KILLER CANNIBAL’S RECORD 16,400 DAYS IN SOLITARY
‘Buried alive’ in a Perspex cage deep in the Monster Mansion cellar
ONE of the country’s most notorious serial killers has set a new world record for solitary confinement.
Robert Mawdsley, 69, dubbed Hannibal the Cannibal, has existed in the same miserable way for more than 16,400 consecutive days in prison.
In 1978, already serving life for two killings, Mawdsley slaughtered two prisoners in Wakefield jail, then told a guard: “There’ll be two short on the roll call.”
Since that July day almost 45 years ago he has spent all his time in solitary.
In 1983 it was deemed too dangerous for staff to see him alone and a special cell was built in the basement at Wakefield Prison, West Yorkshire – known as Monster Mansion for its feared inmates.
Measuring 18ft by 15ft, it has large bullet-proof observation windows.
Within this cell a steel door opens into a small cage encased in thick transparent acrylic panels with a small slot at the bottom through which officers pass food.
It contains a table and chair made of cardboard, a lavatory and basin bolted the floor and a concrete slab for a bed. Mawdsley, who got his Cannibal name amid false claims he dug a spoon into a victim’s brain, remains in the cell for all but one hour a day.
It is said to bear an uncanny likeness to the cell of cannibal killer Hannibal Lecter, played by Anthony Hopkins in the 1991 film Silence of the Lambs.
But there is no Hollywood glamour for the real Hannibal in the tiny space he once described as “like being buried alive”.
Early in his confinement he pleaded for better treatment. And in 2000 he went to court in a bid to be “allowed to die”.
Later, in a letter, he asked for a budgie, promising to love it and “not eat it”.
And asking for a TV to “see the world”, he ended saying: “If the Prison Service says no then I ask for a simple cyanide capsule which I shall willingly take.”
After a horrific childhood in Liverpool, Mawdsley fled to London and became a prostitute. In 1974 he killed a paedophile who showed him pictures of his victims.
Ruled unfit for trial, he was sent to Broadmoor.
There, in 1977, he took a paedophile hostage, tortured him and fatally stabbed him in the ear with a cutdown plastic spoon.
The claim he dug it into his victim’s brain was false but it won him the jail nickname Spoons.
Mawdsley was convicted of manslaughter and sent to Wakefield where in 1978 he strangled and stabbed a convicted wife killer.
He hid the body then sneaked into the cell of a man jailed for sexually abusing a girl of seven.
He stabbed him, hacked his skull with a makeshift dagger and smashed his head into a wall.
Like Dr Lecter in the hit movie, Mawdsley is said to be highly intelligent and love books, poetry and art.
Nephew Gavin Mawdsley, from Liverto pool, told Channel 5’s Evil Behind Bars that his uncle had accepted his fate.
He said: “He’s asking to be on his own because he knows what can happen.
“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 he didn’t kill a child or woman. The people he killed were really bad people.”
A murderer who spent time in the cell next to Mawdsley told the programme: “To hold someone in an underground cage for over 40 years is unforgivable.
“What the system has done to him amounts to psychological torture.”
Mawdsley turns 70 in June. Jailed 49 years ago, he is believed to be the longest-serving UK prisoner after Moors murderer Ian Brady, who died in 2017 after serving 51 years.
US prisoner Albert Woodfox held the world record for solitary confinement at 43 years before his release in 2016.
The Prison Service said inmates in close supervision centres were not in solitary confinement and were allowed time in the open, visits, phone calls and access to legal and medical advice.
I’m not condoning it but the people he killed were really bad
GAVIN MAWDSLEY NEPHEW OF ’CANNIBAL’