The murder and torture of others is an inherently selfish act – some of the murderers that we’ve covered so far have killed others out of greed, hatred, to fulfil their sick fantasies, and sometimes, simply because those people stood in their way.
So what would it take for someone to kill others simply for the sake of making the world a better place? I’m not talking about soldiers or snipers or the like – I’m talking a real-life Dexter here, a killer of killers. Kevin has already covered Pedro Rodrigues Filho, Brazil’s claimant to the role of a Dexter, and as we saw in that episode, it wasn’t so much a case of him killing in order to do good, but rather a case of him taking revenge, and then killing his fellow prisoners in order to feed his need to kill.
But thanks to two of our viewers – namely Margarett Todd and Malediction Wolf – today’s episode is about Britain’s candidate for the role of a Dexter killer - Robert John Maudsley, a serial killer who is also known as Blue, Spoons, Hannibal the Cannibal, and Britain’s Most Dangerous Prisoner.
Almost as soon as I started doing my research on Robert Maudsley, it became apparent that Robert isn’t your garden variety serial killer. There wasn’t a series of murders that led to his capture, he didn’t become infamous for the gruesome ways in which he killed his victims, there wasn’t a media frenzy when he was finally sentenced, and he had been forgotten by society until a psychiatrist named Dr Bob Johnson stumbled across him during a prison tour in 1989.
Almost all the information that is available on Robert John Maudsley is second hand, since he simply refused to discuss his murders or to be glorified for it. Dr Bob Johnson has released some of the information that Robert had revealed during the three years that he treated him, and his family revealed some more during the various documentaries and articles that had been written about Robert. But all the documentaries and articles that have been written about him seem to ask the same question –
Does the story of Robert John Maudsley deserve a happy ending, or not? Let me tell you his story, and then you can decide for yourself.
What Makes a Murderer
As Simon keeps on reminding us, this channel is called The Casual Criminalist for a reason. But in order for our viewers/listeners to understand how Robert Maudsley matches up to his peers, I’m going to have to give you a small crash course on the four different types of serial killers.
A serial killer is defined as –
“a person who commits a series of murders, often with no apparent motive and typically following a characteristic, predictable behavior pattern.”
From my reading, one of the points that is important to remember is that serial killers are usually indistinguishable from the people around them and are thus able to fulfill some role within society - they are husbands, wives, fathers, mothers, and neighbors. For all you know, your high school English teacher might moonlight as a sadistic killer on the weekends, that charming professor at the community college might collect women’s underwear as trophies of his kills, and the local butcher might be selling some specialty meat to his customers after he returns from his monthly ‘hunting trips’.
Serial killers are often grouped into four categories – Visionary killers, the types who believe that God or some other entity is ordering them to kill others; Mission-oriented killers who kill in order to rid society of certain groups of people like sex workers and the homeless; Hedonistic killers who kill simply for the pleasure of it; and Power or Control-oriented killers, who often rape or torture their victims before they kill them.
Robert John Maudsley falls squarely within the category of a Mission-oriented killer. He firmly believes that he was doing the world a favor, feels absolutely no guilt for what he’s done, doesn’t suffer from hallucinations or delusions, and he doesn’t seem to get any gratification from killing.
Just like other Mission-oriented killers, Robert was motivated by feelings of revenge and hatred, simply because - like so many of the other serial killers that we’ve covered so far - he had a horrible childhood.
However, most Mission-oriented killers won’t stop their murder spree until they’re either caught by law enforcement or killed. But what really distinguishes Robert John Maudsley from other serial killers is the fact that he didn’t become a serial killer until after he went to prison.
Little Bobby
Robert John Maudsley was born on the 26th of June 1953 in Speke, a suburb of Liverpool. His father, George Maudsley, worked in one of the local coal mines, and his mother, Jean, was a housewife.
The four eldest Maudsley children were close in age – Brenda was three, Paul two, and Kevin was barely a year old when Robert was born. I think that anyone with kids will tell you that having babies that close together in age is hell - and it is no wonder that their mother simply couldn’t cope, drawing the attention of the neighbors who would often hear her screaming and cursing at them.
When Robert was six months old, social services arrived on the doorstep of the Maudsley household, and all four of the Maudsley children were placed in care due to “neglect”. They were placed in Nazareth House in Crosby, another suburb in Liverpool, just 33 kilometers or 20 miles away from where their parents lived. But the difference in their upbringing from then on, was as stark as the difference between Heaven and Hell.
