WHEN Dani Hitchcock first heard about triple-killer Joanna Dennehy’s horrific crimes, her first thought was ‘that could have been me’.
Because, for two-and-a-half years, the woman dubbed Britain’s most dangerous female inmate was her ‘evil stepmum’, who tore through her family home like a tornado with her depraved sexual behaviour.
Dennehy’s callous killing spree made headlines around the world in March 2013 when she murdered Lukasz Slaboszewski, 31, John Chapman, 56, and Keven Lee, 48, in cold blood.
She also stabbed two more and went on the run before finally being arrested and pleaded guilty to three murders and two attempted murders in November that year.
Dennehy became the first British woman to be sentenced to die behind bars after the judge handed her a whole-life order and branded her a “cruel, calculating, selfish and manipulative serial killer”.
It was even revealed that the then 31-year-old had told a psychiatrist that she’d killed “to see if I was as cold as I thought I was…then it got moreish and I got a taste for it”.
Before her global notoriety , the sex-obsessed alcoholic took control of Dani’s family life, and made her and her brothers feel like strangers in their own home.
The twisted killer made the then 12-year-old feel so uncomfortable and scared that she stopped wanting to spend time with her dad, who she had always adored.
Recalling the moment she heard the news about Dennehy’s spree, Dani tells The Sun in our exclusive Meeting a Monster series: “I was in the car with my mum and it came on the news. I just froze, and laughed a nervous laugh.
“I just said ‘mum, that could’ve been us, my dad, my brothers’. I just felt sick. We had a lucky escape, big time. She really was the evil stepmum.”
Dani’s parents had divorced, and her dad *Geoff ran a local shop where Dennehy was a regular customer.
They started seeing each other and Dennehy moved into his home within a matter of months.
Dani, from Peterborough, recalls her first meeting with Dennehy on a family cinema trip.
She says: “I was really shocked. She looked really grubby and she had her arms out which were full of self-harm scars. I had never seen self-harm like that to this day, and at that age you don’t know what it is.
“I will never forget seeing these scars. She wasn’t embarrassed about them, it was almost like she was quite proud of showing them off.
“She was very blank with me. She spoke to my brothers but not to me, and she was all over my dad which was cringe enough as it is, let alone with someone like her.”
Sick sex jokes
Dani and her brothers used to stay at their dad’s at the weekend, but as time went on Joanna’s presence made Dani not want to go.
“I used to make excuses and things,” says Dani, who now works in childcare. “It sort of drove a wedge between me and my dad.
“I felt on edge in my own dad’s house. It was the house we had all grown up in and when my parents got divorced my dad kept it. But it started to feel not like a home.
“I didn’t even want to go downstairs and I was nervous to go into the kitchen because she would always be in there drinking, all day and all night .
“I felt intimidated in my own home. She was very, very cold. She wasn’t maternal or friendly or welcoming. It kind of felt like it became her house and we were like the guests.”
She was just vile…the only interaction she had with me was she tried to get me to do this seductive dance
Dani
Dani, now 29, believes twisted Dennehy bizarrely saw her as competition for Geoff’s affections, and used to make overtly sexual comments in front of her.
“Any conversation she had with me would be really inappropriate,” she explains.
“I remember her sprinkling something on my dad’s dinner once and I asked her what it was. She said, ‘oh, it is to make your dad hard’.”
Disturbing incident
Despite her young age, Dani had a gut feeling that there was something dangerous about Dennehy.
“I did have a bad feeling,” she says. “I used to say to my dad, ‘why are you even with her?’
“She used to dip in and out of my dad’s life, and I thought they had had a row or broken up, but it is only now I realise that it was because she was in and out of prison .”
And Dani says there was one particularly disturbing and sexually-charged incident which left her confused and her helpless mum furious.
She explains: “She was just vile. The only interaction she had with me was she tried to get me to do this seductive dance. It was to Do it Like a Dude by Jessie J and it was pretty much like pole dancing.
“I have the vision of me and Joanna spending hours practising. She was quite forceful, she was saying everyone will love it if you do this, we will have to show your dad.
“At the time my dad had his mate living with him as well. She basically wanted me to do this sexy dance for my dad and his friend.
“It was only when I went home and showed my mum. She was absolutely disgusted. Joanna was sex-obsessed. She was very all over my dad, she was always sitting on him.”
Dani believes that Dennehy saw her dad as vulnerable prey to be exploited, but when he finally cut her loose, she showed her true colours as she quickly turned to her next victim.
“There was also this man who went into my dad’s shop who was in his 80s and had just lost his wife. When my dad kicked Joanna out, this old man said she could go and live with him.
“She would walk around this old man’s house completely naked. Then she stole all his wife’s jewellery. She is just horrible.”
Dani says she and her mum breathed a sigh of relief when the relationship finally ended and her dad was free of evil Dennehy.
But the memories of her haunted childhood will still take years to shake.
Joanna Dennehy's victims
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.
