Ex-husband of notorious ‘Black Widow’ killer fears she will strike again | UK News

The ex-husband of one of Britain’s most notorious female killers is convinced she will strike again.

Dena Thompson, also known as the ‘Black Widow’, organized a 20-year campaign of terror after tricking men into marrying her, then attacking, cheating and killing them.

After marrying her first husband in the 80s, Dena made him fear for his life, robbing him of his savings and making him believe he was a target for the mafia.

She then married her second husband in bigamy, cheated on him, and murdered him by feeding him poisoned curry. She passed the murder off as suicide and married a third man, whom she later attacked with a metal baseball bat and a meat cleaver.

Dena was eventually jailed in 2003, but police feared her crimes were just the tip of the iceberg. Police said she had also targeted at least eight other men, and possibly more through advertisements in Lonely Hearts newspapers.

But despite being labelled ‘utterly ruthless and remorseless’ by a judge, she is now a free woman again, and her victims fear she is planning to strike again.

‘Single men should beware,’ first husband Lee Wyatt told the Mail. ‘She plays the innocent, the kind of sweet woman who wouldn’t hurt a fly, but it’s all an act. No man is safe with her.’

The 69-year-old retired businessman first met the “pretty and sociable” 22-year-old woman in the early 1980s when they were both living in North London, and married her shortly afterwards.

After they had a child together, Wyatt quit his job and started a stuffed animal company with Dena, something Dena quickly used to her advantage.

Using forged documents, Dena convinced her husband that Disney wanted to pay them millions for the rights to a character she had created. Using the same technique, she made him believe that the Mafia wanted a cut of their money.

More forged documents followed, some said to be from gangsters and others from the FBI. Fearing for his safety, Wyatt fled his home and went underground. He changed his name to Colin Mitchell and deposited his wages directly into his wife’s account.

But what he didn’t know was that while he was hiding out in Cornwall, Dena was in a relationship with advertising executive Juloan Webb, whom she met in 1991 and married in a bisexual manner six months later.

During this time, Dena managed to steal over £25,000 from Julian, falsely claiming she had cancer and needed money for treatment, but instead depositing the money into false accounts.

But she eventually became paranoid that her two husbands would ever meet and murdered Julian on his 31st birthday, after giving him a poisoned curry laced with paracetamol and painkillers.

His death was ruled a suicide and police found no evidence of foul play. However, after an investigation into his death, a coroner concluded there was no evidence that Julian had committed suicide.

Over the next four years, Dena scammed a number of men and paid off their savings, eventually ending up behind bars for 18 months for defrauding her former workplace.

But in 1998, less than six months after her release, she married her third husband, Richard Thompson, and immediately began extorting his life savings.

After she told him she needed money for cancer treatments, Thompson quit his job as a manager at BT and took early retirement, transferring his pension to Dena.

But less than a year into their marriage, she pretended to seduce Thompson by tying him up and blindfolding him in the bathroom, then trying to kill him with an aluminum baseball bat and a meat cleaver.

She avoided jail after claiming she acted in self-defense, a claim Thompson vehemently denies.

“She absolutely tried to kill me, and they’ve proven she killed her second husband,” he told the Mail.

‘So, she would have been a serial killer if she had been successful. And God knows what else she did.

Although Julian managed to avoid a conviction for attempted murder, this incident prompted police to reopen the investigation into Julian’s death. His body was exhumed and they discovered that all of her ex-lovers had been duped into handing over large sums of money.

Dena was sentenced to life in prison in 2007 and told she would have to spend a minimum of 17 years behind bars. She served her sentence and was released on probation two years ago.

Her adventures are revealed in ‘Black Widow’, a new three-part documentary premiering this week on Sky.

But despite the notoriety, her surviving victims are convinced she will continue to target vulnerable men.

“The woman I knew was an evil psychopath,” Wyatt said before her release. “She has never shown remorse for her crimes and it sickens me to think she will be back on the streets anytime soon.”

Thompson said earlier: ‘She can’t change. She’s never shown any remorse.

‘So many men were her victims. She is a master of putting on an act. She is a schemer.

“There is no reason why she should be released.”

Sean McDonald, a retired detective who led the investigation into Dena and met her several times, told the Mail: ‘I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: I am absolutely convinced she will commit further crimes.’

“She’s now in an age group where there are a lot of divorced people and people with high pensions who may own their own home without a mortgage,” he says.

“She chooses her targets very carefully. They are vulnerable men who are lonely and have money.”

Although it is unknown where Dena is currently, she has previously been spotted in Reading and London. She is rumoured to be in a new relationship with a pen pal she met in prison.

“If it’s true, then this person should know about her transgressions,” says Sean McDonald. “But some people are attracted to the drama and excitement of that kind of relationship.”

He added: ‘I think she will continue to offend. It’s just a matter of time.’

She’s a manipulator. There will be other victims.’

He added: ‘If your father, son, uncle, cousin, friend, whoever comes home and says they’ve met a lovely new lady called Dena, I would advise you to call the police.’

Black Widow premieres on Sky Documentaries on September 15.

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