Bondage case wife is jailed

But Dena Thompson was today beginning a jail sentence for fraud.

Immediately after the case, Sussex Police said they planned to re-examine the evidence surrounding the death of her former husband, who died of a drugs overdose six years ago.

Thompson was cleared of attacking her husband, Richard, 42, with a baseball bat and knife as he lay bound and gagged with masking tape on the bathroom floor of their Rustington home in January.

The jury was aware Thompson had bigamously married her previous husband, Julian Webb, in 1991, but had not been told about the nature of his death.

Detective Inspector Martyn Underhill said: "The events portrayed in this trial and the unusual nature of Julian Webb's death have led Sussex Police to confirm that they will re-examine the circumstances of that death. We will have to re-examine the coroner's inquest, possibly exhume the body and at some stage interview Dena Thompson."

During the trial it was alleged Thompson tried to kill her BT manager husband because she feared he would find out she had lied to him about being wealthy and had stolen all his money.

The defence said Thompson lashed out in self-defence after her husband discovered the truth about the money and threatened to kill her.

Judge Anthony Scott-Gall sentenced Thompson to three years and nine months in prison for 15 counts of deception. The offences related to thousands of pounds she stole from her husband and two former lovers, to which she pleaded guilty.

Sentencing Thompson, the judge said she had used "lies and deceit on a grand and convincing scale". He said: "You stole property from vulnerable men, all of whom in their way had become enamoured with you and Mr Thompson went so far as to marry you. You are someone who is irredeemably dishonest and driven by a desire to defraud people of their property."

After the verdict, Det Insp Underhill said: "I think most of her ex-partners will be devastated by this verdict but Sussex Police will go with the verdict of the jury. I do think Dena Thompson is an irrepressible fraud and she will no doubt target other men when she comes out of prison."

Mr Thompson held his head in his hands as the verdict was read out and refused to comment.

Life and loves of a serial fraudster It is not easy to pinpoint when Dena Thompson changed from an ordinary woman into a cold-hearted fraudster.

Born in Hendon, north London, in 1960 to Michael Holmes, a retired prison warder, and his wife, Margaret, her life of crime did not start until she moved to Sussex with her first husband, Lee Wyatt, in the Eighties.

He went on to become her first victim when she tried to blame him for stealing from customer accounts at the Woolwich Building Society.

Since then, Dena Thompson has fleeced a string of men and changed her name four times, adopting each of her three husbands' names and inventing another, Parsons.

At a trial at Chichester Crown Court she was convicted of seven counts of theft and two of forgery under the name of Wyatt, taken from her first husband.

She had stolen more than £26,000 from customers' accounts while working at the Woolwich in Arundel but was only charged with sample crimes.

The thefts took place in 1991 and she tried to blame Mr Wyatt for them.

She duped him into writing a series of incriminating letters.

He was sufficiently frightened to go into hiding and change his name.

Judge Eric Wrintmore said Thompson was "one of the most fluent liars I have ever come across" before sentencing her to 18 months in prison.

She met and married her second husband, Julian Webb, in 1991 at Chichester Register Office while she was separated - but not divorced - from Mr Wyatt, by whom she has a 12-year-old son.

Mr Webb's relatives were not impressed by the marriage as the couple had only recently met and Julian was on the rebound from a previous relationship.

The couple lived in Douglas Close, Yapton, where he was found dead of an overdose of paracetamol and dothiepin, an anti-depressant, in July 1994.

Police investigated the death at the time but found no evidence of foul play.

However, coroner Mark Calvert-Lee recorded an open verdict at the inquest on August 25, 1994, and said he was satisfied Mr Webb would never have considered taking his own life. Sylvia Stone, who worked with Mr Webb at the West Sussex Gazette, said: "Julian was a zany person. He used to keep us laughing because he was such a happy guy."

Following this week's trial, police have decided to re-examine the evidence surrounding Mr Webb's death.

A former neighbour of the couple in Douglas Close, Yapton, said: "All we knew was that he had died in his sleep but we knew she went on holiday straight after he was buried, which seemed funny.

"After Julian she seemed to have a new man coming round every eight months or so. We have heard that she promised them all a new life in America."

Detective Constable Sean McDonald, one of the officers on the attempted murder case, first met Thompson six years ago after the death of Mr Webb.

His subsequent investigation of her life of fraud led him to describe her as "one of the most dangerous people I have ever met".

He said: "She is cunning, conniving, calculating and contemptuous.

"In 15 years on the job I have never come across anyone quite like Dena Thompson."

Officers spent months tracking down Mrs Thompson's former lovers and two, Graham Binks and Phil Trott, agreed to make statements.

Det Con McDonald said they had traced several other men who preferred not to get involved in the court case.

He said: "Some of them had had affairs with Dena behind their wives' backs and were still trying to secretly pay off the debts she had left them.

"They just wanted to put it all behind them."

Mrs Thompson met Graham Binks through the small ads column of a local newspaper in 1997 and within weeks she had moved in with him.

She told him she was being harassed by a man she claimed had attacked her three years before and would feel safer at his home.

She then told him she was dying of cancer and that she had business connections in America before inviting him on an all-expenses-paid business trip to Orlando, paid for by her company.

Mr Binks agreed - but unbeknown to him, Thompson intercepted his credit card Pin number in the post and paid for the trip using his own cash. He lost £4,404.

Phil Trott stumbled across Dena Thompson in a fabric shop in Worthing in 1998.

He described her as very friendly and she offered to give him some free off-cuts of material if he would take her out for a drink.

He rang her the following night and began a short relationship with her.

She told him she was distressed because her father had suffered a stroke and shortly afterwards that he had died.

She also said she had throat cancer and would be dead by Christmas.

Mr Trott felt sorry for her and asked her to move in but he quickly became suspicious of her behaviour and discovered she had stolen more than £500 from his bank account.

Thompson met her third husband, Richard, 42, through a lonely hearts advert in October 1998.

Within weeks she and her 12-year-old son, Darren, had moved into his bungalow in Rustington.

Philip Katz, prosecuting in the attempted murder trial, said she then began weaving a web of extraordinary lies to gain money and sympathy.

When she told him she had breast cancer he took a £36,000 early retirement package so they could start a new life together in the USA, where he would become a fishing captain.

They made several trips to Florida to investigate the possibility and were married on a beach in April last year during one of the visits.

Thompson promised to fix meetings with a go-between who could get him a fishing job but these kept falling through.

She told him he could not meet the man because he was working undercover for the FBI.

After they were married, Thompson told her husband she had won £300,000 on the National Lottery but could not get at the money as it was in her bank account in Jersey.

He gave her a cheque for £3,000 as a deposit for a home they had found in Florida but she paid it into a credit card account she had set up in his name after forging his signature, and from which she had been withdrawing money herself.

Thompson said it was her husband's continual questioning about when she would get the money that prompted her to tell him about the lies and the way she had been stealing money from him, sparking a violent outburst.

She said she hit him twice with a baseball bat in self-defence and that he had been cut on his shoulder as she took from him a knife he was holding.

Mr Thompson needed five stitches to a wound above his left eye, three to one above his right eye and seven in a shoulder wound.

After being arrested for attempted murder, Mrs Thompson filed for divorce from Holloway Prison on the grounds of his unreasonable behaviour.

He is contesting the divorce.