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'Britain’s most dangerous' prisoner’s voice heard in extremely rare recording
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The voice of Robert Maudsley, dubbed 'Britain's most dangerous prisoner', can be heard in only a few places and one of those is thanks to interviews he did with a psychiatrist.
Dr Robert Johnson was visiting Wakefield prison when his interest was piqued by the prisoner they kept in solitary confinement and referred to by a number.
The psychiatrist laid eyes on the killer of four and saw a man with a 'long straggly beard, gaunt face' and eventually got the chance to sit in his cell and speak with Maudsley.
Dr Johnson told Maudsley 'if you frighten me I can't help you' as a way of making sure nothing went wrong during their conversations where they both sat on Maudsley's bed in his cell.
He recounted one instance where Maudsley started getting agitated and said 'my hands are getting sweaty', but the psychiatrist deciding he would leave to calm the prisoner down.
From their conversations a recording of Maudsley's voice talking about his early childhood was made giving people the opportunity to hear what the murderer of four sounds like when speaking, with his Liverpudlian accent still present in his speech.
The convicted serial killer has almost no contact with the outside world, having spent more than four decades in solitary confinement.
Each and every day he spends 23 hours in a 5.5 by 4.5 metre cell made of bulletproof glass below the prison.
While he has asked to be back among general population in the prison, the request has been denied as he is still considered to be a danger to others.
HMP Wakefield is known as 'Monster Mansion' due to the number of high profile and high risk offenders incarcerated there.
Maudsley's first murder came in 1974 when he garrotted John Farrell, who had picked up Maudsley for sex and allegedly shown him evidence of child sexual abuse.
Handing himself over to the police and saying he needed psychiatric help after the murder, Maudsley was found unfit to stand trial and sent to high security psychiatric hospital Broadmoor.
In 1977 he and fellow Broadmoor resident David Cheeseman, who was incarcerated for rape, locked themselves in a cell with convicted child molester David Francis and tortured him to death over the course of nine hours.
Convicted of manslaughter and sent to Wakefield, a year later Maudsley killed inmates Salney Darwood and William Roberts.
He claims that he's only ever killed rapists, sex offenders and child molesters, and the now 69-year-old Maudsley is considered to be a danger to other prisoners if he was released among them.
He once asked if he could have a pet budgie in his solitary confinement cell and promised he wouldn't eat it if given one, he also asked for a TV so he could learn about the world outside.
These requests were denied and he asked for a cyanide capsule to take his own life instead, which was also denied.
Reporting which falsely stated that he ate part of the brain of one of his victims had him dubbed 'Hannibal the Cannibal' and 'The Brain Eater', though these claims were later found to be untrue.
Topics: UK News, True Crime, Crime, Prison
