LONDON (AFP) - A British female serial killer who admitted murdering three men and dumping their bodies in ditches was on Friday sentenced to a life in prison without parole.
Joanna Dennehy, 31, had expressed no remorse for killing the men, who she knew, although she apologised for two attempted murders of strangers while she was on the run last year.
Sentencing her at the Old Bailey court in London, Judge Robin Spencer told Dennehy she was a "cruel, calculating, selfish and manipulative serial killer".
Dennehy had earlier pleaded guilty to murdering Lukasz Slaboszewski, 31, Kevin Lee, 48, and John Chapman, 56, in and around Peterborough in eastern England over a ten-day period in March 2013.
All three were stabbed to death and the bodies left in ditches. The body of Lee, Dennehy's landlord with whom she was having an affair, was dressed in a black sequin dress and arranged in what the court heard was a sexual pose.
Dennehy went on the run when the bodies were found, to Hereford on the border with Wales, where she repeatedly stabbed two randomly-chosen dog walkers, Robin Bereza and John Rogers. They survived.
"Within the space of ten days you murdered three men in cold blood.
Although you pleaded guilty, you've made it quite clear you have no remorse," the judge told Dennehy, who laughed and smirked as she was sentenced.
"Only a matter of days later you attempted to kill two more men - victims chosen entirely at random. Miraculously they survived.
The judge said Dennehy had written to him saying she was not sorry for the murders, and said she told a psychiatrist: "I killed to see how I would feel, to see if I was as cold as I thought I was, then it got more-ish." Three men were also sentenced for helping Dennehy, including Gary Stretch, who went on the run with her and waited in the car while she attacked Bereza and Rogers.
The 47-year-old was told he would serve at least 19 years in jail after being found guilty in an earlier trial of two counts of attempted murder and three counts of preventing the lawful burial of a body.
