Murderer dubbed Black Widow after killing her husband and scamming others has been released after top police officer warned ‘she will strike again’

“THE story of the Black Widow is absolutely true, it really happened.

But it’s stranger than fiction,’ says veteran detective Sean McDonald.

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For 30 years he has been following the bizarre case of Dena Thompson, who deceived her first husband, murdered her second, seduced her third with the promise of sexual games, then bashed his head in with a baseball bat.

It is feared that she defrauded other men along the way and stole their savings.

Black Widow has now been released after serving 19 years of her life sentence for poisoning her husband’s No2 curry and embezzling half a million pounds.

But former detective Sean warns: “If your uncle, father, son or cousin says, ‘I actually met this one,’ Nice If I met a woman named Dena, I would immediately call the police.

“She’s 63 now and a lot of men that age are quite wealthy.

“They’ve paid off their mortgages, they have a pension, they don’t have to work.

“But they are very vulnerable because they can be very lonely, and she is constantly targeting lonely people.

“And I think she’s at the perfect age to meet these people.

“I don’t think the story is over yet. I think it’s just a matter of time before this happens again.”

The incredible story of Black Widow is told in a new three-part Sky documentary, launching tomorrow.

In an exclusive interview, Sean reveals the full story of the nine-year search for evidence to bring Dena Thompson to justice.

£50 million order

In the summer of 1994, then Constable Sean McDonald was seconded to the CID while recovering from leg surgery, which left him unable to operate in Worthing, West Sussex.

On his first day as a detective, concerned mother Rosemary Webb came to the city police station claiming that her son Julian had been murdered.

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Sean, now 67, said: “Julian had died on the night of June 30, his 31st birthday. In the early hours of July 1, the police were called and he was found dead.

“His wife said he overdosed. His mother is furious with us and says, ‘My son wouldn’t commit suicide.'”

In the documentary, Rosemary says she was convinced her daughter-in-law was a murderer: “In my heart I knew she had done this.

“I’d never met anyone who could tell so many lies. Her life was so extraordinarily over the top. She was like a B-movie.”

The day after Julian’s death, Thompson, a building society worker, visited her husband’s bosses at a local newspaper in Arundel to claim the £36,000 life insurance policy he received from his job as an advertising salesman.

Sean recalls, “I had to go to Dena’s house to take a statement. She was definitely not like the grieving widow.

“It was like a social visit – she talked about going to Florida, but she had a lawyer with her.”

Thompson’s first husband, Lee Wyatt, had disappeared and detectives feared she had killed him as well.

Sean says, “We literally couldn’t find him.

“No information about him has been found anywhere.

“We thought he was dead and buried under a terrace.”

In fact he was still alive and living in the West Country, in hiding.

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Thompson made stuffed animals as a hobby and the couple started a business selling them.

Using a neighbour’s word processor, she forged a £50 million order from Disney for a gnome she had designed.

She then convinced Lee that the Irish mafia wanted a piece of Disney’s money and that his life was in danger.

Sean adds: “He was under her spell and he went into hiding.”

Lee called Thompson regularly from a pay phone in Cornwall, telling him that a man lived at their home who was a bodyguard for an undercover FBI unit and was supposed to protect her from the mob.

She then bigamously married her “bodyguard”, Julian Webb, whom she later murdered by feeding him curry laced with drugs.

Police were unable to gather enough evidence to charge her with murder, and a coroner returned an open verdict.

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But detectives did discover a dozen men who had courted Thompson before she stole their money.

They included a customs officer at Gatwick airport whom she left stranded in Florida and a teacher who was so in love with her that he quit his job and gave her his savings when she claimed he had cancer.

In 2000, Sean was called to a police meeting about a woman who had attacked her husband in the bathroom with a baseball bat and stolen all of his money.

Sean says: “They said the woman’s name is Dena. I just said, ‘F***. I know her, and she’s done this before.’

“Suddenly everyone sits up. They showed me a picture of her with her new husband Richard Thompson.

“When I first met her six years earlier, she was a slim, pretty girl.

She had gained a little weight, but she was still the same person.”

Thompson had lured his third husband Richard into the bathroom with the promise of a sexual ‘surprise’.

She convinced him to lie down, tied his hands behind his back, placed a towel over his face and beat his head with a baseball bat before stabbing him twice.

‘Crazy look in her eyes’

Sean says: “There was blood everywhere, but Dena’s mother comes from Devon, cleans up the scene, packs her things and takes her to a hotel for the night.

“She then drove back to Devon, but it was another three days before Richard actually called the police.

“When he finally called, he just said, ‘I want to report this in case I divorce my wife.’

“By the time she got to the courthouse, she was very slim and demure. She spoke very softly and said, ‘I am a thief, but I am not a violent person.’

“The story she told was that it was a sex game, that he had attacked her with a knife and that she had defended herself with a baseball bat.

“In court, her testimony was horrific. ‘Do you love Richard Thompson?’ ‘No.’ ‘Why did you marry him?’ ‘So I could steal all his money.’

She grinned at everyone in the public gallery.

She knew full well that she was getting away with attempted murder

Former Detective Sean McDonald

Why did you make him sign? current from a lawyer? ‘I wanted to steal his house’.

“I think it was only then that Richard fully understood that he had completely changed his mind.

“She left the witness stand, walked straight towards me and I thought she was going to attack me. She had a crazy look in her eyes.

“Someone had talked to me about that before – they called it the Dena can.”

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Thompson was acquitted of attempted murder but admitted fraud, stealing Richard’s savings and being left with so little money he couldn’t buy a carton of milk.

Sean recalls: “When she was acquitted, she grinned at everyone in the public gallery.

“She knew full well that she was getting away with attempted murder.”

Outside Lewes Crown Court in East Sussex, police announced they would re-investigate the death of her second husband Julian, almost seven years earlier.

Thompson wanted to have him cremated, but because their marriage was bigamous, she was not officially the next from family and was rejected.

His last days must have been horrible, because he had no idea what was going on and she gave him these medications.

Former Detective Sean McDonald

In 2001, Julian’s mother gave permission for his body to be exhumed.

Sean says: “The body was in fantastic condition and they were able to get really good samples, I think from the thigh.

“It didn’t prove he was poisoned, but it did prove her story was wrong. She said he had been drinking and there was a bottle of Southern Comfort next to the bed.

“He had no alcohol in his system, nothing in his blood, nothing in the tissue samples, and nothing in his urine from the original autopsy.”

Detectives began to suspect that Julian had been given lethal amounts of drugs, which had been laced into curries to disguise the taste.

Sean says: “His last days must have been horrible, he didn’t understand what was going on and she gave him those drugs.

“There was a lot of circumstantial evidence, but we were able to prove that she was a liar.”

Thompson was sentenced to a minimum of 16 years in prison for murder in 2003.

But due to Covid-19, she was eventually sentenced to 19 years in prison and released on probation in 2022.

Sean says, “The last I heard from her, she had a boyfriend, but he had contacted her while she was in prison.”

Her third husband, Richard, who feels he has not been given justice, says in the documentary: “I want people to know what really happened.”

• Black Widow comes to Sky Documentaries and streaming service NOW tomorrow.