Disgraced BBC Radio 1 DJ Chris Denning has died in prison.
The convicted paedophile died in a prison hospital last year at the age of 81 – but his death has only now been made public, following a watchdog report into his care while imprisoned.
Denning was serving two 13-year sentences after being convicted of sex offences against boys, some as young as nine years old.
He died from a bone infection caused by diabetes, being held at HMP Bedford at the time of his death at Bedford Hospital last June.
Denning had been in prison since 2014 after being convicted of 40 offences against 24 boys aged between nine and 16 following Operation Yewtree to expose paedophiles after the death of Jimmy Savile.
The court heard at the time he had taken some victims to Top of the Pops recordings and introduced them to Savile, abusing one boy at Savile’s home.
Judge Alistair McCreath called Denning ‘utterly depraved’ at sentencing, giving him 13 years.
In 2016 he admitted abusing another 11 boys as young as eight years old and was sentenced to another 13 years.
He was diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease in 2021, as well as diabetes, a heart abnormality, high blood pressure, glaucoma and bed sores, and decided in January 2022 he did not wish to be resuscitated if his heart stopped.
A report into his death, made public over a year after the fact, found he received worse care in custody than he would have if he was a free man, a clinical reviewer for the Prisons and Probation Ombudsman found.
It reportedly found that ‘when clinical readings first showed that Mr Denning needed emergency care, he was not transferred to hospital for treatment.’
The Prisons and Probation Ombudsman published a report declaring it found ‘issues of concern in Mr Denning’s end-of-life care.’
The formerly popular DJ was exposed as a sex offender in the 1970s, first being convicted of gross indecency in 1974 before being prosecuted for publishing indecent articles in 1996.
Despite this, in 1997 he was invited to participate in a 30-year anniversary reunion for BBC Radio 1 alongside the likes of Terry Wogan – and it was later revealed he was a convicted sex offender in Europe before ever finding fame in the UK, having been prosecuted in 1959 in Germany for circulating pornographic images.
He later relocated to Prague, where he was accused of running a paedophile ring and photographed himself abusing boys; he was convicted of abusing boys under 15 and jailed.
He went on the run following his prison sentence in Prague, but was tracked down in Austria and deported to England, where he admitted at Kingston Crown Court to five charges of abusing boys under 16 and jailed for a further four years.
He was then extradited to Slovakia, where he lived briefly following his Prague prison sentence, and sentenced to a further five years for producing indecent images of children.
It was found that in the UK he had used his fame to get close to young boys, as well as opening gaming shops to lure boys in to be abused.
Denning was one of the founding DJs on BBC Radio One, moving on to BBC Two and then record labels where he helped launched the career of paedophile Gary Glitter.
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