From the Roadside Strangler to chilling ‘Slavemaster’, I’ve met dozens of serial killers… psycho Brit terrified me most
Criminologist reveals how beast who murdered eight women tricked victims by appearing like the 'boy next door'
HE’S come face-to-face with some of the most notorious serial killers in the world, but it was a Brit psychopath that left criminologist Christopher Berry-Dee chilled to the bone.
The ex-commando, 76, reckons Joanna Dennehy, who killed three men and stabbed two others, is the “most dangerous” person he’s ever interviewed.
Christopher, a renowned expert in the psyche of murderers, has met with killers like Ted Bundy, Rose West and the Roadside Strangler Michael Ross, who slaughtered eight girls and women.
Yet he was most disturbed by a meeting with Dehenny, 41, who killed three men including her landlord in a killing spree in March 2013.
Christopher tells The Sun: “She’s the most dangerous person I’ve ever, ever, ever come in contact with.
“She’s not actually a big person and the knife she used isn’t that big dagger she was pictured holding but a pocket knife measuring about five inches.
“To walk up to someone in the street like she did and stab someone in broad daylight time and time again the way she did, with blood pouring everywhere… that is just evil.”
Dennehy, from St Albans, Herts, went on a 10-day killing spree in Peterborough stabbing her love interest Lukasz Slaboszewski, 31, housemate John Chapman, 56, and her landlord and lover Kevin Lee, 48, before dumping them in ditches.
With her bloodlust still not satisfied, she travelled 140 miles to Hereford where she tried to kill two strangers in the street.
Incredibly, dog walkers Robin Bereza, then 57, and John Rogers, 64, survived the attacks.
Dennehy, who had served with the Navy in the Falklands War, later told a psychiatrist she “killed to see if I was as cold as I thought I was. Then it got moreish.”
Christopher has previously told how Dennehy threatened to kill Rose West minutes after arriving at the same prison as the House of Horrors murderer.
West, who killed at least 10 women with her evil husband Fred West, was moved from her cell at Low Newton, Co Durham, following the threat.
Christopher said: “She was trying to assert herself over West.
“It’s a dominance thing. As soon as she went into jail it was like ‘Bang! Out you go Rose, I’m in charge.’”
Beast’s letters
The criminologist says Dehenny is all the more sinister because of her intelligence – shown in letters they exchanged after she was jailed for a whole life order in 2014.
He said: “Her letters were quite beautifully written and the spelling was perfect, flawless really.
“One of the detectives involved said to me, ‘You know she was hotwired to become a lawyer or something like that before she went off the rails’.”
Christopher says their contact “went out with a bang” when he asked her if she was involved in drugs.
He said: “I said in a letter, ‘You know people have been saying you’ve been involved in drugs.’
“The letter that came back was just whew. I had really p***** her off.
“The strange thing is that Dennehy had a really good start in life until she got involved with fairground workers and alcoholics and drink and drugs. I think it frazzled her brain.
Joanna Dennehy's victims
Twisted Joanna Dennehy's murder spree has been labelled the 'most dangerous person' crimologist Christopher Berry-Dee has 'ever, ever come into contact with' - here we look at her chilling crimes.
Dennehy’s first victim was her housemate Lukasz Slaboszewski, 31, on March 19, 2013. She convinced the Polish national that she wanted to meet him for sex before stabbing him in the heart and dumping his body in a wheelie bin,
Falklands War veteran John Chapman, 56, who was also believed to have lived with Dennehy, was murdered by her a week later.
Property developer Kevin Lee became Dennehy’s final victim on March 29. He was her landlord and lover before she ended his life. In a letter to a former lover, Dennehy revealed she dressed Lee in a black sequinned to ‘humiliate him’ and dumped his body in Newborough.
Dennehy also tried to kill two others during her 10-day spree. She recruited accomplice Gary Stretch, 47, and the pair drove to Hereford where she stabbed John Rogers, 64, and Robin Bereza, 57. Fortunately, both of them survived.
