Four-times killer dubbed 'Hannibal the Cannibal' set to spend 51st Christmas in glass-caged cell

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A man dubbed the UK’s most dangerous prisoner is preparing to spend his 51st Christmas behind bars.

Quadruple killer Robert Maudsley, now 71, spends his days locked up in a special glass-caged cell which he once described as “like being buried alive in a coffin”.

Maudsley is deemed so dangerous he is kept apart from other inmates at Wakefield Prison.

Born Robert Mawdsley on Merseyside in 1953, he was first sent to Broadmoor secure hospital in 1974 after garrotting John Farrell, who had picked him up for sex.

Maudsley murdered Farrell after he showed him photographs of children he had sexually abused.

The killing was so violent police nicknamed the victim “blue” because of the colour of his face. Maudsley was jailed for life with the recommendation that he should never be released.

For several years, he kept himself out of trouble, but in 1977 Maudsley and fellow prisoner, David Cheeseman, barricaded themselves in a cell with convicted child molester, David Francis. For nine hours, they tortured Francis in the most brutal way.

When the guards finally broke the door down, Francis was dead. Maudsley was then moved to the maximum security Wakefield Prison in Yorkshire, but a year after he killed Francis, his murderous rage returned.

On July 29, 1978, he garrotted and stabbed wife killer, Salney Darwood, in his cell and hid the body under the bed.

Maudsley then stalked the prison wing for his next victim and attacked Bill Roberts, who had been jailed for sexually assaulting a seven-year-old girl. He stabbed Roberts to death before hacking at his skull with a makeshift dagger. When Maudsley was certain Roberts was dead, he calmly walked up to a prison guard and told him there would be two less for dinner that night.

He earned the nickname Hannibal the Cannibal after his killing spree and was deemed too dangerous to remain among the general prison population.

The Mirror reports that Maudsley's purpose-built, super-secure cell has been compared to the one housing Dr Hannibal Lecter in the film The Silence of the Lambs.

Maudsley once wrote: “The prison authorities see me as a problem, and their solution has been to put me into solitary confinement and throw away the key, to bury me alive in a concrete coffin. It does not matter to them whether I am mad or bad. They do not know the answer and they do not care just so long as I am kept out of sight and out of mind.”

The murderer made a failed bid to be moved out of solitary in 2000, and sent letters to The Times newspaper requesting a cyanide suicide pill.

He is said to have a high IQ and to love ­classical music, poetry and art, and those who have visited him inside describe him as gentle, kind and highly intelligent. Former detective Paul Harrison said in 2018 of Maudsley after meeting him: “If you didn’t know him and what he’d done, and you saw him, he’s a really intelligent, clever guy, who made you smile.”

A former prison officer who guarded some of the country’s most notorious criminals for more than a decade has argued that Maudsley should be taken out of his underground cell. Neil Samworth told the Daily Mail: “I think it’s wrong the way he has been treated. He is in total isolation and is not fair. I think his crimes are historic now and he represents no real danger to others. It’s a bit like Charlie Bronson. Yes, he has had lots of fights in the past but he is an old man now.’”

The cell, which reportedly measures 18ft by 15ft - slightly bigger than average - has a concrete slab for a bed. It has large bulletproof windows and a table and chair made of compressed cardboard. The lavatory and sink are also bolted to the floor. Maudsley is passed food through a small slot in the steel door which is encased in thick Perspex.

He is allowed one hour of exercise per day while surrounded by six burly guards and is forbidden from having contact with any other prisoners. In a letter more than two decades ago, he penned: “I am left to stagnate, vegetate and to regress”, adding: “My life in solitary is one long period of unbroken depression.”

The Ministry of Justice insisted there was “no such thing as solitary confinement in our prison system”. A Prison Service spokesman said: “Some offenders will be segregated if they pose a risk to others.

“They are allowed time in the open air every day, visits, phone calls, and access to legal advice and medical care like everyone else.”

Segregation of prisoners is “reviewed regularly”, the spokesman added.

Maudsley’s nephew, Gavin Maudsley, from Liverpool, told Channel 5’s Evil Behind Bars that his uncle had accepted his fate. Gavin said: “He’s asking to be on his own because he knows what can happen. Put him on a wing surrounded by rapists and paedophiles - I know this because he told us - he was going to kill as many paedophiles as he could. I’m not condoning what he did. He did very bad things. But he didn’t kill a child or woman. An innocent person didn’t go to work that day and never return home. The people he killed were really bad people.”

A murderer who spent time in the cell next to Maudsley told the programme: “I felt we were being psychologically murdered. The system’s treatment of Bob was totally dehumanising. To hold someone in an underground cage for over 40 years. It is unforgivable. What Bob did in terms of murdering sex offenders is obviously wrong. But what the system has done to Bob amounts to psychological torture. There are other ways of dealing with prisoners like Bob.”

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