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Killer Will Die Underground In Glass Box Following Brutal Murders

Killer Will Die Underground In Glass Box Following Brutal Murders

Robert Maudsley carried out his first murder in 1974 when he was 21. He went on to kill three more people while in prison

Rebecca Shepherd

Rebecca Shepherd

A serial killer who has been held in solitary confinement for over 40 years will die in a glass cell that was built for him after it was deemed he was 'too dangerous' to be around other prisoners.

Robert Maudsley carried out his first murder in 1974 when he was just 21 years old. He later went on to kill three more people in prison.

The 68-year-old, who was a sex worker as a teen, had a client called John Farrell who became his first victim after he showed Maudsley pictures of children he sexually abused.

Wakefield Prison.
Jamie Lorriman/Alamy Stock Photo

After that, he was jailed for life and ordered to stay at Broadmoor Hospital where he killed another inmate, brutally jamming a spoon so far into his ear it wedged into his brain.

Nicknamed Hannibal the Cannibal, Maudsley was moved to Wakefield which is a maximum security prison where two further murders took place in 1978.

Deemed too dangerous to be around other prisoners, it was decided that Maudsley would be moved to a special cell which would be built for him.

The new two-cell unit, which was ready for Maudsley in 1983, measures just 5.5m by 4.5m and is contained within a series of bullet-proof windows - in turn bearing a strong resemblance to the glass cage prison that Hannibal Lecter was kept in in 1991 film Silence of the Lambs.

Hannibal Lecter's prison cell in Silence of the Lambs.
Orion Pictures

Reports suggest that inside the cell there is a bed, a table and chair made of compressed cardboard, as well as a toilet and sink which are firmly bolted to the floor.

According to the Guardian, there's also a solid steel door that opens inside a small cage within the cell, with a small slot towards the bottom for guards to pass Maudsley food and other items.

Back in 2003, it was said that the prisoner remains in his cell for 23 hours a day, and must be escorted to the yard by six prison officers for his hour of daily exercise, and he is not allowed any contact with the other inmates.

It's been reported that Maudsley - who became the longest-serving living British prisoner following the death of Ian Brady - 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.

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

Featured Image Credit: Wiki Commons

Topics: News, crime, Prison