Triple Killer Joanne Dennehy In Jail For Life

By Nick Pisa, Sky News Reporter

Psychopathic killer Joanne Dennehy laughed as she was taken away to serve life for the random killing of three men and the attempted murder of two others.

The mother-of-two was told by trial judge Mr Justice Spencer that she was a "cruel, calculating and manipulative serial killer" and will now die behind bars.

Dennehy is the third woman to get a whole-life tariff in England and Wales

He said the slayings were carried out in "cold blood" and although she had pleaded guilty it was "clear you have no remorse for those murders".

At one point Dennehy swore at the judge as he made his sentencing remarks.

Dennehy swore at the judge in court

After she was sentenced to a whole-life order, she could be heard laughing as she was taken down to the cells.

Dennehy, 31, is only the third woman to be given a whole-life tariff in England and Wales - after Rose West and Myra Hindley.

Mr Justice Spencer said medical reports made it clear she was a sadomasochist who enjoyed sex with extreme violence.

Earlier this month, she admitted stabbing to death her victims in a 10-day killing frenzy before trying to murder two other men while on the run. 

Dressed in a pink athletics vest, with her hair tied back in a ponytail with a purple scrunchie, Dennehy was handcuffed for the hearing, with another set of handcuffs linked to a female prison guard.

Her bare arms were marked with grim-looking scars and several tattoos in blue ink could clearly be seen.

During the sentencing hearing at the Old Bailey, she smiled, smirked and chatted with her guards, as well as co-accused Gary Stretch - and at one point she called out to her lawyer so she could write him a note.

Stretch and Layton were both jailed

Family members of the victims were in court and security was tight in the dock with nine guards, including two women, keeping watch over Dennehy and her three co-accused.

Earlier in the week the same court had been the scene of violent disturbances after Woolwich killers Michael Adebolajo, 29, and Michael Adebowale, 22, brawled with guards in the dock.

Mr Justice Spencer called Dennehy a "pathological liar" and said she had killed to "satisfy her sadistic lust for blood".

Lukasz Slaboszewski and Kevin Lee were murdered by Dennehy

Dennehy, from Orton Goldhay, near Peterborough, slaughtered her victims, Lukasz Slaboszewski, 31, Kevin Lee, 48, and John Chapman, 56, in and around Peterborough at random last March and April.

Cambridgeshire Police said the investigation was the biggest the force had been involved in since the Soham schoolgirl murders of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman.

Her sentencing was delayed because of a Court of Appeal review earlier this month after the European Court of Human Rights ruled that whole-life terms breached human rights.

Mr Rogers, left, and Mr Bereza both survived attacks by Dennehy

Dennehy also admitted the attempted murder of dog walkers, John Rogers and Robin Bereza, in Hereford while on the run from police as well as preventing the lawful and decent burial of her victims.

The Old Bailey hearing heard she had carried out the attempted killing of Mr Rogers because she wanted his dog.

Stretch, 47, also of Orton Goldhay, Peterborough, who stands at 7ft 3, was found guilty of the attempted murders of Mr Bereza and Mr Rogers and three counts of preventing the lawful burial of a body.

He was given life with a minimum term of 19 years. He told the judge " thank you very much" as he was taken down to the cells.

Moore admitted assisting an offender

Leslie Layton, 36, of Orton Goldhay, was found guilty of preventing the lawful burial of two murder victims and perverting the course of justice and jailed for 14 years, with a minimum of seven years.

Robert Moore, 55, of Peterborough, admitted assisting an offender and was given three years with a minimum of 18 months to be completed.

During the earlier trial, prosecutor Peter Wright QC, said Dennehy "cast a spell" over her accomplices and some of her victims as she killed "for fun".

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Moazzam Begg Charged With Terror Offences

Ex-Guantanamo detainee Moazzam Begg has been charged with providing terrorist training and funding terrorism overseas, West Midlands Police have said.

The 45-year-old British citizen, from Hall Green, Birmingham, was one of four people arrested earlier this week on suspicion of terrorism offences linked to the Syria conflict.

He will appear at Westminster Magistrates Court today alongside a woman, Gerrie Tahari, 44, of Sparkbrook, Birmingham, who is charged with facilitating terrorism overseas.

Both were arrested on Tuesday with two other men held on suspicion of facilitating terrorism overseas.