According to Paul Maudsley -
“[Nazareth House] was run by nuns. It was a brilliant place and we all went to school up the road, in Little Crosby. We were happy. We spent nine years there and were a real family unit. We looked upon the nuns as our parents. Our real parents never came to see us until towards the very end of those nine years. We didn’t know them. I have no memories of them before we were at the orphanage.”
Based on the later interviews that Dr Johnson had with a grown-up Robert, he would develop a strong sense of right and wrong during his time at the orphanage, and he has very strong views regarding what keeps a person’s soul pure enough for you to be able to go to heaven, indicating that – at least to some degree – he is religious, or at least has some kind of moral code.
The three Maudsley boys referred to themselves as the Three Musketeers, and they would often pretend that they were saving someone from the evil Cardinal Richelieu. For all intent and purposes, they were the only family they had, and for all they knew, they were orphans.
But that all ended in 1962 when the embodiment of every orphan’s dream came to Nazareth House - a family was willing to adopt Paul, and there was a good chance that the other 3 Maudsley children might be able to follow soon after. But seeing as how the Maudsley children hadn’t officially been surrendered by their parents, the orphanage had to contact George and Jean and ask them whether they were willing to put their children up for adoption.
The elder Maudsley’s – who already had a fifth child at this point – refused and insisted that they wanted their children back, and the Maudsley children were told that – in fact – they weren’t orphans – they still had a family, albeit one that hadn’t bothered to come and visit them. And as you can imagine, none of the Maudsley kids wanted to leave Crosby to go and live with the parents they didn’t know. As Paul puts it –
“It was a strange situation, to go from Nazareth House to sitting on a couch in a house with parents who didn’t talk to us.”
Jean and George Maudsley were nothing like the nuns that the 9-year-old Robert had grown up with. Hard and unforgiving, they had no issue with beating their children, and according to Paul –
“…our ma instigated half of it. If we went to the shops instead of coming straight home [after school] she would bring it to dad’s attention, and he would beat us.”
They were dirt poor, and the five Maudsley children had to sleep on the floor with their extra clothes acting as blankets. With George being the only breadwinner and his salary being meagre at best, there wasn’t enough money to feed and clothe their growing family, and the eldest Maudsley kids would often be sent out to go and steal what they could. Whenever the police caught them and escorted them home, George would punish them for getting caught, beating them severely.
All three of the boys were beaten on a regular basis, but it was as if Robert was the main target of their father’s abuse – both physically and sexually. Some sources hint that Robert took more abuse because he was trying to protect his older siblings, but Emma Kenny, the Family Counsellor who discussed Robert Maudsley’s case on the documentary, “Robert Maudsley – Caged Misery”, explains that it is often the youngest – or weakest – child that is picked on the most.
Robert would later tell Dr Johnson that he remembers being locked up in a broom cupboard as punishment for almost six months.
“…my father only opened the door to come in to beat me, four or six times a day. He used to hit me with sticks or rods and once he bust a .22 air rifle over my back.”
It must have seemed like his prayers were answered when another social worker showed up on their doorstep barely a year after the Maudsley children had returned to live with their parents. Robert was the first to be taken away and placed into foster care.
At one point, George Maudsley told the rest of his children that Robert had died, and their home life would go from bad to worse as more and more babies were born. George and Jean would end up having 12 children in total. I’ll let Simon fume about the absolute selfishness of this, but I will add that the NHS only made contraceptives widely available in April 1971.
Robert’s older siblings would eventually run away from home when they were between 16 and 18 years old, scattering all over the UK. According to Paul Maudsley, the eldest Maudsley children did well for themselves and started their own families, while the youngest children ended up in foster care.
But the same could not be said of Robert.
After he was placed into foster care, the then ten-year-old Robert only ended up in one abusive home after another, and at the age of sixteen, he ran away and headed to London. According to Graeme Gulliford, a journalist that was interviewed for the documentary “Robert Maudsley – Caged Misery”, London was where all of Britain’s lost children fled to.
“…it was the bright lights, the promise of a new start and opportunity. But what they found, and what Robert found, was a place of incredible hardship. A place that was bedeviled with vice…”
The sixteen-year-old Robert hadn’t had contact with his older siblings for years, and since they were under the impression that he was dead, they didn’t go looking for him once they had managed to free themselves from their parents. This meant that he was broke and alone and didn’t have any kind of support system when he finally reached London and tried to make a life for himself.
