'Brutal' killer Damien Bendall joins a string of some of the country's most dangerous offenders who are expected to die behind bars, including disgraced police officer Wayne Couzens and necrophiliac David Fuller.
Bendall, 32, dubbed the "sleepover killer", pleaded guilty on Wednesday to murdering his 35-year-old partner Terri Harris, her 11-year-old daughter Lacey Bennett, her son John Paul Bennett, 13, and Lacey's friend Connie Gent, also 11, at the home he shared with Ms Harris.
He also admitted raping Lacey at the house in Killamarsh, near Sheffield, in 2021, during what prosecutor Louis Mably KC told Derby Crown Court were "brutal, vicious and cruel attacks on a defenceless woman" and young children.
Justice Nigel Sweeney had no hesitation in handing him the rare punishment, which means he will never be released.
Whole-life orders are the most severe punishment available in the UK criminal justice system for those who commit the most serious crimes.
More than 60 criminals are serving whole-life orders - these are the killers who will never walk the streets of Britain again...
Ali Harbi Ali
Ali Harbi Ali, 26, is a terrorist who stabbed MP Sir David Amess to death at a constituency surgery in October last year.
The Islamic State fanatic, from Kentish Town in north London, was convicted of murdering and preparing terrorist acts by a jury at the Old Bailey.
He will never be considered for release - unless there are exceptional compassionate grounds to warrant it.
Anthony Russell
Anthony Russell was handed a whole-life prison sentence in March for the brutal murders of a mother and son and a pregnant woman.
He pleaded guilty to the murders and was also unanimously convicted of raping pregnant Nicole McGregor, 31, before killing her.
The triple killer assaulted Ms McGregor hours after she had shown him a picture of her baby scan.
He also told her partner "I bet you can’t wait for it to be born", in the hours after she disappeared, knowing he had raped and killed her, a court heard.
Ruling that Russell was exceptionally dangerous and manipulative, the judge at his sentencing hearing said: "You are a man prepared to use very significant violence on anyone.
"You are exceptionally dangerous to those who know you, and those who do not. This is one of those cases deserving of a whole-life order."
David Fuller
Double murderer David Fuller was sentenced to life after it emerged he had sexually abused more than 100 dead women and girls in hospital mortuaries.
In 1987, the 67-year-old beat and strangled Wendy Knell, 25, and Caroline Pierce, 20, to death before sexually assaulting them in two separate attacks in Tunbridge Wells, Kent.
Fuller was arrested for what has been dubbed the “Bedsit Murders” on December 3 in 2020 following new analysis of decades-old DNA evidence, which linked him to the killings.
But when officers searched his three-bedroom semi-detached home in East Sussex, where he lived with his family, they uncovered shocking images of him attacking corpses.
Over 12 years before his arrest in December 2020, he had filmed himself abusing at least 102 corpses, including a nine-year-old girl, two 16-year-olds, and a 100-year-old woman.
Fuller was handed a whole life sentence for the murders with a concurrent 12-year term for his other crimes.
Wayne Couzens
Wayne Couzens was given a whole-life prison order in September last year for killing 33-year-old Sarah Everard.
Couzens' life tariff is the first to have been imposed for a single murder of an adult not committed in the course of a terror attack.
The Old Bailey heard how Couzens used his Metropolitan Police-issue warrant card and handcuffs to snatch Ms Everard as she walked home from a friend’s house in Clapham, south London, on the evening of March 3 in 2021.
The firearms officer, who had clocked off from a 12-hour shift at the American embassy that morning, drove to a secluded rural area near Dover in Kent, where he parked up and raped Ms Everard.
By 2.30am the following morning, she had been strangled to death with Couzens' police issue belt.
Couzens burned her body in a refrigerator in an area of woodland he owned before dumping the remains in a nearby pond.
He was arrested at his home in Deal, Kent, after police connected him to a hire car he used to abduct Ms Everard.
Lord Justice Fulford said the seriousness of the case was so “exceptionally high” that it warranted a whole life order.
Khairi Saadallah
Khairi Saadallah murdered three men in a park in a brutal knife attack in 2020.
The 26-year-old shouted “Allahu akhbar” as he fatally stabbed friends James Furlong, 36, Dr David Wails, 49, and Joseph Ritchie-Bennett, 39.
