“THE story of the Black Widow is absolutely true, it really did happen.
But it’s stranger than fiction,” says ex- detective Sean McDonald.
‘Black Widow’ Dena Thompson has been released from jail after serving 19 years of a lifePhoto News Old Bailey
Former Detective Constable Sean McDonald warns Dena Thompson could kill againChris Eades
For 30 years he has followed the bizarre case of Dena Thompson, who hoodwinked her first husband, killed her second and lured her third with the promise of sex games, then smashed his head in with a baseball bat.
Along the way, it is feared she has conned other men out of their savings.
The Black Widow is now out of jail after serving 19 years of a life sentence for poisoning husband No2’s curry and embezzling half a million pounds.
But former Detective Constable Sean warns: “If your uncle, father, son or cousin says, ‘I met this really nice woman called Dena’, I’d ring the police immediately.
“She’s 63 now and a lot of men that age are quite wealthy.
“They have paid off mortgages, they have got pensions, they don’t need to work.
“But they are quite vulnerable because they can be quite lonely, and she homes in on lonely people all the time.
“And I think that she’s at that perfect age where she could meet these people.
“I don’t think the story is finished yet. I believe it’s only a matter of time before this happens again.”
The incredible story of the Black Widow is told in a new three-part Sky documentary, which launches tomorrow.
In an exclusive interview, Sean reveals the inside story of the nine-year search for evidence to bring Dena Thompson to justice.
£50million order
In the summer of 1994 the then PC Sean McDonald was seconded to the CID while recovering from a leg operation which meant he could not pound the beat in Worthing, West Sussex.
On his first day as a detective, worried mother Rosemary Webb came into the town’s police station claiming her son Julian had been murdered.
After Dena’s second husband died, ex-detective McDonald recalls that she was not acting like a grieving widowConnors Brighton
Sean, now 67, says: “Julian had died overnight on June 30, his 31st birthday. In the early hours of July 1, police are called and he’s found dead.
“His wife said he’d taken an overdose. 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 killer: “In my heart I knew she’d 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, building society worker Thompson visited her husband’s bosses at a local newspaper in Arundel to claim the £36,000 life insurance that came with his job in advertising sales.
Sean recalls: “I had to go to Dena’s house to take a statement. She was absolutely not like the grieving widow.
“It was like a social call — she talked about going to Florida but she had a solicitor with her.”
Thompson’s first husband, Lee Wyatt, had gone missing, and detectives feared she might have killed him too.
Sean says: “We literally could not find him.
“There were no records of him anywhere.
“We thought he was dead and buried under a patio.”
In fact he was alive and living in the West Country — in hiding.
First husband Lee Wyatt survived to tell Sky’s new documentary how Dena left him terrifiedSky Uk Limited ©
As a hobby, Thompson made soft toys and the couple had gone into business selling them.
Using a neighbour’s word processor, she forged a £50million order from Disney for a leprechaun she had designed.
She then convinced Lee the Irish Mafia wanted a share of the Disney money and his life was in danger.
Sean adds: “He was under her spell and he went into hiding.”
Lee called Thompson regularly from a phone box in Cornwall, and she told him there was a man living at their home who was a bodyguard from an undercover FBI unit, there to protect her from the Mafia.
She then bigamously married her “bodyguard”, Julian Webb, who she later killed by feeding him drug-laced curry.
Police could not gather enough evidence to charge her with his murder, and a coroner recorded an open verdict.
Second husband and former bodyguard Julian Webb died in 1994 after wife Dena poisoned his curryCollect
But detectives did discover a dozen men who had romanced Thompson before she stole their money.
They included a Gatwick Airport customs officer who she left stranded in Florida and a teacher who was so infatuated, he quit his job and gave her his savings when she claimed to have cancer.
Then in 2000 Sean was called to a police meeting about a woman who had attacked her husband with a baseball bat in their bathroom after stealing all his money.
Sean says: “They said the woman’s name is Dena. I just went, ‘F***. I know her, and she’s done this before’.
“Suddenly everybody sits up. They showed me a picture of her with new husband Richard Thompson.
“When I’d first met her six years earlier she was a slim, prettyish girl.
She’d ballooned in weight but it was the same person.”
Thompson had lured third husband Richard to the bathroom with the promise of a sexual “surprise”.
She persuaded him to lie down, tied his hands behind his back, placed a towel over his face and smashed his head with a baseball bat before stabbing him twice.
‘Crazy look in her eyes’
Sean says: “There was blood everywhere but Dena’s mum travels up from Devon, cleans up the crime scene, packs up her stuff and takes her to a hotel for the night.
“Then she drives her back to Devon, but it took another three days before Richard actually called the police.
“Then when he did ring up, he just said, ‘I want to report this in case I divorce my wife’.
“By the time she got to court, she was very slim and demure. She spoke very quietly and said, ‘I’m a thief, but I’m not a violent person’.
“The story she gave was that it was this sex game, that he attacked her with a knife and she defended herself with a baseball bat.
“In court her evidence was horrible. ‘Did you love Richard Thompson?’ ‘No’. ‘Why did you marry him?’ ‘So I could steal all his money’.
She just smirked at everybody in the public gallery.
She knew damn well she got away with an attempted murder
Ex-detective Sean McDonald
“‘Why did you get him to sign over power of attorney?’ ‘I was going to steal his house’.
“I think it was only then that Richard fully understood that he’d been completely turned over.
“She left the witness box, walked straight towards me and I thought she was going to attack me. She had this crazy look in her eyes.
“Somebody had spoken to me about that before — they called it the Dena stare.”
Third husband Richard Thompson was attacked with a baseball bat before his money was stolenNews Group Newspapers Ltd
Thompson was cleared of attempted murder but admitted fraud, stealing Richard’s life savings, leaving him with so little money that he couldn’t buy a pint of milk.
Sean recalls: “When she was acquitted, she just smirked at everybody in the public gallery.
“She knew damn well she got away with an attempted murder.”
Outside Lewes Crown Court in East Sussex the police announced they would reinvestigate the death of her second husband Julian, nearly seven years earlier.
Thompson had wanted him cremated but as their marriage was bigamous she was not officially the next of kin and was overruled.
His last few days must have been dreadful with him completely not understanding what was going on, and her administering these drugs
Ex-detective Sean McDonald
In 2001 Julian’s mum gave permission for his body to be exhumed.
Sean says: “The body was in fantastic condition and they were able to get very good samples, I think from the thigh.
“It didn’t prove he’d been poisoned but it did prove that her story was wrong. She said he’d been drinking and next to the bed was a bottle of Southern Comfort.
“He had no alcohol in his body, none in his blood, none in the tissue samples and none in his urine from the original post-mortem.”
Detectives began to suspect Julian had been fed lethal amounts of drugs mixed into in curries to disguise the taste.
Sean says: “His last few days must have been dreadful with him completely not understanding what was going on, and her administering these drugs.
“There was a lot of circumstantial evidence but we could prove she was a liar.”
Thompson was jailed for murder in 2003 with a minimum of 16 years.
But because of Covid she ended up serving 19 years and was released on parole in 2022.
Sean says: “The last I heard of her was that she has a boyfriend but he had been contacting her when she was in prison.”
Her third husband, Richard, who believes he has been denied justice, tells the documentary: “I want people to know what really happened.”
Black Widow is coming to Sky Documentaries and streaming service NOW tomorrow.