Robert ended up addicted to drugs, and because of this, he wasn’t able to hold a job. Eventually, he would start working as a ‘rent-boy’ – aka a sex-worker – in order to survive and pay for his drug habits. And it was while he was working London’s streets that he would suffer at the hands of his clients, being tortured and beaten and sexually abused on a regular basis.
He tried to take his life twice during this time and spent some time in psychiatric units in hospital. Here, he would tell the hospital staff that he was hearing voices, and that they told him to kill his parents. He believed that if he killed his parents, he would finally be free of the memory of the torture they’d put him through, as well as the hatred he felt towards them.
He needed help and he knew it, but as soon as he was healed up, the hospital would release him and send him back to the streets of London.
But when Robert Maudsley first met John Farrell, his time in London slowly started running out, and it would change the course of his life forever.
Blue
Today, Wood Green is a metropolitan center in Greater London, and there are a number of cinemas, bars, nightclubs, restaurants, and cafés in the area. In the 1970’s, some of the shops that had been a part of the “Golden Mile of North London” had been demolished, and the Wood Green Shopping City was being built.
Wood Green would have been an ant’s nest of construction workers and day laborers, and most of Robert’s clients knew exactly where to find him. He would often hang around in the local bars, chatting up the patrons, and since the Sexual Offences Act had decriminalized homosexuality between men in 1967, they were free to approach the 21-year-old Robert and arrange for him to accompany them somewhere else for a night of “mutual pleasure”.
On the 14th of March 1974, Robert was lounging around at a bar in Wood Green when one of his regulars, the 30-year-old John Farrell, walked up to Robert and invited him back to his apartment. John worked in construction, and he and Robert would meet up regularly, with some sources claiming that the two were in a relationship.
There are different versions of what happened after the two men left the bar that night. That is mostly because Robert never expanded on what had happened between him and John Farrell, and it would be another twenty years before journalists tried to piece the story together. So I’m going to go with the version that is more likely based on what I’ve learned during my research.
Robert and Farrell ended up going to Farrell’s apartment that night. As was their habit, the two men would indulge in their favorite drug of the moment, and they ended up lounging on the bed, smoke drifting in the air around them, the curtains drawn against the world outside.
They were comfortable around each other, but Robert wasn’t the most adventurous bed partner between the two of them, seeing it as more his job than anything else. But that night, Farrell proposed that they try something new, and he left Robert on the bed while he made his way to his dresser.
From the back of the top drawer, Farrell pulled out a stack of polaroid’s and made his way back to Robert, who looked on in a drugged daze. Farrell turned on the bedside lamp and sat down next to Robert, proudly handing him the stack of photos.
They’re his, Farrell would explain as Robert studied one photo after another. His boys. He always took photos of them. Liked to remind himself of the good times.
Robert flicked through photo after photo, the daze lifting as he realized that these boys were young. Very young. Much younger than the 30-year-old Farrell. And as it dawned on him that Farrell was a pedophile, an icy rage built up inside of Robert.
Robert John Maudsley strangled John Farrell with the cord of his bedside lamp, killing him. He then bludgeoned him before stabbing him repeatedly with a knife. Half-naked and covered in blood, Robert stared down at Farrell’s body and realized what he’d done.
You can guess what happened next – he cleaned himself up, got dressed, got rid of the knife, and left the apartment.
But you’d be wrong.
Robert Maudsley didn’t clean himself up. Dressed only in his pants, his chest, arms and hands covered in blood, he left John Farrell’s apartment, calmly made his way to the nearest police station, walked inside, met the shocked gazes of the officers on duty, and declared –
“I just killed a pedophile. I need help.”
Still half-naked and covered in blood, he’d wait in an interrogation room while officers were sent to John Farrell’s apartment to confirm that Farrell was indeed, dead. They found his body exactly where Robert had said it would be, the polaroid photos scattered on the mattress below him. John Farrell was blue in the face, the cord of the bedside lamp still tied around his neck, his head a bloody mess, his body covered in stab wounds.
Robert confessed to the murder of John Farrell and earned the nickname “Blue” from the police officers who’d went to investigate Farrell’s flat. Robert was sentenced with manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility, and because of this, he was sent to Broadmoor, a high-security psychiatric hospital, where he would stay for the duration of his sentence, and, hopefully, finally receive the help he needed.
