Twisted serial killer Robert Maudsley, dubbed Hannibal the Cannibal, was terrifyingly calm as he confessed to having murdered two fellow prisoners in a single day.
He strolled up to a guard in top security Wakefield prison and casually remarked: “There’ll be two short on the roll call.”
He had killed both with a makeshift knife. They were the third and fourth victims of the monster, who will never be freed from jail.
While the truth about Maudsley’s horrific actions has become blurred at times, there is no doubting his savagery.
In 1974 Maudsley, born in Toxteth, Liverpool, carried out his first murder.
He was working as a rent boy when a builder named John Farrell picked him up and took him back to his North London flat for sex.
Maudsley, then 20, flew into a rage when Farrell showed him photos of a young girl he had abused.
He slowly garrotted Farrell, turning the builder’s face blue.
The killer handed himself in to police and was sent to Broadmoor Hospital, where
he earned his first nickname, Blue, after the colour of his victim’s face.
Three years later, he became known as Spoons and Hannibal the Cannibal, when he and another psychopath took paedophile David Francis hostage in his cell and tortured him for nine hours.
When finally found, the dead man’s head was said to be “cracked open like a boiled egg,” with a spoon hanging out.
A guard said Maudsley had eaten part of his victim’s brain, hence the British Hannibal the Cannibal tag.
This was untrue but the grim myth lives on.
Maudsley was sent to Wakefield, known as Monster Mansion because of the large number of notorious prisoners held there, and in July 1978 killed twice in one day.
His first victim was wife killer Salney Darwood, 46, who he lured into a cell before strangling and stabbing him with a knife made from a soup spoon.
He hid the body under a bunk, before creeping into the cell of child molester William Roberts, 56.
Roberts was lying on his bed when Maudsley smashed his head against a wall and then prised his skull open with the knife.
Now 66, Maudsley is kept in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day and is not allowed to interact with other inmates because of his history.
In chilling tapes made with prison psychiatrist Dr Bob Johnson, Maudsley said: “I’m just capable of anything, Bob.”
In 2000, he pleaded for an easing of his solitary or to be allowed to commit suicide via a cyanide capsule. His call for a pet budgie was also denied.
