A killer who mutilated his aunt in a frenzied knife attack in the Westcountry has been arrested in Australia after 15 years on the run.
Simon Hennessey was jailed for life for stabbing the woman to death when he was just 14. But he walked out of an open prison in 1998. He has now been caught in Queensland by police investigating a huge credit card fraud, 15 years after his escape. Hennessey, now in his late-40s, faces extradition back to Britain.
He stabbed 72-year-old Mary Webber 70 times at her home in Alma Road, Plymouth, in 1978. Hennessey admitted killing his aunt, pleading mental illness.
He escaped twice before being sent to an open prison, HMP Leyhill in Gloucestershire. He was finally re-arrested on the Sunshine Coast of Australia, by detectives investigating a series of credit card frauds.
He gave a false name and said he was 44, and appeared in court locally several times during April and May this year, facing 50 charges of fraud.
It is alleged Hennessey had set up false companies to extract credit card details, and then used a "skimming machine" to withdraw tens of thousands of dollars from bank accounts.
Australian police soon realised that the name and details the British man in their cells had given them belonged to an innocent New Zealander with the same date of birth. They were then stunned to discover the man they had in custody was wanted 10,000 miles away in the UK. More investigations revealed that Hennessey had been living from the proceeds of frauds under false identities for years. The Australian media dubbed him a "Frank Abagnale character" – after the fraudster who was portrayed by Leonardo di Caprio, in the film Catch Me If You Can.
Sunshine Coast prosecuting chief Daren Edwards told The Courier-Mail in Queensland: "It appears he has used several identities. We believe he has moved between Thailand, New Zealand and Australia."
Avon and Somerset Police are now in touch with the authorities in Queensland about extradition.
Killer was trapped by fingerprints on a toilet chain
Simon Hennessey, who has been found in Australia after escaping from prison in the UK while serving a sentence for the murder of his aunt was originally arrested after the killing in 1978 following an operation involving 100 officers, a major manhunt and 3,000 police interviews. Hennessey, from Plymstock, was originally trapped by fingerprints left on a toilet chain. in his aunt's house moments before he stabbed her in the head, face and torso as she sat writing a letter in an apparently motiveless attack. Hennessey then washed his sheath knife in her sink, put it in his bicycle saddlebag and hid it in a cupboard when he got home. A court heard he suffered from epilepsy which caused a brain disease resulting in an 'abnormality of the mind'. Hennessey pleaded guilty to manslaughter but could not give any reasons for his actions. He was sentenced to life in prison but absconded from a youth treatment centre in Birmingham three years later, in 1981. Hennessey was recaptured six months later while staging a robbery in Brighton with an imitation pistol. He later escaped from his escort while visiting Plymouth Library and fled to Exeter. Hennessey spent time at Dartmoor and Channings Wood prisons in Devon. He walked out of Leyhill prison in 1998 with a Spanish guitar, having just completed Spanish language lessons, and much of the fruitless search for him concentrated in Europe. A couple who lived around the corner from the scene of the horrific killing today spoke of their shock 35 years later. Malcolm Carroll, then head of news for radio station Plymouth Sound, interviewed Simon Hennessey's parents after their son admitted his guilt. Both Malcolm and wife Su were interviewed by police at their home in Earl's Acre, where they still live. Malcolm said: "It was one of the most shocking killings Plymouth has seen since the war. A 14-year-old boy killing his aunt with such ferocity. I find it breath-taking. "I spoke to the parents and they were a normal, middle-class family. He came from a nice home, they were ordinary parents. "His mother was crying. The one thing they desperately wanted to get across was that their son had this mental illness. "They did not want anyone to see him as a little monster." Su, features editor at The Herald and Western Morning News, said: "It is just awful. As soon as we heard the name we instantly remembered because it was such an unusual and terrible crime. "It was a really ferocious attack and an extensive police operation. This wasn't some quiet cul-de-sac, you would hope someone would have noticed something."