Three other people – Stephen Young, 51, Patrick Edwards, 29, and Nishit Nisudan, 34 – were also injured.
Saadallah pleaded guilty to three murders and three attempted murders.
Mr Justice Sweeney sentenced him at the Old Bailey to a whole-life order, saying it was a “rare and exceptional” case.
Mark Fellows
Mark Fellows, known as 'the Iceman', was responsible for the murders of criminals John Kinsella and Paul Massey.
Judge Mr Justice William Davis sentenced him to life without parole, describing him as a contract killer and a “gun for hire” - prepared to kill anyone for money who deserved to spend the rest of his days behind bars.
He was later handed another life sentence after a jury found him guilty of conspiracy to cause grievous bodily harm with intent for his involvement in a brutal knife attack on Aaron Williams.
In June 2019, three of the country’s most senior judges rejected an appeal that his whole-life sentence was excessive. Dismissing the appeal, a judge told Fellows the trial judge was correct in deciding he should never be released.
John Taylor
Child killer Taylor was serving a minimum of 30 years for the murder of schoolgirl Leanne Tiernan in 2000.
He is thought to have stored her body in a freezer for nine months before dumping it in woodland.
He was subsequently linked to several historic sex attacks and admitted to a string of sickening sex attacks in Leeds during the 1970s, 80s and 90s.
He was handed a whole-life sentence in 2018.
William McFall
McFall and Stephen Unwin killed mum Quyen Ngoc Nguyen for sex and money during a terrifying ordeal.
The murderers lured the 28-year-old to a trap and subjected her to a prolonged attack in which she was sexually abused, held captive and stolen from.
He was sentenced to a whole-life order in April 2018.
Stephen Unwin
Unwin was sentenced to a whole-life order alongside McFall.
Alan Maidment
Maidment was sentenced to a whole-life term for murdering a dad-of-one nine months after being released from prison.
He stabbed the man 32 times before his body was set on fire in March 2017.
John Wass
Wass was found guilty of 17 counts of historical child abuse in 2017.
He received a whole-life tariff for the offences against three different victims, dating back to the 1960s.
The charges against Wass included rape, sexual assault and sexual exposure.
Billy White
White murdered his girlfriend in 2015 and later murdered a fellow prisoner at HMP Long Martin.
His sentence was increased to a whole-life order on 25 September 2017 at Worcester Crown Court
Leroy Campbell
Campbell – who had been assessed as having "lifelong risk factors” – was released from prison four months before raping and killing Lisa Skidmore, 37 in November 2016.
He had previously been jailed for attacking three other women.
He was handed a whole-life sentence after pleading guilty to murder, attempted murder, rape and arson with intent.
Stephen Port
Serial killer Port was given a whole-life sentence in 2016 after he drugged, raped and killed four gay men in east London he had met on the gay dating app Grindr.
He was also convicted of raping four others.
Thomas Mair
White supremacist Mair was convicted of murdering Labour MP Jo Cox in June 2016.
The MP for Batley and Spen was on her way to meet constituents at a routine surgery when she was repeatedly shot and stabbed in Birstall, West Yorkshire.
When sentencing the judge said he had no doubt Mair murdered Cox to advance a political, racial, and ideological cause - that of violent white supremacism and exclusive nationalism.
Arthur Simpson-Kent
Arthur Simpson-Kent brutally killed former EastEnders actress Sian Blake, 43, and their kids, Zachary, eight, and Amon, four, after finding out she planned to leave him.
On October 5 2016, he was given a whole-life sentence after he pleaded guilty to the murders.
Christopher Halliwell
Halliwell is serving a whole-life sentence for murdering Sian O’Callaghan, 22, in March 2011.
He was later convicted of murdering Becky Godden-Edwards who had been missing since 2003.
Following Halliwell’s sentence, police said there was a “distinct possibility” he was a serial killer, highlighting the eight-year gap between the two murders.
Anthony Ayres
Ayres was on licence for murdering his girlfriend in 1993 when he murdered a mum-of-one at a friend's flat in Essex.
He was handed a whole-life sentence in 2016.
Russell Oliver
Oliver was serving life for beating a man to death in 2013 when he killed a fellow prisoner at GMP Long Lartin.
He killed murderer John York at the prison in May 2015 and was given a whole-life sentence the following year.
