Calls for Britain's most dangerous prisoner to be removed from glass dungeon

Britain's most dangerous prisoner should be removed from solitary confinement, a former prison officer has said.

Robert Maudsley - the longest-serving prisoner in the UK's penal system - has killed four people in total, three of which took place in prison.

Maudsley’s first murder came in 1974 when he killed John Farrell in London after he picked him up for sex and showed him evidence of child sexual abuse.

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He was garrotted by Maudsley, who then handed himself over to police, stating that he needed psychiatric help.

Three years later, Maudsley and another prisoner tortured and killed child molester David Francis in Broadmoor Hospital.

He then killed two inmates at HMP Wakefield when he was sent there.

Maudsley has since been serving life imprisonment, with the recommendation that he never be released.

And although has was once described as the ‘Cannibal Killer’ in the press, the allegations of cannibalism turned out to be false.

At the age of 70, Maudsley remains in Wakefield and is kept in solitary confinement for 23-hours of every day in a specially glass built cell.

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Neil Samworth, a retired prison officer, who worked at Strangeways and Salford's Forest Bank prison, has since called for Maudsley to be taken out of solitary confinement.

He recently 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.

Maudsley himself said in a letter that he wanted to move to better conditions.

He 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.

"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.

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"My life in solitary is one long period of unbroken depression."

During his trial, Maudsley claimed that he was thinking about his parents and how he should have killed them when he committed his crimes.

In 2000, he asked the UK’s Prison Service if he would be allowed to keep a pet in his cell, while also promising not to eat it.

But the pet budgie he asked for was denied by the board.

Maudsley has always stated that his victims were rapists, paedophiles or sex offenders.