Warning: Graphic details

Robert Maudsley is one of the UK’s most notorious killers, a man who has killed behind bars and on the outside and has spent over 40 years in solitary confinement.

His extreme brutality has led to him being placed under extraordinary supervision and one grisly incident resulted in him being dubbed “The Brain Eater” by other prisoners.

Although his repeated acts of violence have seen him locked inside a cage similar to the one that housed the fictional Hannibal Lecter, his family say he’s only guilty of taking the law into his own hands - because of his habit of turning on child sex abusers.

Making a murderer

Robert Maudsley’s tough upbringing sowed the seeds of his later homicidal rage. He was born in Liverpool in 1953, the youngest of four at the time, but was placed into care when his mum and dad couldn’t care for them. He spent nine years in the care of nuns before his parents came back and a nightmare childhood began.

In an article in the Guardian in 2003, his brother Paul remembered how their lives changed.

“At the orphanage we had all got on really well. Our parents would come to visit, but they were just strangers. The nuns were our family and we all used to stick together,” he said.

 “Then our parents took us home and we were subjected to physical abuse. It was something we’d never experienced before. They just picked on us one by one, gave us a beating and sent us off to our room.”

“All I remember of my childhood is the beatings,” Maudsley once said.

Robert Maudsley has been in solitary confinement for over 40 years.

He ended up back in foster care before fleeing south to London aged 16, where he quickly fell into drink and drugs. Psychiatric problems became apparent and he was treated after attempting suicide, telling medical staff he heard voices ordering him to kill his parents.

But the drug habit needed funding and young Maudsley turned to sex work to pay for his fix, a career that would eventually set him on the path to his first killing.

‘Spoons’, ’The Brain Eater, ’Hannibal the Cannibal’

One night in 1974 Maudsley met John Farrell, the labourer hiring the young addict for sex. But when Farrell allegedly showed Maudsley photos of young children he abused, Maudsley snapped. He garrotted his victim, before stabbing him and hitting him in the head with a hammer.

He was eventually found unfit to go to trial and sentenced to life in Broadmoor Hospital, the UK’s notorious home for the criminally insane.

It didn’t take him long to kill again.

In 1977 Maudsley and fellow prisoner David Cheeseman locked convicted paedophile David Francis into a room and held him hostage, with the events that transpired cementing Maudsley’s reputation and earning him the monikers that stuck.

Maudsley and Cheeseman barricaded the door and tied Francis up before torturing him as prison staff listened in, unable to gain entry.

The ordeal lasted nine hours and included the pair hoisting Francis up for staff to see through a spyhole and jamming a makeshift weapon into his ear.

Maudsley blamed his killing on his childhood trauma.

In his book Pure Evil, author Geoffrey Wansell writes: “According to legend, Francis’s body was found with his head ‘cracked open like a boiled egg’ and with a spoon hanging out of it.

“In reality, Maudsley did not eat any part of his victim’s brains. One prison officer who worked with him explained that Maudsley had, in fact, made a makeshift weapon by splitting a plastic spoon in half to create a rough pointed weapon.

“He then killed his fellow Broadmoor inmate by ramming it into his victim’s ear, penetrating the brain.”

A post-mortem did not show that any of the brains had been consumed but the myth quickly spread and Maudsley would later become known as “Spoons”, “The Brain Eater” and “Hannibal the Cannibal”.

The killing continues

This time Maudsley did stand trial and was found guilty of manslaughter and sent to Wakefield Prison. In 1978, within weeks of his arrival, he struck again. He killed Salney Darwood, who was jailed for killing his wife, by luring him into his cell and garroting him, before swinging his head into the walls of the cell.

Then he stashed the body under his bed and tried luring other prisoners into his cell.

This time, no one took the bait.

“They could all see the madness in his eyes,” the Guardian reported in 2003.

Undeterred, Maudsley crept into the cell of Bill Roberts, jailed for the sexual assault of a seven-year-old girl.

