A tall but overweight man wearing scruffy clothes lifts up his shirt provocatively and stares gormlessly into the camera as he poses on the balcony of a suburban council block.
At a glance it looks like a cringeworthy picture posted on social media – but the truth is chilling.
The man in this grainy photo is Gary Stretch, a ‘nodding dog’ follower to one of Britain’s most notorious female serial killers – Joanna Dennehy.
Dennehy took the picture in 2013 while she was on the run from the police after butchering three men and just hours before she set off to stab two more innocent victims.
Stretch, formerly known as Gary Richards, was Dennehy’s key accomplice and called himself her ‘Hubby 4 Lifey’ in jail-house love letters.
But he was not the only acolyte under the killer’s spell.
Leslie Layton was also one of Dennehy’s henchmen and helped her dispose of the bodies of two of her victims.
Like Stretch, he was said to be under the ‘psychological’ control of the killer, though was described as ‘willing’ by a judge.
Dennehy was handed a whole life tariff after her trial heard she had a ‘fetish’ and ‘taste’ for murder.
But far from reformed, last week it was revealed she had chopped off the finger of a prison guard in an audacious, but failed, attempt to escape from Britain’s high security female prison, HMP Bronzefield.
While Dennehy will die behind bars for her heinous crimes – MailOnline reveals what has become of the men that fell under her spell.
Stretch, formerly known as Gary Richards, posing with his tshirt lifted up while on the run with Joanna Dennely
Dennehy is considered the ‘most dangerous female inmate’ in the country after plotting to chop off a prison guard’s finger to escape prison and threatening to kill serial killer Rose West
Leslie Layton was also convicted of preventing the lawful and decent burial of two men and perverting the course of justice
Mother-of-two Dennehy, from Peterborough, had bragged to her friends while on the run that herself and Stretch – also a father to three children – were a modern day ‘Bonnie and Clyde’.
The 59-year-old had helped her hide the bodies of her three victims, 31-year-old lover Lukasz Slaboszewski, housemate John Chapman, and landlord and lover Kevin Lee.
The pair then drove 140 miles west in a Vauxhall Astra registered under the false company name Undertaker and Sons to Hereford where he aided her in randomly picking out two dog-walkers to attack.
But while Dennehy viewed the 7ft3 ‘giant’ as her partner in crime, his defence claimed at trial that he had been ‘manipulated’ and ‘bent’ by Dennehy to act as she wished.
Stretch’s defence lawyer, Karim Khalil QC, had likened Dennehy to a ‘Shakesperean’ or ‘Jacobean’ villain, and said she surrounded herself with people she ‘knew to be weak’ and could ‘bend to her will’.
He described Stretch, 59, as her ‘nodding dog’, even addressing the subject of Stretch’s size stating: ‘Fear is a terrible thing. It crushes the human spirit. Fear makes a mockery of size.’
Dennehy – who psychiatrist Dr Frank Farnham found had the condition paraphilia sadomasochism, a disorder of preference for sexual activity involving the infliction of pain or humiliation or bondage – is believed to have met Stretch several years before the killing spree.
In a letter to ex-partner Julie Gibbons after trial, Stretch told of how he had met Dennehy after a spell in prison and had been staying on a sofa at her home.
Speaking to The Mirror back in 2014, Ms Gibbons had told of how she feared her family could have been Dennehy’s next target after Stretch suggested he had only helped her to ‘keep her away from his family’.
Ms Gibbons, who described Stretch as a ‘gentle giant’, had said Dennehy must have had him under her ‘spell’ and that he had ‘fallen in love with her’.
In twisted letters written to Dennehy from his cell while they both awaited sentencing, Stretch had written that she was his ‘devil in the flesh’ and described sex with her as ‘a dream never to come true’.
He had also praised her ‘bloodthirsty’ leanings and ‘dirty and dark mind’ and even signed off the letters with ‘Your biggest supporter!’ ‘Undertaker’ and ‘Hubby 4 Lifey’.
Despite attempts by the defence to argue Stretch had been under Dennehy’s influence, he was sentenced to life with a minimum of 19 years after being found guilty of three counts of preventing the lawful burial of a body and one of attempted murder at Cambridge Crown Court.
Stretch was found guilty of three counts of preventing the lawful burial of a body and one of attempted murder at Cambridge Crown Court
Dennehy was said to have ‘bent’ and ‘manipulated’ her accomplices Stretch and Layton, with their defences saying the pair were her ‘nodding dogs’
In letters written to Dennehy from his cell, Stretch signed off ‘Hubby 4 Lifey’ and ‘Undertaker’
Pictured: the pocket knife used by Dennehy for her murders
Now, over ten years later, it is understood Stretch is still serving his sentence at HMP Woodhill in Milton Keynes.
The infatuated accomplice of the serial killer had launched two appeals against his life sentence, both of which were rejected by an Appeal Court judge in 2014.
At the Court of Appeal hearing in October 2014, Lord Justice Pitchford said the life sentence handed out to Stretch was appropriate to his crimes.
‘The applicant, knowing that Dennehy was a serial killer and for that reason likely to kill again, assisted her to evade justice by concealing the bodies of her three victims.
‘We agree with the judge first that the applicant presented a most serious danger to the public and second, that the sentence for the attempted murders must be condemnatory,’ he said.
He added: ‘We conclude that it is not arguable that any part of the sentence imposed was inappropriate and for this reason the renewed application for leave to appeal is dismissed.’