Ian Birley
Birley stabbed businessman John Gogarty 69 times in his own home so he and his girlfriend could pay off a £500 drug debt.
He was given a whole-life tariff while his girlfriend Helen Nichols was told she will serve at least 20 years.
Birley was on licence when he killed the 65-year-old property developer, having served 18 years of a life term for another murder.
He had been out of prison for just 18 months when he struck again in 2015.
Jason Gomez
Convicts Gomez and Paul Wadkin lured Darren Flynn into a jail cell before stabbing him at least 190 times with two makeshift weapons.
Gomez, who was serving life for murder at the time of the killing, was given a whole-life sentence in 2015 while Wadkin was jailed for a minimum of 30 years.
David Mitchell
Mitchell murdered Robert Hind while on licence from an earlier life sentence for killing his then girlfriend.
He was sentenced to life in 2015.
Ryan Matthews
In 2015, Matthews was given a whole-life order after stabbing a healthcare assistant to death at a psychiatric hospital the year before.
Paul O'Hara
O’Hara was sentenced to a whole-life term on June 30, 2014, after admitting to murdering his girlfriend Cherylee Shennan.
He had been previously sentenced to life in 1998 for murdering girlfriend Janine Waterworth in "very similar circumstances" and had only been released on licence in 2013.
Joanne Dennehy
Dennehy, 33, is serving a whole-life sentence for the killing of three men in the space of 10 days in 2014.
Michael Adebolajo
Fusilier Lee Rigby was brutally murdered on the streets of Woolwich, south-east London, in May 2013.
Muslim converts Michael Adebowale and Michael Adebolajo ran over the 25-year-old soldier close to Woolwich Barracks before stabbing him to death in broad daylight.
Adebolajo was sentenced to a whole life term, while Adebowale received a 45-year minimum term.
Ian McLoughlin
Knifeman McLoughlin slashed Graham Buck’s throat when the brave dad-of-three caught him robbing an elderly neighbour in July 2013.
The triple killer murdered the good Samaritan while on his first day out of prison for a previous murder conviction.
McLoughlin was first jailed for 10 years for manslaughter after he hit Len Delgatty, 49, over the head with a hammer in 1984.
He later murdered barman Peter Halls, 55, and was jailed for life, with a minimum of 25 years, in 1992.
Anwar Rosser
Former soldier Rosser was given a whole-life tariff for the "savage and gratuitous" murder of Riley Turner, 4, in January 2013.
Riley's mother, Sharon Smith, and stepfather, Guy Earwaker, had let Rosser stay in their home in Keighley, West Yorkshire, for the night on January 20 last year "out of compassion".
They had agreed to let him stay on the sofa after arriving drunk following a night out.
But at around 4am, he crept upstairs armed with four knives and carried out the horrific attack.
Jamie Reynolds
Porn-obsessed Jamie Reynolds hanged 17-year-old Georgia Williams before filming himself carrying out sexual acts on her lifeless body in May 2013.
He dumped her body and went on the run but was caught by police.
Reynolds had previously tried to strangle a girl but had only been given a police warning.
Gary Smith
Smith was serving a life sentence for a 1998 murder when he and accomplice Lee Newell murdered a convicted child killer in his cell at HMP Long Lartin in 2013.
He received a whole-life sentence on 23 September 2013.
Lee Newell
Newell was convicted alongside Smith and received a whole-life sentence on the same date.
Dale Cregan
Cregan was jailed for life in 2013 for slaying policewomen Nicola Hughes, 23, and Fiona Bone, 32, while on the run for two other murders.
Cregan was arrested by police when he walked into a police station around an hour after Hughes and Bone were killed. He also pleaded guilty to the murders of Mark Short and David Short in 2012, as part of a gangland feud in Manchester.
He was handed a whole life tariff for the four murders in June 2013.
Mark Bridger
Five-year-old April Jones was abducted and killed on October 1 2012 by paedophile Mark Bridger, who was jailed for life the following year.
She had been playing on her bike outside her home on the Bryn-y-Gog estate in Machynlleth when she was snatched by the killer.
Her body has never been found.
Stephen Farrow
Farrow murdered 77-year-old Betty Yates and Reverend John Suddards, 59.
He was convicted in 2012 and given a whole-life sentence.
David Cook
Double murderer David Cook killed a Sunday school teacher from Reading during the 1980s.