Spoons
Dr Bob Johnson would laugh if he heard anyone referring to Broadmoor as a “hospital”, since according to him, a hospital is somewhere where you go to get medical treatment – and Broadmoor didn’t seem to help any of its patients.
Even though Broadmoor isn’t officially a prison, it sure does look like one, and many of its patients are sent there after they’ve committed some sort of crime, making the hospital notorious. Wikipedia has a list of all the infamous patients that have called Broadmoor home at some point in history, and some of them are assassins, murderers and serial killers that you might be familiar with either from this channel, or similar true crime shows – people like The Devil’s Daughter, Sharon Carr, June and Jennifer Gibbons, aka the Silent Twins, David Gonzales, Robert Napper, Charles Bronson, and Peter Sutcliffe, who is also better known as the Yorkshire Ripper.
During his stay at Broadmoor, Robert had a certain degree of freedom. He wasn’t considered dangerous and was allowed to walk around the hospital, spend time in the activity rooms either reading, listening to music or watching movies, and attend therapy. According to the hospital staff, he mostly kept to himself, but as time went on, Robert got to know his fellow “patients” a lot better, and he soon realized that Broadsmoor was filled with monsters who were worse than John Farrell had been.
Because Robert had never elaborated on or boasted about his crimes – another unusual trait that differentiates him from other serial killers – we still can’t be sure why he targeted 26-year-old David Francis, a fellow inmate and convicted child molester.
What we do know, is that Robert didn’t act alone. He’d befriended the 32-year-old David Lant, another inmate who had been sentenced to Broadmoor for sexually assaulting a 16-year-old girl, and together the two planned on how they were going to kill David Francis.
Robert and David stole plastic spoons from the cafeteria and worked to sharpen the spoons into knives, hiding it on their bodies as they waited for an opportunity to get David alone. On the 26th of February 1977, the hospital staff had arranged for the inmates to play a friendly soccer match on one of the hospital’s lawns, and the two men grabbed at the opportunity that had fallen into their laps.
As the rest of the patients were making their way back into the building later that morning, they either captured or lured Francis into an empty cell. The hospital staff, distracted by the rest of the patients, only realized that something was wrong when they heard screams echoing down one of the hallways.
The hospital staff peeked through the small glass window of the barricaded cell and realized that Robert and David had managed to tie Francis up using a power cord that they’d stolen from a record player. They ended up torturing Francis for a solid NINE HOURS. No one knows why the staff didn’t intervene or call the police or attempt to break the door down, but one of the nurses would later say –
“[The hospital] staff had to bear the screams of Francis as he was tortured for hours. They abused his body the nth degree.”
Allegedly, they heard Francis ask the two men why they didn’t just kill him and get it over with, right before Robert stabbed him in the ear with one of the broken spoons, killing him. The two men then held Francis’s body up to the glass window to show the hospital staff what they’d done before opening the door to let them in.
The staff would later explain that Francis’s head been -
“cracked open like a boiled egg”
He’d also been cut all over his body and had been partially skinned. The staff and the media kept repeating the fact that a gore-covered spoon had been seen sticking out of Francis’s ear, and the rumor soon spread that Robert Maudsley had eaten Francis’s brains, earning him a spot on the front page of various newspapers. An autopsy disproved this rumor, but Robert still got the nickname “Hannibal the Cannibal” along with the nickname “Spoons”.
The two men seemed to have different reasons for why they’d targeted David Francis. One of the explanations provided was that Francis had allegedly attacked one of their friends for being gay. Another was the fact that he’d been a convicted child molester, a fact that immediately made him worth killing in Robert’s book. Either way, Robert Maudsley and David Lant both pled guilty to the murder of David Francis, and both of them received life sentences.
David Lant was sent to Hollesley Bay Prison in Suffolk in order to serve out his time, and Robert ended up being sent to Wakefield Prison in West Yorkshire.
A Fox in a Chicken Coop
Wakefield Prison is a Category A men’s prison, meaning that it is one of the most secure prisons in the UK. It’s also known as the UK’s Monster Mansion, and the majority of the UK’s serial killers ended up here, including Charles Salvador and Harold Shipman.
