An inmate at Wakefield prison is held in one of the UK’s most secure cells - a glass box buried underneath the prison - and is thought to be so dangerous he will never be released.
Robert Maudsley is known as the ‘brain eater’ by his fellow inmates and is let out of his cell for just one hour a day, guarded by six people at all times.
He was in his early 20s when he committed his first murder and was jailed - but this didn’t stop him and he continued to kill once inside.
Maudsley’s brutality has earned him a one-of-a-kind dungeon beneath Wakefield Prison.
The 18x15ft cell has been likened to the glass cage that housed Hannibal Lecter in the Silence of the Lambs film.
His only furniture is a table and chair made of compressed cardboard and his toilet and sink are bolted to the floor.
Maudsley sleeps on a concrete slab, sealed behind a solid steel door, which leads to another cage, The Daily Star reported.
This cage is encased in thick, see-through plastic panels and has a small slit the serial killer is passed meals and other items through, from guards.
Maudsley spends 23 hours a day in this cell, only allowed out for one hour. During his exercise, six guards escort him out into the yard and he is never allowed contact with other inmates.
In a rare interview Maudsley said he felt "tormented" by his solitary confinement.
He said: "There is a lack of hope and I don't appear to have anything to look forward to.”
Starved of company, he wrote a letter to The Times, asking: "Why can't I have a budgie instead of the flies and cockroaches and spiders I currently have? I promise to love it and not eat it."
In March 2000, he wrote another letter asking for a cyanide pill so that he could end his life.
Maudsley suffered a traumatic childhood, and endured violent and sexual abuse until he left home. He blames his upbringing for his later acts.
He said in 1979, when on trial for a double murder: “If I had killed my parents in 1970, none of these people need have died.”
Working as a male prostitute in London in 1974, Maudsley met Robert Farrell. Farrell paid him for sex, and then showed him pictures of children he had sexually abused.
Maudsley strangled Farrell, and he was later that year sentenced to life imprisonment with a recommendation that he should never be released.
In 1977, Maudsley and fellow Broadmoor inmate, David Cheeseman, barricaded themselves in a cell with convicted child molester, David Francis.
For nine hours they tortured Francis in the most brutal way, eventually killing him.
Inside the prison, Maudsley became known as "Spoons" because Francis’s body was reportedly found with a spoon sticking out of the skull and part of the brain missing - earning him his other nickname.
After the murder, Maudsley was moved to the maximum security Wakefield Prison in Yorkshire but a year after he murdered Francis he killed once more.
On July 29, 1978, he garrotted and stabbed wife killer, Salney Darwood, in his cell and hid the body under the bed.
Not done there, Maudsley stalked the prison wing for his next kill and attack Bill Roberts - who had sexually assaulted a seven-year-old girl.
He stabbed Roberts to death before hacking at his skull with a makeshift dagger.
When Maudsley was certain Roberts was dead he calmly walked up to a prison guard and told him there would be two less mouths to feed at dinner that night.
Deemed too dangerous to remain amongst the general prison population, work began on constructing the special cell for Maudsley in the bowels of Wakefield Prison.
He has been in that room since 1983, and is not expected to leave it alive.
