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Crime

18th Nov 2021

UK’s most dangerous prisoner will die underground in a glass box

Kieran Galpin

Maudsley

He has been a prisoner since 1974

A serial killer, who first killed aged just 21, will die in a glass cell built especially for him after he was deemed to be “too dangerous” for other prisoners.

Robert Maudsley – now 68 – worked as a sex worker in his youth and when his client, John Farrell, showed him pictures of children he sexually abused, he inadvertently sealed his fate.

Consequently, Maudsley was jailed for life – but that didn’t stop him from killing another three people. His first kill behind bars happened at Broadmoor hospital after he jammed a spoon into his victim’s ear, wedging it into his brain.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1w5ihkZh3Q

Maudsley was then moved to Wakefield maximum-security prison, where he killed two more people in 1978.

With Maudsley killing people behind bars, it was decided that a special cell would be built for him.

The cell was built in 1983, measuring a measly 5.5m by 4.5m and contained within bulletproof windows. For this reason, he was nicknamed ‘Hannibal the Cannibal’ in reference to The Silence of the Lambs villain Hannibal Lecter, who was kept in a similar cell in the 1991 movie.

It is believed that the cell contains a bed, a table and a chair made of compressed cardboard. His toilet and sink are firmly bolted to the floor, reports suggest.

Maudsley, who is now the longest-serving prisoner in the UK, wrote in 2003: “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.”

He continued: “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.

Maudsley

“I am left to stagnate, vegetate and to regress; left to confront my solitary head-on with people who have eyes but don’t see and who have ears but don’t hear, who have mouths but don’t speak. My life in solitary is one long period of unbroken depression.”

Maudsley will never be released and will die in his 5.5m by 4.5m glass cell.

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