Once named as one the most dangerous men in the country Robert Maudsley nicknamed “Hannibal the Cannibal” has spent 17,000 consecutive in solitary confinement in his prison cell -complete with TV’s and a Playstation. Found guilty of murdering four people Maudsley was given the nickname after it was reported he ate one of the brains of his victims – something that was later found to be untrue. He first got sent to Broadmoor when he murdered John Farell, a child abuser in 1974. While in prison he would murder three more inmates, all people convicted of sexual offences.
In 1983 the scouser was moved to HMP Wakefield where he was put in a solitary “glass cell” which measured 18ft by 14ft. where he would be locked in for 23 hours a day. His cell was fitted out with bulletproof glass, a toilet, a sink bolted to the flood and a chair made only of compressed cardboard, something that Maudsley described as a “concrete coffin”.
He would spend four more decades being locked away in the West Yorkshire prison that was known as “monster mansion” due it housing a large number of the UK’s most prolific and high risk prisoners.
Shortly before his transfer, it was reported that Madusley went on hunger strike after his playstation, books, and speaker was taken away from him.
After years of pleading with the prison to be moved in March of this year when he was transferred 125 miles south to HMP Whitemoor in Cambridgeshire, another Category A jail which is dubbed as “Britain’s Alcatraz” with many of the most notorious being transferred there since its opening in 1991.
Now 72 years old and off solitary confinement onto a regular wing, he believes he is being “persecuted” at his new home.
Speaking to The Mirror, Loveinia Grace MacKenney, 69, who regularly writes to Maudsley said: “It is a disaster waiting to happen. He does not want to be alongside other men because of the abuse he suffered as a child.
“You can tell from his letter to me what a terrible state he is in, his handwriting is shaky. He no longer has his TV, he has no radio. He was a model prisoner on his own, but I think they have targeted him.”
With no sign of him getting out, Maudsley 17,000 consecutive days behind bars could be due to break a world record. The time is thought to be a record for a British prisoner, and overtook what is thought to be the previously longest time set by French Australian man Charles Foussard who spent 51 years in solitary.
Maudsley became the UK’s longest serving prisoner after the death of Moors murderer Ian Brady, who served 51 years, in 2017.
