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Jane Lavender

Britain's most dangerous prisoner is kept in glass box under Wakefield Prison

The UK's most dangerous serial killer - nicknamed 'Hannibal The Cannibal' - has been held in an solitary prison cell for more than four decades.

A new documentary series gives an insight into the life of murderer Robert Maudsley, who is set to spend the rest of his life in a dungeon underneath Wakefield Prison.

Liverpool-born Maudsley committed his first horrific murder aged just 21, reports the Mirror.

While serving time in prison he went on to kill another three men.

Born one of 12 children, as a baby Maudsley was taken into care.

He spent his early years living at Nazareth House, a Catholic orphanage in Merseyside.

For Maudsley, this was a welcome relief from the chaos and poverty at home.

But when he was eight, his parents came to take him and his siblings home and he was subjected to years of violent abuse.

His father would regularly beat his children, and Maudsley often took extra beatings to protect his siblings.

Once, a young Maudsley was locked in a room for six months, his only contact was violence from his father.

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 is held within a glass cage in the basement of Wakefield Prison (PA Archive/PA Images)

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 with Maudsley at one point ramming a spoon through his ear and into his brain, earning him the moniker Hannibal the Cannibal.

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.

Robert Maudsley killed another inmate in Broadmoor after torturing him for nine hours (ITV)

On July 29, 1978, he garrotted and stabbed wife killer Salney Darwood in his cell and hid the body under the bed.

By 1983, it was ready. The cell was dubbed the glass cage as it was so similar to the prison Hannibal Lecter was kept in in Silence of the Lambs.

It's just 5.5metres by 4.5metres and has huge bullet-proof windows, which prison officers watch Maudsley through.

The only furniture is a table and a chair, which are both made of compressed cardboard, while his toilet and sink are bolted to the floor.

Maudsley's bed is a concrete slab and the door is made of solid steel, which opens into a cage just inside.

The cage is encased in thick, see-through, acrylic panels and has a small slit at the bottom, through which guards pass the serial killer his meals and other items he needs.

Maudsley is locked in the cell for 23 hours a day, only being freed for an hour of exercise.

He is escorted to the exercise yard by six guards and is never allowed any contact with other inmates.

Robert Maudsley was dubbed 'Hannibal The Cannibal' after his shocking murders (Unknown)

In an interview, Maudsley said he felt "tormented" in solitary confinement.

He explained: "There is a lack of hope and I don't appear to have anything to look forward to.

"I feel no officer takes any interest in me and they're only concerned with when to open the door and then to make sure I get back in my cell as soon as possible.

"I think an officer could stop and talk a bit but they never do and it's these thoughts that I think about most of the time."

Maudsley claimed his time in solitary confinement was having an impact on his speech and he was no longer able to speak clearly through lack of contact.

He added: "I see this in part as going back to my childhood and going back to the room where I was detained for six months and that torments me."

In a desperate attempt for company, in 2000 Maudsley begged for the terms of his imprisonment to be relaxed.

He asked for a pet budgie and then, if that was refused, for a cyanide capsule so he could end his life.

His requests were denied and Maudsley will spend the rest of his life, alone, in his glass box underneath Wakefield Prison.

"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,' he once wrote.

"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."

In a press release promoting the new documentary, Crime + Investigation say: "Ultimately, what makes Maudsley almost unique among serial killers is that he can be seen as more tragic than evil – a man driven to terrible acts (solely against sex offenders and other criminals) by the very real demons of his past.

"As he once said: 'When I kill, I think I have my parents in mind. If I had killed my parents in 1970, none of these people need have died. If I had killed them, then I would be walking around as a free man without a care in the world.'"

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