and stable home
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for Joanna to grow up in. She was very sensitive. Her mother later
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said if she stood on a worm or something, she would be really upset
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if it died. She used to take them to bed with her. She
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was a loving girl. Joanna got good grades at school and loved playing netball
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and hockey. But so much of that charmed and gentle life that had been
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all that Joanna had known had also changed by the time she turned sixteen.
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By then, she had a twenty one year old boyfriend named John Traynor,
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and the two of them ran off together, leaving Joanna's parents and Joanna's old
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life behind. Joanna was a teenager and she enjoyed having an older boyfriend that
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she could live with unsupervised. She could do whatever she wanted to do and
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didn't have to answer to anyone. But only a year later, Joanna would
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learn that some actions do have consequences. At the age of seventeen, Joanna
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found out that she was pregnant. Far from defending herself and her behavior after
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hearing the news, however, the pregnancy only seemed to tick Joanna off.
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She didn't want children, and even though she decided to keep the baby,
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it didn't look like that opinion was going to change anytime soon. Quote she
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came out of the hospital and the first thought in her mind is to get
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stoned, her boyfriend at the time, John Traynor, later said, but
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Joanna actually ended up doing so much more than just getting high. Joanna began
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abusing both drugs and alcohol, and she started self harming. About six more
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years of this went by, and Joanna became pregnant again. This time John
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saw the writing on the wall and he walked with both the children. Once
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their second child was born. Joanna then moved to Petersborough, where she continued
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to abuse substances and allegedly worked as a prostitute to fund her habits. It
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is possible that it was because of this work that Joanna's opinions of men began
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to change, but What is clear is that by the age of twenty nine,
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Joanna had simply had enough of men. It started with a brief arrest
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for theft. During interviews, it became obvious to the arresting officers that they
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were dealing with something far more than just a petty, aspiring criminal. Joanna
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was admitted to a hospital for psychiatric treatment, and it was there that she
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was diagnosed with OCD and antisocial disorder otherwise known as psychopathy. Joanna was now
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officially a psychopath, but once her treatment was over, she was released back
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into the public. It was only about a year later that Joanna would make
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headlines across the nation and become known as the most evil woman in Britain.
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Things escalated with thirty one year old Lucas Labazuski. He and Joanna had only
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met in Petersborough a few days before, but Lucas was already excited about their
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future prospects. He told his friends that he was heading off that evening to
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see a girl he was hoping would soon become his girlfriend. But unfortunately for
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Lucas, he was very far off the mark. Joanna and Lucas spent the
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night drinking, and then Joanna invited him to a home owned by her landlord.
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There, she enticed Lucas in and asked him to put on a blindfold.
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Lucas eagerly agreed, and once he had it on, Joanna pulled out
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a knife and began stabbing him. One of those stab wounds pierced Lucas's heart
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and killed him. Joanna then hid his body in a dumpster and went on
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about her evening. But she could never come back from what she had just
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done. She could never undo killing Lucas, and she could never put the
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feelings that murdering someone had stirred up inside her back into the box. Joanna
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knew that she wanted to kill again, and she lasted only ten days before
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she gave in to the urge to do so. This time, she struck
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much closer to home. For Joanna, part of the whole riche was the
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thrill of the hunt, the drawing in and enticing of her victims. Targeting
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women was out of the question. They were likely mothers, and Joanna could
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take mothers away from children, so it was men that she would go after.
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Fifty six year old John Chapman, one of Joanna's housemates, fit the
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bill. Perfectly. Joanna flirted and seduced, and she drew him into her
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room. There she toyed with him before turning to her tried and true She
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told John to put on a blindfold and wait, and then once he could
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not see her coming, she began stabbing him. Joanna satisfied her immediate urges
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by killing John, but instead of keeping Joanna satiated, this new murder only
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seemed to spur her on. Only hours later and Joanna had her next fix
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in front of her forty eight year old Kevin Lee. Kevin was actually Joanna's
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and her previous murder victim, John's landlord, Andanna already had him ensnared.
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Joanna was Kevin's mistress. But even Kevin could have had no idea what awaited
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him when Joanna invited him in that evening, or even that his other tenants
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was already lying dead in that very same house. Joanna got John into her
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room and then she played with him. She convinced him to put on a
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black sequin dress, and then she told him to put on a blindfold.
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Kevin, like the others who had gone before him, never saw Joanna reaching
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for her knife. She stabbed him to death. And then she moved on
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to getting rid of the evidence. The first thing that Joanna had to dispose
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of were the bodies piling up around her, and to do that she employed
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some unexpected tactics. Shortly after she'd first moved to Peterborough years ago, she'd
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met a man named Gary Richards who went by the nickname Stretch. Joanna called
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Stretch and asked him to help her move and discard the remains of the men
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she'd just killed, and maybe one of the most bizarre twists and turns of
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the case, Stretch agreed. Stretch had fallen for Joanna all those years ago,
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and it looked like he simply couldn't do enough for her. Along that
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same vein was thirty six year old Leslie Layton, who was someone that Joanna
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counted on as a close friend. Certainly it would seem close enough to ask
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for help in a time of crisis. Joanna managed to convince not one but
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two people to help her dispose of the bodies, and the three of them
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drove around Petersborough roads looking for ditches to hide Joanna's victims. In Kevin would
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stand out amongst the bodies abandoned on the side of the road. The sequin
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dress had just been the start, and his remains were arranged in a sexually
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explicit pose to hammer in the humiliation that took Joanna's victim count up to three.
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She now had a plan, and it was a cold and cruel one.
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Joanna was now determined to kill at least nine men before she was called,
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and the pressure was building. She'd gone from lasting ten days to giving
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into her urges to mere hours, and time was ticking. She Stretched and
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Leslie were driving back home from dumping Kevin's body when Joanna snapped again. This
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time, her victims weren't her boyfriend, her housemate, or the landlord she
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was having an affair with. They were two men out walking their dogs.
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Joanna ordered Stretch to stop the car, and then she pounced. She caught
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Robin Breza in the shoulder and chest with her knife, and then she turned
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on John Rogers. She stabbed John over forty times before fleeing the scene,
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leaving Robin and John to helplessly bleed out on the street. Fortunately for these
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two victims, timely medical intervention saved both of their lives. Back on her
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murder spree, Joanna then found herself the target. The investigators cornered her after
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finding Kevin Lee's remains, but almost unbelievably, Juenna managed to escape with stretch
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before they could arrest her. She was on the run for two days before
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the authorities caught up with her. But in another twist in the case,
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Joanna seemed to enjoy the attention. Instead of being angry or sad that she
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had been caught, especially before fulfilling her plan of killing nine men, Joanna
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seemed to find it funny. Security footage of her arrest shows her laughing and
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flirting with the police officers. Maybe she was still trying to entice a victim
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even at the very last moment. At trial, Joanna pled guilty to all
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charges and was sentenced to life in prison with the recommendation that she never be
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released. Joanna is one of only three women in British history to have ever
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received this sentence, one of the other ones being the notorious serial killer Rosemary
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West. Joanna was actually placed in the same facility as Rose West, but
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Rose was moved after Joanna threatened to kill her too. That's ten minute murder
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for today, brief and bingeable true crime. I'm Joe. I'm the host,
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11:07
Yeah, I've kind of considered that. I think that would be interesting.
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I agree with you completely. I have thought over the logistics of how I
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