The pair - a 36-year-old man from Shirley, Solihull, and a 20-year-old man from Sparkhill, Birmingham, who is the son of Tahari - remain in police custody.

Begg was released from Guantanamo Bay in January 2005

Begg was held by the US government at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba for nearly three years after being arrested in Pakistan in February 2002.

He was detained on suspicion of being a member of al Qaeda before being released without charge in January 2005.

He was allowed to return to the UK where he was arrested by police before being released without charge.

Begg is a director of Cage - which campaigns "against the War on Terror" - and has always maintained that he has never been involved in any kind of terrorist activity.

More follows...

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Rebekah Brooks Admits Paying Public Officials

Rebekah Brooks has admitted paying public officials for information during her time as a newspaper editor.

The former News International chief executive denied knowing the name of a source paid by the Sun for stories over eight years or that the source worked for the Ministry of Defence (MoD).

But Brooks, 45, told the hacking trial at the Old Bailey she approved payments on "a handful" of occasions between 1998 and 2009, when she edited the News of the World and later the Sun.

She answered "yes" when asked by her lawyer Jonathan Laidlaw QC if she ever sanctioned payments to public officials.

Pressed on how many times, she replied: "A handful of occasions - half a dozen."

She added: "My view at the time was that there had to be an overwhelming public interest to justify payments in the very narrow circumstances of a public official being paid for information directly in line with their jobs.

Frank Bruno was the subject of a 'brutal' front page

"Public interest - I and everyone else always finds this a very difficult subject to address because it's very subjective depending on what newspaper or media organisation you're in. Each newspaper has its own interpretation."

The court has previously heard claims that MoD press officer Bettina Jordan-Barber received a total of £100,000 for information she provided to The Sun.

Jurors were told a record of payments was found relating to 71 stories across categories such as deaths in action, injuries in action, alleged misconduct, and treatment of troops and their welfare.

She also told how her newspaper's coverage of boxer Frank Bruno's mental breakdown was a "terrible mistake".

She said she approved the tabloid's front page story, featuring the headline "Bonkers Bruno Locked Up", about the sports star's health problems in 2003.

She said she realised her "blind spot" when she returned home and was alerted by her then-husband Ross Kemp.

"I got home, put the proof down and Ross said 'What is that? What are you doing?' He had seen the front page and questioned how brutal it was," she said.

"It was a terrible mistake I made."

She said the headline was changed but featured in 15,000 of the Sun's four million copies that day.

Brooks, who denies conspiring to hack phones, conspiring to commit misconduct in public office and conspiring to cover up evidence to pervert the course of justice, was in the witness box on Thursday for her fifth day of evidence.

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Hewitt Apologises For Links To Paedophile Group

Who Were Paedophile Group PIE?

Updated: 1:43pm UK, Tuesday 25 February 2014

A campaign group for lowering the age of consent, a networking group for paedophiles and the publisher of newsletters giving easy access to child porn.

The Paedophile Information Exchange (PIE) started life in 1974 as a splinter group - or special interest group - of a Scottish gay rights movement.

It quickly moved to London because that was where the greatest interest in its activities lay and by 1975 had been accepted as an "affiliate" group by the National Council for Civil Liberties (NCCL).

Run by paedophiles who had "come out" and openly lobbied for child sex to be legalised, the group also provided a means for the like-minded to contact each other.

It also published regular newsletters - which became the now-defunct magazine Magpie, which published pictures of children, paedophilia "jokes", and also assisted paedophiles to obtain child pornography.

The group won support among left-wing groups largely by allying itself with the battle for gay rights and academia.

The freelance journalist Eileen Fairweather, who worked for the feminist magazine, Spare Rib, and who went on to expose abuse in Islington children's homes wrote recently for The Daily Telegraph: "PIE fooled so many on the Left, within academia and in social work, because they adroitly hijacked the language of liberation.

"Little was known then or discussed about the extent or horror of child abuse. PIE members also portrayed themselves as 'child lovers', benign uncle figures who offered tenderness, not rape.

"They claimed that paedophiles, like women, gay men and children, were 'oppressed by the patriarchy'. Therefore we should all make common cause. Spare Rib, to its credit, refused to fall for this self-serving guff. But nor did we condemn it."

