A probation services officer who had just five months of experience before she was allocated prolific offender Damien Bendall’s case told an inquest she would have prevented him from living with the pregnant girlfriend he later murdered if she had been told about comments he made suggesting he would kill her and her children if the relationship failed.
Bendall, 33, who is serving a whole-life order for the murders of his partner Terri Harris, 35, her daughter Lacey Bennett, 11, her son John Paul Bennett, 13, and Lacey’s friend Connie Gent, 11, after he attacked them with a claw hammer at their home in Killamarsh, Derbyshire, had reportedly told an officer from the Electronic Monitoring Service (EMS) that he would kill them if the relationship went “bad”.
