In a horrifying turn of events, the man who mercilessly slaughtered his partner and three children detailed the gruesome aftermath of the killing spree in their family home. He butchered them in their sleep before callously trading his deceased son’s Xbox to feed his drug habit.
Derby local Damian Bendall, 32, initially opting for a manslaughter plea, admitted his guilt in the slayings of his partner Terri Harris, 35, her young ones Lacey Bennett, 11, John Paul Bennett, 13, and Lacey’s buddy Connie Gent, also 11, at the shared household. Hauled before Derby Crown Court, Bendall accepted a life sentence, sealing his fate behind bars indefinitely.
In an eerie post-arrest admission, Bendall painted a vivid, bloody picture for the authorities, describing the domicile as “covered in claret”. His confession didn’t end there – at Ripley police station he said: “The whole house is covered in claret. I used the hammer. I didn’t realise what I did until I walked into my room and saw my missus and my daughter.”
Following that, he laid bare the grim reality of the horrors he had committed.
“Bet you don’t usually get four murders in Killamarsh do you – well, five (murders), because my missus was having a baby.”, reports the Mirror US.
These chilling words were spoken during the trial that highlighted further harrowing details. After committing the appalling murders, Bendall swiped John’s Xbox console, caught a cab to Sheffield, and swapped the console for drugs, as prosecutor Louis Mably KC told the court.
Bendall also admitted to raping Lacey in what Louis Mably KC termed “brutal, vicious and cruel attacks on a defenceless woman” and her children.
The bodies of Terri and the children were found at a property in Killamarsh, north-east Derbyshire, close to Sheffield, on 19 September 2021. Mably suggested that Lacey likely endured rape by Bendall more than once.
Connie, who was over for a sleepover, had initially planned to stay just one night but tragically, her mother agreed to let her stay an extra night, which ended up being the day of Bendall’s rampage, the court heard.
On the day Bendall unleashed his assault, after 9:42pm, the children had been selling sweets outside their home to collect money for Cancer Research. The court heard that nearly all the victims bore defensive wounds, showing they had tried to resist Bendall’s onslaught.
Mably KC painted a horrifying picture in court, saying: “The circumstances of these offences are truly hideous and dreadful. These were brutal, vicious and cruel attacks on a defenceless woman and three young children. The defendant attacked them using a claw hammer which he used to hit them over the head and on the upper body. It was perfectly clear none of the victims stood a chance.”
Bendall was nabbed outside the house shortly after 7:39 am, following his mother’s distress call to 999 reporting that he had stabbed himself. A chilling body-worn video footage showed Bendall, with two superficial knife wounds, eerily admitting to police: “I’ve murdered four people.”
The courtroom then heard the gut-wrenching audio from the police search of the home, where an officer’s voice cracked with emotion as he discovered the grim scene, uttering: “They’re gone, they’re gone. They’re all gone.”
The trial shed light on Bendall’s criminal past, including convictions for robbery, attempted robbery, and grievous bodily harm. He committed the rape and murders while under a 24-month suspended sentence from Swindon Crown Court in June 2021 for torching a car he had tried to nick.
In response to the whole-life sentence handed down to Bendall, Andrew Baxter, deputy chief crown prosecutor for the East Midlands, expressed the gravity of the crimes, stating: “It is hard to put into words the scale of Damien Bendall’s barbaric and horrifying actions. “He went through the house looking for the victims until he had killed them all, raping one of the children in the attack. What he did left two families utterly devastated by grief and a community in bewilderment and shock.”.
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