Cook strangled 37-year-old Beryl Maynard with a dressing gown cord in her home in Earley in 1988. He was jailed for life for the attack, but was released in 2009 after serving 21 years in prison.
The release came after Cook absconded after being given a temporary release in 2006. Three years later, while living in North Wales, he beat his neighbour Leonard Hill, 64, unconscious and then strangled him to steal petty cash.
He was given a whole life sentence for the attack and told he would die in prison, which he did in 2020 after contracting Covid. Andrew Dawson - 'The Angel of Mercy Killer'
Out on licence for a previous murder in the 80s when he struck again.
He was convicted of murdering two men in 2011.
David Baxendale
Baxendale served seven years in Spain for murder before being deported back to Britain.
In March 2011 he was convicted of repeatedly stabbing a woman in Nutfield, Surrey.
John Cooper - 'The Bullseye Killer'
Cooper was given four life sentences in 2011 for the 1985 double murder of brother and sister Richard and Helen Thomas, and the 1989 double murder of Peter and Gwenda Dixon.
George Norman Johnson
He killed Florence Habesch in 2011 to fund his drug addiction.
Johnson had already served 20 years of a life sentence for murdering a man in 1986.
John Sweeney - 'Canal Killer'
Convicted in 2011 of murdering two women whose bodies were found mutilated and dumped in canals in London and the Netherlands.
Stephen Griffiths - the 'Crossbow Cannibal'
Griffiths was convicted of murdering three women in Bradford. One of the killings involved the use of a crossbow.
He dismembered his victims and dumped their remains. He also claims to have cannibalised them but it's never been proven.
Sentenced to a life term in 2010.
Wilbert Dyce
In 2010, he was convicted for killing a woman and her two daughters in 1982.
Desmond Lee
Lee served 14 years of a life sentence for murdering his landlady in 1990.
In 2010, he was convicted of murdering his lover Christopher Pratt by breaking his voice box and a bone in his neck in his flat in Ravensthorpe.
John Maden
Maden drugged, raped and killed his 12-year-old niece at his Manchester home after luring her there on the pretext of babysitting.
He was handed a full life term in 2010.
Anthony Hardy - 'Camden Ripper'
Hardy was convicted of killing three women in 2010.
Police believe he may have been responsible for up to six more murders.
Marc Chivers
Chivers had previously served 15 years in Germany for murdering his ex-girlfriend.
Deported back to the UK in 2008 where he strangled another ex-girlfriend to death with a dog lead.
He was given full life term in 2008.
Simon Wilson
Weeks after being deported to Britain from Australia, where he spent 16 years in jail for murder, serial rapist Wilson attacked a 71-year-old woman.
He had slashed his victim across the face before his vile abuse.
The British-born criminal was given a whole-life sentence in 2008.
Douglas Vinter
A convicted killer who murdered his wife after being released on license.
Given a whole-life term in 2008.
Steve Wright - 'Suffolk Strangler'
Wright was jailed for life in 2008 after being found guilty of murdering five prostitutes in the Ipswich area in December 2006.
Michael Smith
Smith murdered Peter Summers, 35, in an attack with a bottle in Stoke-on-Trent in 2006.
He had served 30 years in prison for murdering his teenage girlfriend and killed again just two months after he was released.
Peter Tobin
Scottish serial killer Tobin killed at least three women between 1991 and 2006. Two of their bodies were found in his back garden.
He was 60 when sentenced and died in prison in October 2022, with his ashes spread at sea after no family members claimed his body.
David Tiley
David Tiley is a double rapist who stabbed to death his disabled fiance Susan Hale on release.
He then killed her carer at their home in Southampton.
Tiley was given a life sentence in 2007.
Andrew Randall
Randall murdered his seven-week-old daughter Jessica by throwing her head-first into a couch at their home in Kettering, Northamptonshire.
He was sentenced to a full life tariff in 2007.
Rahan Arshad
Taxi driver Arshad murdered his wife and three children at their home in Stockport, Greater Manchester.
He was given a life term in 2006.
Stephen McColl
Gang leader McColl murdered two members of his gang and was given a life term in 2006 as a result.
John McGrady
McGrady is a convicted rapist who strangled and mutilated a 15-year-old neighbour in South London.
He dumped her dismembered remains in bin bags.
He was given a full life term in 2006.