Dennehy’s crimes were so inhumane that she is one of only four women in the UK to have ever been handed a whole life order.
The twisted serial killer told police officers and psychiatrists of how she found killing ‘moreish’ and ‘fun’, and had tried it to see if she was ‘as cold’ as she thought.
She went from killing her first victim Lukasz Slaboszewski with a single stab wound to the heart, to launching a frenzied attack of more than 30 stab wounds on her final victim John Rogers – who miraculously survived.
Dennehy had met her first victim Slaboszewski just days before the murder. She had befriended him and he had messaged a friend to the effect that ‘life was beautiful’ now he had Dennehy as his ‘girlfriend’.
She then lured him to her home in Rolleston Garth, Peterborough, and stabbed him through the heart.
Dennehy’s co-conspirator Stretch caught on CCTV while they were on the run from police
The psychopath posing in a photo that was taken while she was on the run
Dennehy was diagnosed with ‘psychopathic, anti-social and emotional instability disorders’
She had then dumped the body in a wheelie bin and even brought over a 14-year-old girl she had befriended to view the body.
Dennehy and Stretch then using money borrowed from landlord Lee – who later became her third victim – dumped Slaboszewski’s body in a ditch.
It was during her second murder that her second accomplice Layton became involved.
While a judge acknowledged Layton had ‘played a subordinate role to Gary Stretch’, he still found he was a ‘willing’ participant.
He was said to be another ‘nodding dog’ of Dennehy’s, helping to hide the bodies of two of her victims and cover their tracks.
Cambridge Crown Court had heard how he and Stretch had acted out of fear that they could be her next victims.
Layton, who had left home and cut ties with his family as a teenager, had been living in a flat above Dennehy.
The judge described how he had become ‘caught up in the excitement and fascination of the appalling murders’.
Dennehy’s second victim, John Chapman, a 56-year-old man who was ‘kindly and harmless’ and had served in the Royal Navy but fallen to alcoholism, was a housemate to Layton.
Stretch and Layton had met and drank with Chapman just days before Dennehy murdered him by stabbing him in his own bed sitting room.
In a horrifying discovery, a photograph of Chapman’s dead body was found on Layton’s mobile phone.
Dennehy killed her love interest Lukasz Slaboszewski (left) and her housemate, John Chapman
Dennehy was originally help on remand at HMP Bronzefield in Surrey, where she allegedly had an affair with a male prison officer
She is being held at HMP Low Newton, a maximum security prison in the village of Brasside near Durham
The judge found that Layton’s reaction to finding Chapman’s dead body was not to call for help but to photograph the body for his ‘own purposes as a morbid souvenir.’
Dennehy’s third victim Lee, her landlord and lover, was lured to her flat and stabbed five times in the chest.
Layton was found to have been involved in getting rid of the bodies and setting fire to Lee’s Mondeo car.
Lee’s body was dressed in a black sequined dress when dumped as a final act of humiliation.
Layton was sentenced to 14 years after he was found guilty of preventing the lawful and decent burial of two men and perverting the course of justice.
He is understood to have been released on licence after seven years, and is believed to be living in Lincoln.
Speaking to Layton’s mum outside her home in Peterborough, Susan Layton, 72, told of how she did not recognise her son when she saw him in court.
While she had not been in contact with her son for almost two decades, the news of the trial still came as a huge shock to her, prompting her to attend court.
She said: ‘My son was involved but I don’t know what went on. I was shocked. I was literally shocked.
‘Me and my youngest daughter, we went to court.
‘It wasn’t my son. It didn’t look like him if you know what I mean.
‘I couldn’t even recognise him.
‘In his teens when he was like 17 he said ‘oh I can go and get a place of my own, £7 a week’, I said ‘go and do it’, so he went and after that nothing.
‘He doesn’t speak to any of the family.’
Representing Layton during trial, Christopher Morgan said: ‘The only person who glorifies in death and who trades on it and gets satisfaction from thinking about it and doing it is Joanna Dennehy.
She also murdered her landlord Kevin Lee while they were in a sexual relationship
Dennehy was seen laughing while being taken into police custody accused of multiple murders
‘Leslie Layton has nothing to do with those exceptional circumstances, he’s now caught up in it.’
Layton supposedly now lives in Lincoln, having built a new life and finding a partner.
Layton’s mother told MailOnline: ‘I know that he lives in Lincoln somewhere but where I don’t know.
‘He didn’t even speak to me before and he won’t even speak to me now.
‘I haven’t tried reaching out because I mean it probably would be disheartening for him and for me.
‘But he’s got his life now and I’ve got mine. And I think he’s got a girlfriend apparently.
‘I know he got 14 years but when he came out I do not know. He’s got seven years to do and I think he’s got a tag on.
‘Apparently, according to what I got told, he [Stretch] is going to go for him [Leslie] when he’s out.
‘Because apparently he thought it was him that turned and split on them two, that it was him that turned and informed the police.
‘Because he got less than what them two got.
‘But she [Dennehy] is still inside. And she’ll stay until the rest of her life.’
While Stretch could one day have hopes of being released, Dennehy will spend her entire life behind bars.
As MailOnline visited one of the flats Dennehy had lived in when she carried out the murders, a neighbour who had lived in the block at the time shouted: ‘Sod her!
‘She can rot in jail!’