Robert Maudsley HATED Wakefield prison. Broadmoor had allowed him a lot more freedom - he could see a psychiatrist, read books, and listen to music. Now he was under guard 24/7, and he was put into an open ward where he was surrounded by the worst criminals that the UK had to offer, including child molesters and sex offenders. Allegedly, he petitioned the prison authorities on multiple occasions to send him back to Broadmoor, but his requests were denied.
He also – allegedly – asked to be placed in solitary instead, since he didn’t want to be surrounded by the kind of people he despised.
Those requests were also denied.
For almost a year, Robert watched and listened as he wandered the open areas between the cells, and in the end, he had a list of seven people who he had decided deserved to die. And when he woke up on the 29th of July 1978, he stuck a home-made knife – aka a shiv – and a piece of rope that he’d smuggled out of the workshop into his belt and went on a hunt.
His first victim was Salney Darwood, a 46-year-old man who was serving a life sentence for murdering his wife, Blanche. Darwood doesn’t necessarily match Robert’s usual victim profile, but Darwood had been giving Robert French lessons, and the two had gotten to know each other well. It has been speculated that he’d confided something to Robert during one of these lessons that triggered Robert, unaware that he’d just painted a big fat target on his back.
Robert somehow convinced Darwood to escort him to his cell. Darwood followed him, and once they reached Robert’s cell, Robert garroted Darwood with the rope, then stabbed him repeatedly with the serrated blade. Once he was sure that Darwood was dead, Robert shoved his body underneath his bed, and went looking for victim number two.
According to his fellow prisoners, Robert then stalked down the walkways and started calling out names, inviting his fellow prisoners to come and pay him a visit. Wisely, they refused, and some made sure to stay out of his way, avoiding him for most of the day.
Out of time, Robert stalked into the cell of the 56-year-old William Roberts who was serving 7 years for the sexual assault of a 7-year-old-girl. William was lying on his bed, and he could only watch as Robert stalked towards him with a smile on his face, trapping him. Without a word, Robert grabbed a hold of William’s shoulder and started stabbing him repeatedly before he mutilated William’s face. Once William was dead, Robert turned around and calmly made his way towards the prison officer’s room.
There, he placed the bloodied, makeshift knife on the desk and told the officer that –
“The next roll-call will be two short.”
Once again, Robert John Maudsley was on trial for murder. He explained that his parents were ultimately to blame for his actions, that it was his anger at how they’d treated him that drove him to kill child molesters. He also claimed that he saw his father’s face whenever he’d attacked one of his victims. He would later explain that –
“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.”
Which, of course, is completely delusional, but okay. However, the Home Secretary eventually announced that Robert John Maudsley was too dangerous to release or keep around other prisoners, and he would spend the rest of his life-term sentence in solitary confinement.
The Problem with Robert John Maudsley
At the age of 69, Robert John Maudsley is infamous for the fact that he has spent the last 48 years in prison, 44 of which has been in solitary confinement, making him one of the UK’s longest serving prisoners.
In 1983, a cell was built specifically for Robert in the basement of Wakefield prison, and it is thought that his cell was the inspiration for Hannibal Lecter’s prison in the movie, Silence of the Lambs. Known simply as “The Cage”, it consists of two rooms and is 5.5m by 4.5m, or 18ft by 15f. It has large bulletproof windows through which his guards can watch him since he’s a suicide risk. His only furniture is a chair and table that is made out of compressed cardboard, and his bed is a concrete slab.
His toilet and washbasin are bolted to the floor, and the second cell can be reached through a solid steel door.
He spends 23 hours a day in his cell, and when he is allowed outside for his hours’ worth of exercise, he is escorted through the 17 doors that separates him from the outside world by 6 guards. He compares his solitary confinement to the times when his dad locked him up in a room on his own, saying –
“There are so many similarities, in terms of … being placed in strong boxes with cages. It’s so much like a room, so much like a cupboard, you know. And don’t forget, there are times [when] they strip me naked, just like my father used to strip me naked. There’s so many similarities in terms of [the prison guards] shoving food [underneath my door] and [my dad] just throwing it on the floor.”
In 1991, Robert had spent some time on the Isle of Wight at the Parkhurst Prison, and there he met Dr Bob Johnson, the psychiatrist who would interview and counsel him for almost three years. Dr. Johnson would explain how Robert was barely able to string sentences together when they first met, but a few weeks later Robert would explain that he’d started to –
“{Put] the pieces of myself back together.”