In 1975, PIE submitted a 17-page document to the Home Office Criminal Law Revision Committee lobbying for no age of consent.

During this time PIE sent a leaflet to MPs which said: "Paedophiles are ordinary, decent, sensible human beings, no more sexually depraved than yourself, and with a capacity for loving and helping children which is at present being repressed."

In 1977 PIE chairman Tom O'Carroll was allowed to make a speech at the spring conference of the NCCL, giving the group further legitimacy.

In late 2013, the Home Office announced an inquiry into claims that PIE was being inadvertently financed by the Labour administration of the time through grants.

In 1980 O'Carroll published "Paedophilia: the radical case" which argued for "a climate in which children come to view all consensual sex, including consensual paedophilia, positively and without guilt may be necessary for the welfare of everyone".

O'Carroll moved that a relationship between adults and children could proceed on a basis of signals being interpreted saying " … the man might start by saying what pretty knickers the girl was wearing, and he would be far more likely to proceed to the next stage of negotiation if she seemed pleased by the remark".

By 1981 O'Carroll had been jailed for the contact advertisements in PIE publications offering to put people in touch with child pornography distributors.

In 1984 the group was disbanded and in the years that followed a number of its senior members were sentenced for paedophilia offences.

In 2006 the last of the leading PIE associates was jailed. David Joy was sentenced to 18 months after 1,129 of the worst level of child pornography images were found at his Leicestershire home. The images were of children aged between one and 13.

The judge warned him that he may never be eligible for parole because of his commitment to paedophilia.

He said: "It's clear that you hold firmly to a set of beliefs involving sexual activity with adults and children.

"Those beliefs are wholly in variance to the views held by most members of society, views that most of society would find abhorrent."

Many in 2014 find it hard to believe that such a group existed openly but as the Tory MP Nadine Dorries recently pointed out in a tweet: "In 70's following legalisation of homosexuality (rightly) and a decade of 'free love' organisations like PIE genuinely thought they were next."

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'Plebgate' Row Police Officers Sacked

Two police officers have been sacked over the Andrew Mitchell "Plebgate" row.

Keith Wallis and James Glanville were dismissed from the Metropolitan Police for gross misconduct, Scotland Yard said.

Andrew Mitchell, chief whip at the time, was involved in an argument with another police officer, Toby Rowland, after he was prevented from cycling through the main gate of Downing Street in September 2012.

Mr Mitchell, who was accused of calling the officer a "****ing pleb", ended up resigning over the row.

The Tory MP has always maintained he never used the word "pleb", but admits swearing during the altercation.

Earlier this month, Wallis was jailed for a year for misconduct in a public office after he admitted lying about witnessing the incident.

In an email to Conservative deputy chief whip John Randall, he claimed to be a constituent who was sightseeing near Downing Street when he saw Mr Mitchell swearing at police officers.

Mr Glanville was arrested in January 2013 on suspicion of the unauthorised disclosure of information to the media.

Although no criminal action was taken, the team tasked with investigating the disclosure of information to the press found evidence Mr Glanville gave details to The Sun.

Operation Alice established he provided the newspaper with a photo of PC Rowland's email about the incident that he sent to his supervisors.

He lied about his actions in statements given to detectives.

During the hearing, the Met's Assistant Commissioner Simon Byrne found the pair had breached standards of professional behaviour relating to honesty and integrity, confidentiality, orders and instructions and discreditable conduct.

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Baby Killer Had Warned He Was A Danger

By David Crabtree, Midlands Correspondent

A soldier jailed for causing the death of his baby daughter had warned army doctors that he could harm his child.

Former Lance Corporal Liam Culverhouse, from Northampton, is serving a six-year sentence after assaulting Khloe Abrams when she was seven weeks old.

The baby suffered brain damage as well as fractures to her skull, ribs and limbs. She died more than a year later of pneumonia brought on by her injuries.

A newly published serious case review has highlighted the fact that, in 2009, Culverhouse was the victim of an attack in Helmand province, Afghanistan, which killed five of his comrades.

Culverhouse was shot three times, blinded in one eye and played dead to survive.

The 25-year-old, who subsequently suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, assaulted his daughter 18 months after being medically discharged from the Army.