Dennehy received a life term for the killings and attempted murders. Stretch was jailed for life after being found guilty of attempted murder.
“She probably looked back on her life and thought she’d messed everything up and hated everyone, especially men.
“She was so cold. She had two kids and never touched them when they were born, she never suckled them. She never kissed them. She didn’t want anything to do with them.
“She treated men like dirt, using them. That’s a very dangerous woman.”
‘Boy next door disguise’
Berry-Dee has met with around 30 killers including Roadside Strangler Michael Ross, who murdered eight women and girls between the ages of 14 and 25 in the early 1980s in New York and Connecticut.
He raped seven out of eight of his victims and is claimed to have raped two other women he didn’t kill.
The criminologist said: “When he told me he raped two little girls after he strangled them he giggled. He thought it was funny.
Those unblinking black eyes of his made a sudden switch to hatred.
Berry-Dee on Kenneth Bianchi
“The thing about Micheal is that he was a very personable young man.
“There was a journalist who interviewed him for a New York paper and she told me, ‘If I was walking up a dark alleyway at night and heard footsteps behind me and turned around and saw Michael Ross I’d be relieved.’
“That’s what he presented like. He was like the boy next door.”
‘Real monster’
Berry-Dee has also been up close to killer Kenneth Bianchi when he found himself locked in a cubicle without guards with unshackled “evil.”
Bianchi was one half of the Hillside Stranglers as they came to be known.
He and cousin Angelo Buono were convicted of kidnapping, raping, torturing and murdering 10 women and girls aged 12 to 28 between October 1977 and 1978.
Meeting the murderers
Christopher Berry-Dee has interviewed and built up relationships with some of the most dangerous minds serial killers in the world while making films, writing books and helping cops solve crimes. These include:
- Ted Bundy, one of the most notorious killers in US history after committing a series of horrific murders during a four-year period in the 1970s. He was responsible for murdering more than 30 young women.
- Aileen Wuornos, the notorious female serial killer from Michigan who shot dead seven men. She was executed by the state of Florida with a lethal injection in 2002.
- Henry Lee Lucas, also known as The Confession Killer, who was convicted of murdering his mother in 1960 and two others in 1983. He falsely confessed to approximately six hundred other murders.
- David Alan Gore: The American serial killer convicted of six murders in Vero Beach and Indian River Country, Florida, in the 1980s.
- Kenneth Allen McDuff, the only known death row prisoner to get parole – and go on to kill again. He was convicted of murdering three strangers – and breaking one of the victim’s neck with a broomstick.
- Arthur John Shawcross, also known at the Genesee River Killer, who raped and strangled 11 women in the Rochester area of New York from 1972 to 1989.
Christopher said he conned Bianchi, now 72, into giving him an interview by pretending he believed his stories of innocence.
He said: “I was sitting inches away from a real monster. But for some reason, he was ‘unhappy’ and started staring me down. Those unblinking black eyes of his made a sudden switch to hatred.
“To break the ice, I got up from my chair, walked around to him, put my arm on his shoulder and whispered in his ear, ‘C’mon, give your mate a smile’.”
Slavemaster sleight
Berry-Dee, who says he never feels fear during his meetings with killers, has also been in contact with serial killer ‘Slavemaster’ John Edward Robinson – the first murderer to use the internet to find victims.
He has been linked to the murders of eight women from 1985 to 2000 and has been convicted of five.
The decaying bodies of his victims were found in chemical drums – two on his farm.
He earned his nickname after making sexual offers to his neighbours’ wives, calling himself the Slavemaster of a secret BDSM society.
Berry-Dee said: “I was writing to him in tandem with an FBI woman.
“He was telling her bondage was all wrong and that he was never a slave master while writing to me explaining everything he wanted to do with her.
“Eventually I said ‘Guess who is my friend?’ and that was that.”
Christopher Berry-Dee’s Psychopaths and Savages: Guilty But Insane, and Talking With Psychopaths: A Journey Into The Evil Mind (published by John Blake) are available now.