But then his treatment was ended abruptly, and he was left to stagnate further. According to Robert, the British justice system sees him as a problem that they can’t solve, and as such he is -
“…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.”
In March 2000, Robert wrote to The Times, asking the authorities to provide him with a television, classical music tapes, pictures and a pet bird. He also said that -
“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,”
It was denied, and later requests that he should be allowed to play board games with his guards, were also denied. His guards are also not allowed to speak to him. He is only allowed three visitors – his two older brothers, Kevin and Paul, and Paul’s son, Gavin. From what Gavin has shared during multiple documentaries about his serial killer uncle, the two of them write letters to each other, and it sounds as if Robert Maudsley does have some access to the outside world, since the two of them compare notes on movies and books, and Gavin updates his uncle on the world of Formula 1 racing.
But like I’d said earlier on, every documentary that has been made about Robert Maudsley ends up asking the same question - Does the story of Robert John Maudsley deserve a happy ending, or not? Does this man who – according to himself and his family – only became a serial killer because of his past, and then only once he’d already been imprisoned – deserve to die all alone in a glass cage?
According to Emma Kenny, the Family Counsellor who discussed Robert Maudsley’s case on the documentary, “Robert Maudsley – Caged Misery”, it isn’t unusual for Robert’s family – and the public – to sympathize with him. After all, Robert Maudsley was suggested as a topic for this channel after Simon ranted about how Dexter killers are never the vigilante types who go after other serial killers.
In my opinion, Robert Maudsley also can’t be labeled as a Dexter killer since he didn’t kill out of a sense of “vigilante justice”, but rather hatred and revenge. Emma Kenney explains it perfectly when she says that –
“Robert Maudsley feels justified in what he did. He sees pedophiles as vermin and he feels that it is appropriate to extinguish them, and whether we like to acknowledge it or not, that is not an uncommon belief system in the UK.
There will be many who feel that he was justified in his actions, but we have to always be aware that taking somebody’s life is the most grave thing that anyone can do. It is the worst behavior of a human being.”
It is worth mentioning that just because Robert Maudsley claimed to only be a danger to child molesters and pedophiles, it doesn’t suddenly make him a “better” kind of serial killer. Yes, his childhood trauma might have turned him into a killer, but the same can be said of almost every killer that we’d covered on The Casual Criminalist so far.
But it is also worth mentioning that not every victim of childhood abuse becomes a serial killer – Robert Maudsley had 11 siblings in total, and despite the fact that they suffered far longer at the hands of their father, they didn’t turn into serial killers.
No matter what his motivations were, Robert John Maudsley still made his own bed – however hard it might be. John Farrell’s murder wasn’t pre-meditated, but every murder after that was, the weapons and methods decided on in advance. Every victim had been carefully selected; their fates sealed the moment they made Robert Maudsley’s list. And that doesn’t make him less of a killer simply because he’s “only a danger to pedophiles”.
So, does Robert John Maudsley deserve to die alone in a glass cage, or should he be allowed to live his last years in peace simply because society had failed him? And if you say yes, can you also say the same about any of the other serial killers who society had also failed?
I think not.
Dismembered Appendices
As I’ve mentioned before, there isn’t a lot of information available on Robert Maudsley, but I was able to scrape together a few interesting tidbits.
Even though some of the sources I found called Robert Maudsley “the inspiration for Hannibal Lecter”, that simply isn’t true. Thomas Harris, the American author who created the character for his books, has said that he was inspired by multiple people, including a prison physician called Alfredo Ballí Treviño. According to Wikipedia, he was suspected of killing and dismembering several hitchhikers in the Mexican countryside during the late 1950s and early 1960s, before being caught for the murder of his friend and lover, Jesus Castillo Rangel.
According to Paul Maudsley, Robert’s eldest brother, they’d only realized that Robert was still alive when the newspapers reported on the murder of David Francis, prompting the brothers to seek him out.
Gavin Maudsley has claimed that he only realized who his “uncle Bobby” was when Robert Maudsley appeared in a documentary about life in solitary confinement, and his school friends pointed out the similarities in their looks and surname. Before that, he was just the weird uncle who he and his father would visit in prison.
Despite the fact that almost all of the articles about Robert Maudsley claims that he wants to be freed from his solitary confinement, he’d allegedly claimed on more than one occasion that he prefers solitary confinement above mixing with the other prisoners. However, he’s also made a point of informing prison authorities that if he ever was released, he would continue to kill child molesters and pedophiles.
