Britain's most dangerous killer will die in locked underground glass box alone

Notorious serial killer Robert Maudsley spends 23 hours of the day inside a bulletproof cell in Wakefield Prison after killing four people - including three whilst behind bars

Britain's most dangerous serial killer has spent more than 16,500 consecutive days in isolation for his horrific crimes, and will remain isolated in an underground cell until he dies.

Robert Maudsley - dubbed Hannibal the Cannibal - has been in jail since the age of 21, after he was found guilty of murdering convicted child molester John Farrell, aged 30, in 1974.

Earlier this year, the twisted triple murderer set a new world record for the most days spent in solitary confinement, and last month, he turned 70 behind bars.

The specially-built cell, where he is kept at Wakefield Prison, is said to be 18ft by 15ft - which is slightly bigger than average - and has a concrete slab for a bed.

Maudsley is now deemed to be so dangerous that he is no longer allowed to associate with other prisoners or even guards, and spends all of his time alone, entombed in a glass box deep in the bowels of the prison. He will never again be a free man and instead remains in the tiny see-through room that has been his home for decades.

The cell has large bulletproof windows and a table and chair made of compressed cardboard. The lavatory and sink are also bolted to the floor. A steel door opens into a small cage within the cell, encased in thick Perspex, with a small slot at the bottom through which he is passed food.

It is said to bear an uncanny likeness to the cell of cannibal killer Hannibal Lecter, played by Anthony Hopkins in the 1991 film Silence of the Lambs. Maudsley got his 'Han­­nibal the Cannibal' name amid claims he dug a spoon into the brain of one of his victims, an allegation he always denied.

Jailed 48 years ago in 1974, he is believed to be Britain's longest serving prisoner after Moors murderer Ian Brady, who died in 2017 after serving 51 years. But even a life behind bars hasn't stopped the violent killer from lashing out, and he has murdered another three men since he has been locked up.

The serial killer was one of 12 children and was taken into care when he was still a baby. He spent his early years living at Nazareth House, a Catholic orphanage in Merseyside. When he was eight, his parents came to take him and his siblings home, and he was subjected to years of violent abuse.

As soon as he was 16, Maudsley fled home but soon became trapped in a spiral of drug abuse and funded his habit by working as a rent boy. One of his clients, John Farrell, was the first man he murdered in 1974. Maudsley garrotted him after he showed him photographs of children he had sexually abused.

The murder 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 and sent to Broadmoor Hospital, which housed some of the country's most dangerous prisoners.

For several years, Maudsley kept himself out of trouble, but in 1977 he 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 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 his 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.

Now deemed too dangerous to remain among the general prison population, work began on constructing a special glass caged cell for Maudsley in the bowels of Wakefield Prison. By 1983, it was ready.

The triple killer once described his cell as "like being buried alive in a coffin", and in the early days of his confinement, he wrote to newspapers campaigning for better treatment. In 2000, he went to court in a bid to be "allowed to die". In a letter, he asked why he couldn't have a pet budgie, promising to love it and "not eat it".

And questioning why he couldn't have a TV to "see the world", he ended the letter saying: "If the prison service says no then I ask for a simple cyanide capsule which I shall willingly take and the problem of Robert John Mawdsley can easily and swiftly be resolved."

His 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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