31-05-2025
I've interviewed murderers and rapists at UK's ‘Monster Mansion' prison – but one harrowing case left me broken
SITTING across from the cold hearted murderer, Kerry Daynes barely flinches, in fact if anything she's trying to suppress a yawn.
The forensic psychologist, 51, is talking to the serial killer Dennis Nilsen, responsible for the death of at least 15 people during his killing spree in 70s and 80s.
10
However, his grisly past doesn't spark an ounce of fear in Kerry.
' Dennis Nielsen was one of the most boring people that I've ever met,' she says.
'He was a dull civil servant that could complain for England, he could have turned it into an Olympic sport.
'The only thing that made him interesting, really, was of course these hideous offences that he'd committed.'
Hideous offenses are, of course, Kerry's bread and butter, having spent more than two decades analysing some of the UK's most dangerous criminals from Moors Murderer Ian Brady to infamous inmate Charles Bronson.
With her cool and collected attitude it's a career she's thrived in but Kerry, who lives in Manchester, admits that she almost went down a very different path.
Speaking as part of Life Stories, The Sun's YouTube series that sees ordinary people share their extraordinary experiences, she says: 'I really wanted to be an advertising executive.
'I thought there was loads of money in it and it seemed like money for a rope.'
After taking psychology at university, she "fell into" criminal psychology after developing a crush on a boy in that module.
'There was one boy in particular that I really fancied and he was taking law, so I signed up for some law subsidiaries alongside psychology,' she says.
'I always say that I became a forensic psychologist by accident and under the influence of cheap cider and hormones.'
INSIDE 'MONSTER MANSION'
While nothing ever came of her crush, Kerry graduated with honours from Sheffield University and in 1996 she was taken on as a voluntary assistant at HMP Wakefield, dubbed ' Monster Mansion'.
'I looked around me and I saw faces that I recognised from the newspapers,' she says.
'I could put the mugshots to the people.
'I was put onto a research project which meant I had to interview every man in the prison who had both raped and murdered a woman in very great detail.
'The whole point of this research project, believe it or not, was that they felt that they might be able to develop a set of guidelines for women who were being raped so that they could minimize the chances of them being murdered.
'It's mind blowing to think about it now.'
While Kerry admitted that initially she was out of her depth she quickly became adept at talking to some of Britain's most dangerous criminals.
10
10
She opened her own private psychology practice in 2003 and worked as a freelance forensic psychologist for over 20 years.
Often asked how she was able to cope with the harrowing task of analysing some of the UK's most depraved criminals, Kerry admits she developed a unique coping method.
'I was working in a secure unit and there was one guy that I worked with that was in his 80s who was deemed too unsafe to move anywhere else,' she explains.
'He'd murdered two women in a very sadistic manner and really enjoyed seeing women suffer and nobody warned me about the habit he had for female staff.
AN EYEBALL IN MY SOUP
'He had a prosthetic eye and I was sitting having my lunch one day when he came up behind me and he literally flicked his prosthetic eye into my soup.
'So of course I screamed the place down, and gave him the response that he wanted so he continued to do it and I had to find a way of ignoring it.
'Eventually I would just scoop the eyeball out and I would put it to the side of my plate and I would carry on and that stopped him.
'And ever since I have applied that logical and rational approach to my work.
'I still to this day I actually go, 'You know what, Kerry, need to put the eyeball to one side'.'
It was this approach that saw Kerry keep her cool while coming face to face with the likes of Yorkshire Ripper Peter Sutcliffe.
But Kerry admits that not all of her encounters were as uneventful as her one with Dennis Nilsen.
'In 2011 I was working at a forensic step-down unit, a little bit like a halfway house for inmates,' she explains.
'In this unit they had access to a kitchen and they didn't have sharp knives, but on this particular occasion, one of the residents was tasked with doing the washing up.
'We'd all had chicken kebabs on skewers and as I walked into the kitchen he ran at me and I thought that he punched me in the stomach.
'It wasn't until I looked down that I realised he'd stabbed me with a kebab skewer. Half of it was sticking out of my stomach and all I could think was, 'I really hope the half that's in me is clean.'
'I had a small operation that left me with some problems down the road but I was lucky to get away with only that.
'People did call me Donna for weeks after.'
While Kerry has faced some truly abhorrent criminals she admits there is one that still plays on her mind and nearly forced her into early retirement in 2013.