It turns out that Robert Maudsley isn’t the snowflake that many think he is. More than one of the documentaries that I’ve watched while researching Robert Maudsley pointed out that it isn’t unusual for child molesters or pedophiles to be targeted – or killed – in prison. According to a 2015 article by Michael St. James, prison is often a “living hell” for pedophiles.
They’re easy targets because the other prisoners turn on them once it becomes clear why they’re in prison, and killing them earns their murderers ‘respect’ in the prison’s hierarchy. As such, Robert Maudsley isn’t the only person who’d become a serial killer in prison by targeting child molesters. He simply had a better PR team.
Key Takeaways
- Robert John Maudsley is a mission-oriented serial killer who targeted child molesters and pedophiles, believing he was doing society a favor.
- Unlike most serial killers, Maudsley only began killing after he was already imprisoned, first murdering a fellow inmate at Broadmoor psychiatric hospital.
- Maudsley endured horrific childhood abuse, including being locked in a cupboard for months and beaten daily by his father, which he claims motivated his later crimes.
- He has spent 44 years in solitary confinement in a specially built underground cell called ‘The Cage,’ which may have inspired Hannibal Lecter’s prison.
- The article concludes that despite his traumatic past and sympathetic public image, Maudsley remains a premeditated killer who is not morally excused by his victim selection.
Dana Ortiz covers prosecutorial mechanics, evidentiary procedure, and how investigations unwind decades after the original case file went cold.
Frequently Asked Questions
What nicknames is Robert John Maudsley known by?
Robert John Maudsley is known by several nicknames including Blue, Spoons, Hannibal the Cannibal, and Britain’s Most Dangerous Prisoner.
What type of serial killer is Robert John Maudsley classified as?
Robert John Maudsley falls squarely within the category of a Mission-oriented killer. He firmly believes that he was doing the world a favor, feels absolutely no guilt for what he’s done, doesn’t suffer from hallucinations or delusions, and he doesn’t seem to get any gratification from killing.
What distinguishes Robert John Maudsley from other serial killers?
What really distinguishes Robert John Maudsley from other serial killers is the fact that he didn’t become a serial killer until after he went to prison.
What happened to Robert Maudsley and his siblings when he was six months old?
When Robert was six months old, social services arrived on the doorstep of the Maudsley household, and all four of the Maudsley children were placed in care due to ‘neglect’. They were placed in Nazareth House in Crosby, another suburb in Liverpool.
How did Robert Maudsley kill John Farrell?
Robert John Maudsley strangled John Farrell with the cord of his bedside lamp, killing him. He then bludgeoned him before stabbing him repeatedly with a knife.
What happened during the murder of David Francis at Broadmoor?
On February 26, 1977, Robert Maudsley and David Lant tortured David Francis for nine hours in an empty cell. They had tied Francis up using a power cord stolen from a record player. Robert stabbed him in the ear with one of the broken spoons, killing him. Francis’s head had been ‘cracked open like a boiled egg’, he’d been cut all over his body and had been partially skinned.
Who were Robert Maudsley’s victims at Wakefield Prison on July 29, 1978?
On July 29, 1978, Robert Maudsley’s first victim was Salney Darwood, a 46-year-old man serving a life sentence for murdering his wife. His second victim was William Roberts, a 56-year-old serving 7 years for the sexual assault of a 7-year-old girl.
What is ‘The Cage’ and when was it built?
In 1983, a cell was built specifically for Robert in the basement of Wakefield prison. Known simply as ‘The Cage’, it consists of two rooms and is 5.5m by 4.5m, or 18ft by 15ft. It has large bulletproof windows through which his guards can watch him since he’s a suicide risk.
How long has Robert Maudsley spent in solitary confinement?
At the age of 69, Robert John Maudsley has spent the last 48 years in prison, 44 of which has been in solitary confinement, making him one of the UK’s longest serving prisoners.
Who is allowed to visit Robert Maudsley?
He is only allowed three visitors – his two older brothers, Kevin and Paul, and Paul’s son, Gavin.
Sources
- Original Casual Criminalist video: Robert John Maudsley: Britain’s Most Dangerous Prisoner
- Hero image source by Kerry Raymond / openverse, by.
