It wasn’t the most conventional relationship.
My daughter Corena, 19, had just started dating an old family friend, Dennis Chambers, 54.
Of course, the age gap concerned me. But I also worried about the timing… Corena was fresh out of a marriage that had only lasted six months.
I knew she was feeling vulnerable and I worried Dennis was taking advantage of that.
But a month later, Dennis invited Corena to his place for the weekend and asked if I’d like to join them.
It completely changed my mind. Dennis was a kind and funny guy, full of entertaining stories about life on the road as an army driver.
There was no denying the spark between him and my daughter. So I decided to live and let live.
Things moved quickly. They moved in together a month later and eleven months after that, in July 2015, they married.
My daughter Corena was only 19 when she started dating family friend Dennis Chambers, 54
At first they seemed happy, but later on, during some of my visits, I started seeing the cracks in their relationship.
Dennis was always away on the road and Corena told me she often felt lonely. ‘Even when he is here, he wants to eat then watch TV on his own,’ she complained.
One night, he’d promised to take her to dinner and a movie, but changed his mind after she’d spent hours getting ready.
‘It happens all the time,’ she told me.
He’s too stuck in his ways to be married to a younger woman, I thought.
I wasn’t surprised when, after about three years, Corena confided she was thinking of leaving Dennis.
‘We want different things, mum,’ she said.
But then, months later, in March 2019, she said she was pregnant.
I was so excited – I was going to be a grandmother!
I was so excited when baby Emmy was born, she was my first grandchild
Corena pictured with baby Emmy
But after a moment of silence, Corena dropped a bombshell.
Dennis wasn’t the father of the baby. Instead, feeling stuck in an empty marriage, Corena had been sleeping with a male friend and fallen pregnant.
I advised her not to tell Dennis straight away. I wanted her to check all was well with the baby and for her pregnancy to progress with minimum stress.
She agreed. Before we knew it, she’d given birth to her daughter Emmy in January 2020.
I fell instantly in love. She was my first grandchild and absolutely beautiful.
Dennis still didn’t know Emmy wasn’t his. He changed nappies and soothed her, but the novelty soon wore off and he carried on as before.
One morning, a month later, Corena’s brother Johnny was staying with us.
Dennis was out and Johnny and I realised we hadn’t heard a peep from Corena’s bedroom all morning so we knocked on the door. There was no answer. It was locked.
Not a peep from Corena or Emmy. I checked and Corena’s car was still in the drive.
My blood ran cold. ‘I’m calling the police,’ I said.
They came straight away and forced the door open. What I saw in that room still haunts me to this day.
Corena was on the floor, covered in blood, her face horribly disfigured. Where was Emmy?
Next thing I knew, an police officer was pushing me back. ‘This is a crime scene, you need to leave,’ they said.
I could see the horror in the officer’s eyes. ‘I need to know what’s happened!’ I cried. ‘And where is my granddaughter?’
No one would answer me.
‘I know Dennis is behind this!’ I cried.
I’ll never forgive Dennis for his unfathomably evil act
As I stood outside the house with Johnny, paramedics arrived and wheeled Corena out on a stretcher.
Then a hearse arrived.
‘Oh, God, no,’ I screamed as my knees buckled.
I knew what it meant. Emmy was gone.
I hardly had time to take it in as we were rushed to the hospital where Corena was having emergency brain surgery.
‘You need to prepare yourself,’ a nurse said, taking us into her room.
I didn’t recognise my own daughter.
Her skull was badly fractured, and her head was swollen and swathed in bandages.
She had suffered a stroke and was in a critical condition.
The next day police arrested Dennis, who was hiding out in a national park.
When officers questioned him about the attack, he snarled, ‘They got what they deserved.’
Police said someone had told him about Corena’s affair and that Emmy wasn’t his.
We never found out who.
Dennis admitted he’d smashed in Corena’s skull with a hammer, then suffocated Emmy on the bed with a burping cloth.
He said he’d had to hold the cloth there for several minutes before she stopped breathing.
It was unfathomably evil.
Corena was still in a coma three weeks later when we had little Emmy’s funeral. We laid her to rest in a little white coffin in a plot next to my parents.
‘They’ll look after her,’ I wept to Johnny.
Not long after, Corena came out of her coma. The first thing she did was squeeze my hand and point to her stomach.
I could see she was wondering where her baby was.
‘Dennis attacked you both. Emmy didn’t make it,’ I choked.
Her eyes widened in shock, and she shook her head, moaning. She became so distressed she had to be sedated.
Corena spent months in hospital and rehab. Despite her doctor’s’ doubts, she learned to walk again. Her speech was halting and slurred, but I could understand her.
Then, in February 2021, Dennis admitted to everything.
In July, a year after the attack, he appeared in court for his plea and sentencing.
Corena was living in a nursing home by then and in no state to travel. Busy visiting and caring for her, I couldn’t go either.
We heard that Dennis was jailed for life for baby Emmy’s murder with 40 years on top for the aggravated malicious wounding of Corena.
Police officers told us Dennis had apologised in court, saying: ‘I’m sorry for what I’ve done. If I could change it, I would.’
As the judge handed down his sentence, the court was told: ‘There is no other word for this but evil. You snuffed out baby’s life, then destroyed your wife’s face and future, and then calmly fled in your car.’
It also emerged Dennis, then 61, had terminal cancer and he died a few months later.
The coward never got to rot in prison like he deserved.
After that, all we could do was try to pick up the pieces of our lives as best we could.
Corena lives with me now. She’ll need life-long care and still can’t walk. She has to wear nappies.
No punishment on Earth will ever be enough for what Dennis did.
