A man in the UK sentenced to life in prison on Wednesday for the murder of three children and their pregnant partner was seen on video calmly admitting: “I have murdered four people.”
Damien Bendall pleaded guilty to rape and four counts of murder at Derby Crown Court on Wednesday, Derbyshire Police said in a statement. He admitted to raping and murdering 11-year-old Lacey Bennett on September 19, 2021.
Bendall also allegedly murdered his 13-year-old brother, John Paul Bennett, the brothers’ mother and Bendall’s pregnant partner, Terri Harris, 35, and the girl’s friend, 11-year-old Connie Gent, in a house in Killamarsh. , a town and civil parish in north-east Derbyshire, England.
Interviewed at Ripley Police Station afterwards, Bendall told officers: “I used a hammer,” adding boastfully: “I bet they don’t usually get four murders in Killamarsh, do they? Well, five, because my lady I was expecting a baby.” SKY News reported.
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He allegedly said that after the murders, he took the boy’s game console and took a taxi to sell it for drug money before returning to the house and then calling the police.
Damien Bendall eventually admitted to murdering 35-year-old Terri Harris, her children, 13-year-old John-Paul Bennett, 11-year-old Lacey Bennett, and Lacey’s close friend, 11-year-old Connie Gent.
(Derbyshire Police)
Sitting outside the house when police arrive, body camera footage shows Bendall standing up and telling officers that he has no weapons. He complies when asked to unbutton his coat, and the officers ask if he hurt himself, noting the blood on Bendall’s hands. Bendall says that he stabbed himself “about four inches with a bread knife and one in the stomach” and goes on to unbutton the top of his coat.
Damien Bendall tells UK officers that he stabbed himself before admitting to the murders of his girlfriend and their three children.
(Derbyshire Police)
Keeping a cool demeanor, Bendall asks the officers to move around the corner. They agree, but stop him from going very far, as one officer asks, “do you know what’s going to happen to you now?”
“I know what’s going to happen. I’m going to prison, obviously. Again,” Bendall says.
The officer says that Bendall will be subject to arrest. “I’ve murdered four people,” Bendall adds casually.
Damien Bendall admits to UK police officers: “I’ve murdered four people.”
(Derbyshire Police)
Bendall is handcuffed, and a property search uncovers the four victims. The officers are then heard reading Bendall the rights to him and leading him into the back of a police van.
In a recording of the initial emergency call, Bendall is also heard calmly telling the dispatcher, “I need the police and ambulance here now because I’ve killed four people.”
Bendall would later tell police that he took “three or four bags of coke and then passed out.” He was also under the influence of cannabis, police said.
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The brother and sister were from Harris’s previous relationship. His father, Jason Bennett, said in his victim impact statement that the boys’ murders “destroyed” him and that life now seemed “pointless.”
“It is as if my heart has been broken into a billion pieces never to be mended. I am a shadow of my former self, I am nothing,” the statement read. “I have a lot of love around me, but the love I crave from my beautiful children, I can’t have that, it’s a hole that can never be filled.”