THE CASE THAT BROKE ME
'People always say, 'It must be awful talking to psychopathic killers' but it's the cold and callous child sexual abuse that really turned my stomach,' she says.
'It starts to take a toll in a while and you feel as though you're swimming through sewage and it was these cases where I truly struggled to have compassion as a psychologist.
'Around this time I was asked to take part in a documentary about the trial of Mark Bridger, who had murdered April Jones in Mold in Wales which involved me sitting in on the trial.
'That case got to me, it still gets to me, in a way none other had before.
'I think April, for me, represented all of those hundreds of other children who had been abused by the men I had worked with.
'After watching Mark Bridger's performance in court, I had an existential crisis.'
'At that point I felt that I couldn't do my job anymore because I was just really f***ing angry.
Kerry changed direction and began working exclusively with female offenders.
'Of course they had committed terrible crimes as well but it wasn't an endless stream of child abuse,' she says.
'I really enjoyed working with women.'
Kerry also got involved in prevention work, working closely with the Suzy Lampaugh Trust as anti-stalking campaigner, a subject close to her heart after being subjected to a horrific stalking ordeal herself.
'I was asked to go on television as a talking head for a true crime programme and for two years, there was a man stalking me and I wasn't even aware of it,' she says.
'Apparently he'd written to me, something to do with his daughter wanting to go into this field. And I'd written back, as I do.
'Then, for me, just out of the blue, I get a message one day saying that he's set up websites in my name and he wants me to contribute to these websites and perhaps we could do this as a business together.
'I politely declined but he turned nasty very quickly and began posting things on these websites, writing sexual things about me that aren't true and are damaging my career.
Who are the UK's worst serial killers?
THE UK's most prolific serial killer was actually a doctor.
Here's a rundown of the worst offenders in the UK.
British GP Harold Shipman is one of the most prolific serial killers in recorded history. He was found guilty of murdering 15 patients in 2000, but the Shipman Inquiry examined his crimes and identified 218 victims, 80 per cent of whom were elderly women.
After his death Jonathan Balls was accused of poisoning at least 22 people between 1824 and 1845.
Mary Ann Cotton is suspected of murdering up to 21 people, including husbands, lovers and children. She is Britain's most prolific female serial killer. Her crimes were committed between 1852 and 1872, and she was hanged in March 1873.
Amelia Sach and Annie Walters became known as the Finchley Baby Farmers after killing at least 20 babies between 1900 and 1902. The pair became the first women to be hanged at Holloway Prison on February 3, 1903.
William Burke and William Hare killed 16 people and sold their bodies.
Yorkshire Ripper Peter Sutcliffe was found guilty in 1981 of murdering 13 women and attempting to kill seven others between 1975 and 1980.
Dennis Nilsen was caged for life in 1983 after murdering up to 15 men when he picked them up from the streets. He was found guilty of six counts of murder and two counts of attempted murder and was sentenced to life in jail.
Fred West was found guilty of killing 12 but it's believed he was responsible for many more deaths.
'He was commenting on what I was wearing and it was evident that he was following me.'
In one horrifying incident Kerry says that the man tried to run her over and on another occasion she found that her pet cat had been killed and thrown over her fence.
STALKING HELL
'It was ironic that I was working with some of Britain's most dangerous men but it was at home that I felt most unsafe,' she says.
'I've worked with stalkers and I felt that I really understood it but trust me, when you are the victim of a stalker, you get that 360 degree view and I think the impact of it still lives with me today to some extent.'
The man received a 12-month harassment notification in 2016.
Despite her own terrifying experiences and the appalling cases she has dealt with, the psychologist doesn't view her clients as "monsters".
'I hate to hear them being called monsters,' she says.
'By doing that we're not recognising the people in our society who are capable of doing these awful things, we're somehow separating them from us.
'They are part of us, a part of our society and I do believe that our society creates them and so I've always thought of them as human beings, though of course very flawed human beings.'
While Kerry always worked with 'compassion' for her clients she says it never marred her decision making when it came to whether or not to rehabilitate an offender.
'What I am proudest of is the work that I've done that I believe has kept people safe,' she explains.
'If there's one person out there that could have been a potential victim and hasn't been that's why I do my job.
'I've had men write to me saying, 'I would have killed my wife but I didn't because of you' which is very reassuring I suppose!
'The work that I've done has meant that people that have left secure hospitals and gone on and lived safe and meaningful, productive lives is what I am most proud of.'