Viktor Dembovskis
Latvian immigrant Dembovskis raped and murdered his 17-year-old neighbour as she walked home from school in West London.
He fled to Latvia but was extradited and given a full life term in 2006.
William Horncy
In 2005, Horncy murdered millionaire Amarjit Chohan, his wife, mother-in-law and two sons in an effort to take over his freight business.
He was jailed for life in 2005.
Kenneth Regan
Regan was given a full life term alongside Horncy for his part in the same murders.
Mark Hobson
In July 2004, Hobson murdered his girlfriend at their home before luring her twin sister there and killing her too.
He fled and then killed an elderly couple a few miles away before going on the run.
Hobson was given a life tariff in 2005.
Levi Bellfield
Bellfield murdered three young women in London and Surrey between February 2003 and August 2004.
He has also been linked to a number of unsolved murders and attacks on women.
Bellfield is the only prisoner to have been sentenced to two separate whole-life orders for two different crimes.
Mark Martin - 'Sneinton Strangler'
Between December 2004 and January 2005, Martin killed three homeless women in Nottingham.
He was sentenced to a whole-life term in 2008.
Thomas McDowell
McDowell strangled and cut up trainee rabbi Andreas Hinz with a rip saw.
He then dumped his head, limbs and torso in bin bags in Camden, North London.
Given a full-life term in 2004.
Phillip Heggarty
Heggarty murdered his friend Derk Bennett in a hammer attack in 2003.
The High Court ruled his life sentence must mean life.
Ernest Wright
Convicted of murder in 1971 and served 26 years in prison. He was released in 1999 and shot a man dead execution-style in 2000. He died of heart failure and pneumonia in prison in 2020.
Paul Glen
Glen served 13 years for killing a hotelier in 1989. He was released on parole in 2002 and killed again just two years later.
He was handed a whole-life sentence by a judge in 2004.
Peter Moore - 'The Man in Black'
Moore killed four men in sexually motivated attacks in Wales and was jailed for life in 1996.
Rosemary West
In 1995, West was convicted of the murder of 10 women and girls in her home in Gloucester.
The victims included one of her daughters and a step-daughter.
Her husband Fred West killed himself in jail before he could be tried for 12 murders.
She is one of just two women serving a whole-life tariff.
Malcolm Green
In 1971, Green was jailed for life for the brutal murder of a Cardiff prostitute.
He was released in 1989 and shortly afterwards bludgeoned a tourist from New Zealand to death.
Given a whole-life tariff by the Home Secretary.
Mark Robinson
Robinson murdered two of his girlfriends in 1989. He was sentenced to life in prison and later handed a whole-life tariff.
Anthony Arkwright
In 1989, Arkwright went on a two-day killing spree where he hacked and battered three people to death, including his elderly grandfather.
He was the youngest offender to be issued with a whole-life tariff at the age of 21.
John Duffy - 'Railway killer'
Duffy attacked numerous women and raped and murdered at least three of them in the south of England in the 80s.
He later gave evidence against his accomplice David Mulcahy, who was then jailed for life for three murders and seven rapes.
Victor Miller
Miller abducted, sexually assaulted and battered a 14-year-old boy to death in Worcestershire in 1988.
Police believe he was responsible for 30 unsolved sexual assaults.
He has asked to die in prison.
Jeremy Bamber
Bamber shot dead his adoptive parents, sister and six-year-old twin nephews at the family farmhouse in Essex.
He was convicted in 1986 and given a whole-life tariff by the Home Secretary.
Arthur Hutchinson
Hutchinson crashed a wedding reception in 1983 and murdered the bride's father, mother and brother, before raping her sister at knifepoint.
He was issued with a whole-life tariff by the Home Secretary, Leon Brittan.
John Childs
Childs was convicted of carrying out six contract killings, including a 10-year-old boy.
He was jailed for life in 1979.
Robert John Maudsley - 'Hannibal the Cannibal'
Maudsley was dubbed 'Hannibal The Cannibal' and 'Jaws' for his crimes even though there is no evidence he ate anyone.
He has spent a record time in solitary confinement for the murders of four people - three of which took place in prison.
He was alleged to have eaten part of the brain of one three men he killed in jail, earning him his grim nickname.
He was jailed for life in 1977 and became Britain's longest serving prisoner following Ian Brady's death in 2017.
