British serial killer spends his 50th Christmas behind bars | UK News

A British serial killer who has spent more time in solitary confinement than any other criminal in the world has ‘celebrated’ his 50th Christmas behind bars.

Robert Mawdsley, 70, is the longest-serving inmate in the British penal system and has spent around 45 years in solitary confinement- thought to be a world record.

The killer, nicknamed ‘Hannibal the Cannibal’ over false claims he ate one of his victim’s brains, has been locked up since 1974 after being jailed when he was just 21 years old, the Mirror reports.

After a horrific childhood in Liverpool, Mawdsley fled to London and became a prostitute.

Some time later he killed 30-year-old John Farrell, who was reportedly a child sex offender, but was deemed unfit for trial and sent to Broadmoor hospital, a high-security psychiatric hospital in Berkshire.

But in 1977, shortly after arriving, he took a fellow inmate hostage and tortured him, before stabbing him to death with a cut-down plastic spoon.

The victim was allegedly found with the spoon blade in his ear, which led to false rumours that some of his brain had been eaten.

This earned Mawdsley the nickname ‘Hannibal the Cannibal.’

Mawdsley was then convicted of manslaughter for the killing in Broadmoor and was sent to Wakefield prison, where he murdered a further two inmates in 1978

He now spends his days in a 18 foot by 15 foot cell, which was built especially for him in 1983 and is protected by bullet proof glass.

In a Channel 5 documentary HMP Wakefield: Evil Behind Bars, Mawdsley’s nephew Gavin from Liverpool revealed how his softly spoken, ‘well-read’ uncle is content to be locked away from the rest of the world.

He added: ‘[If you] put him with rapists and paedophiles, I know because he told us, he is going to kill as many paedophiles as he can.

‘I’m not condoning what he did, but…the people he killed were really bad people.’

Ex-detective Paul Harrison, who specialises in interviewing mass murderers, said of Mawdsley in 2018: ‘You’ve got the image of a monster… an evil man. I’d got all these preconceived ideas. If you didn’t know him and what he’d done, and you saw him in the bar… he’s a really intelligent guy, who made you smile.

‘He’d talk about everyday things. A lot of serial killers are intense and narcissistic and talk about themselves. I didn’t find him like that at all. I thought, “Wow, this is something different to any serial killer”.’

Mawdsley has previously said he is ‘happy and content in solitary’ but also once described spending the majority of his day in his small space as ‘like being buried alive in a coffin’.

In 2000, Maudsley launched a legal bid to the courts requesting to be allowed to die.

In a letter to the courts, he asked: ‘What purpose is served by keeping me locked up 23 hours a day? Why even bother to feed me and to give me one hour’s exercise a day? Who actually am I a risk to?’

He also requested to be allowed to keep a pet budgie, and joked that he ‘promised not to eat it.’

Mawdsley is believed to be Britain’s longest serving prisoner after Moors murderer Ian Brady, who served 51 years. He died in 2017.

A Ministry of Justice spokesman told the Mirror there is ‘no such thing as solitary confinement in our prison system’.

‘Some offenders will be segregated if they pose a risk to others. They are allowed time in the open air every day, visits, phone calls, and access to legal advice and medical care like everyone else.’

They also declined to reveal which prison houses Mawdsley’s cell.

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