The review said: "There is evidence that, several months, before the child was born, the father had declared to two doctors employed by the Army that he believed he was likely to harm his child if they were left alone together.

"Neither doctor shared that information with Children's Social Care or the Army Welfare Service and this failure to ultimately share that information with civilian safeguarding agencies was a serious error as it denied those agencies the opportunity to fulfil their responsibilities to safeguard and promote the child's welfare."

It went on to suggest that measures may well have been put in place which could have prevented the child's death.

Other opportunities were missed.

A considerable amount of information was stored in health service files about the father's troubled years. Some of this, says the report, would have been highly relevant to those assessing his parenting ability.

Among the report's recommendations is the need for more information sharing between army medical staff and their civilian counterparts.

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Man, 82, Charged With Shooting Women Dead

A elderly man has been charged over the deaths of two women whose bodies were found at a puppy farm.

John Leo Lowe, 82, was arrested after police were called to Keepers Cottage Stud in Farnham, Surrey, on Sunday.

The bodies of Christine Lee, 66, and her daughter Lucy, 40, were found at the property, along with the bodies of four dogs.

Lowe faces two counts of murder and a charge of possession of a firearm with intent to endanger life.

Surrey Police said he has been remanded in custody and will appear at Guildford Magistrates' Court on Wednesday.

The women were known to Lowe, police said. Post-mortem examinations showed they died from gunshot wounds.

The killings happened near the Surrey town of Farnham

The body of one woman was found inside, while the body of the other woman was found outside near animal pens to the back of the house.

No one else was at the property at the time and a long-barrelled firearm was recovered from the scene.

Three German shepherds and a labrador were also shot dead and were removed from the farm by the RSPCA. The charity confirmed it had visited the property, along with other agencies, over the last few years.

A spokesman said that following the deaths it had "removed one cat and 10 dogs, including a number of puppies, from the property. These include Chihuahuas, pomeranians, shih tzus and an Old English sheepdog-type".

It also intended to remove a small number of exotic birds and RSPCA staff are caring for a large number of chickens and four horses.

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RBS Reaches Deal To Award £550m Bonus Pot

By Mark Kleinman, City Editor

Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) is to pay approximately £550m in staff bonuses for 2013 after securing the agreement of the Treasury agency that is its biggest shareholder.

Sky News has learnt that the taxpayer-backed bank will disclose the sum - which is higher than previous reports had suggested - alongside its annual results on Thursday.

The bonus pot for 2013 is certain to reignite a row over pay at RBS because it will also announce a loss for the year estimated at £8bn, the biggest since its bail-out by the Government in 2008.

UK Financial Investments (UKFI), the body which manages taxpayers' stake in the bank, is understood to have signed off on the payments in recent days.

The sum of around £550m will represent a fall on the 2012 bonus pot of £679m of just under 20%, which Chancellor George Osborne is expected to cite as evidence that RBS is exhibiting restraint on bonus payments.

Last year's figure was further reduced by £72m to £607m because of the clawback of previous years' deferred bonuses, undertaken as a consequence of RBS's £390m fine for its role in the Libor-rigging scandal.

RBS is expected to have reduced the 2013 bonus pool by at least £25m under a commitment it gave 12 months ago to reduce bonuses in subsequent years.

It is unclear whether RBS will also announce a plan on Thursday to seek shareholder approval at its annual general meeting in May to allow it to pay bonuses worth double the value of senior employees' basic salaries.

Other UK banks are planning to do so, but RBS found itself at the centre of another political row last month when Labour leader Ed Miliband urged David Cameron to use the Government's stake to block any such request.

At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Mr Cameron told Sky News: "With our particular responsibility for RBS, I can tell you that I don't only want to see the level of pay and bonuses come down overall, I want to see it come down per-person, per-capita as well."

The Prime Minister said last month that new European rules on bankers' pay, which the Government is challenging, could exacerbate the riskiness of banks.

He said: "This European directive... in some ways might make things worse, because you could see rates of pay go up.

"You can claw back a bonus, the taxpayer can get the money back. You can't claw back [basic] pay."

Thursday's bonus announcement will come as Ross McEwan, RBS's new chief executive, unveils a plan that will mean the bank's 120,000-strong workforce shrinking to barely two-thirds of that number following the sale and closure of several business units.

RBS and UKFI declined to comment.

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