He attacked him with a makeshift knife as he lay in his bunk, killing him before calmly walking to the guards’ office, placing a home-made knife on the desk and telling them they would be two short when it came to the next roll-call.

That was the last day that Maudsley would spend in the general population.

He was eventually sentenced for double murder and sent back to Wakefield Prison, before a later decision from the Home Secretary imposed the full term on him - meaning he would never be released.

It was during that murder trial that the court heard that Maudsley believed his victims were his parents, an imagining his lawyers claimed came from the abuse he suffered as a child. “When I kill, I think I have my parents in mind,” Maudsley said.

“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.”

Inside the glass cage

Much of Maudsley’s time in solitary has been spent in a purpose-built cell at Wakefield, which was built in 1983 and features a thick perspex front that allows guards to watch him constantly. The construction has been compared to the cell that housed Anthony Hopkins’ Hannibal Lecter character in the Silence of the Lambs film, which was released seven years later.

The 5.5m x 4.5m space was designed to only house a cardboard table and chair, a toilet and sink that are bolted to the floor, and a concrete slab with a mattress.

He spends 23 hours a day in there, his one hour in the exercise yard spent on his own under the watchful eye of specially assigned guards.

Maudsley reportedly has a genius-level IQ and enjoys classical music, art and poetry. Friends and family describe him as kind and gentle with a good sense of humour.

Maudsley's cell has been compared to the one that housed Hannibal Lecter in Silence of the Lambs. Photo / Supplied

In 2000, Maudsley made a plea for greater freedom in a series of letters to The Times newspaper.

“If (the Prison Service) says no then I ask for a simple cyanide capsule which I shall willingly take and the problem of Robert John Maudsley can easily and swiftly be resolved,” he wrote.

“I am left to stagnate; vegetate; and to regress; left to confront my solitary head-on with people who have eyes but don’t see and who have ears but don’t hear, who have mouths but don’t speak.

“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.”

The killer also said the only risk he posed was to sex offenders.

‘He didn’t kill any innocent people’

Speaking to UK documentary makers in 2019, Maudsley’s nephew Gavin offered justification for his uncle’s crimes.

“He didn’t kill any innocent people,” he said.

“My uncle’s done terrible things, I’m not trying to say he hasn’t, but I say he’s guilty of taking the law into his own hands.”

Gavin Maudsley spoke out again this year to reveal that his uncle’s life has been made more comfortable.

“Wakefield used to be his hell but now he’s settled down and he’s comfortable,” he said.

“He watches his TV, he listens to music on his music system, he’s got a Playstation 2, so he plays his video games. He goes to bed at 10pm.

“On visits we get him his banana milk and several chocolate bars and normally a sausage roll. He’ll bring a flask of hot water with him and some tea bags and make us a cup of tea.”

But Gavin Maudsley delivered a sobering take on the risk his uncle still poses.

“It sounds crazy but solitary confinement in Wakefield prison is his safe space. He told me in a letter that given the chance he would kill again, and I believe that.”

SUICIDE AND DEPRESSION

Where to get help:
• Lifeline: 0800 543 354 (available 24/7)
• Suicide Crisis Helpline: 0508 828 865 (0508 TAUTOKO (available 24/7)
• Youth services: (06) 3555 906
• Youthline: 0800 376 633
• What’s Up: 0800 942 8787 (11am to11pm)
• Depression helpline: 0800 111 757 (available 24/7)
• Rainbow Youth: (09) 376 4155
• Helpline: 1737
If it is an emergency and you feel like you or someone else is at risk, call 111.

SEXUAL HARM

Where to get help:
If it’s an emergency and you feel that you or someone else is at risk, call 111.
If you’ve ever experienced sexual assault or abuse and need to talk to someone, contact Safe to Talk confidentially, any time 24/7:
• Call 0800 044 334
• Text 4334
• Email [email protected]
• For more info or to web chat visit safetotalk.nz
Alternatively contact your local police station - click here for a list.
If you have been sexually assaulted, remember it’s not your fault.