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.
On July 28, 1978, already serving life for double murder, Mawdsley killed two fellow prisoners in Wakefield jail.
He told a guard: “There’ll be two short on the roll call.” Since that day almost 45 years ago he has spent his time in solitary.
In 1983, after prison staff, including barbers, declined to see him alone, a speciall cell was built at Wakefield.
At 18ft by by 15ft, it is slightly bigger than average. It has large bulletproof windows and a table and chair made of compressed cardboard.
The lavatory and sink are bolted to the floor while the bed is a concrete slab.
A steel door opens into a small cage within the cell, encased in thick Perspex, with a small slot at the bottom through which he is passed food.
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.
Mawdsley got his Hannibal the Cannibal name amid claims he dug a spoon into the brain of one of his victims, an allegation he always denied.
There is no Hollywood glamour for the real-life Hannibal. He spends 23 out of every 24 hours in the tiny space he once described as “like being buried alive in a coffin”.
In the early days of his confinement he wrote to newspapers campaigning for better treatment. In 2000, he went to court in a bid to be “allowed to die”.
In a letter he asked why he couldn’t have a pet budgie, promising to love it and “not eat it”.
And questioning why he couldn’t have a TV to “see the world”, he ended the letter saying: “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 Mawdsley can easily and swiftly be resolved.”
Although the story of digging a spoon into the brain of one of his victims was later shown to be untrue, it won him the nickname Spoons from fellow inmates.
Like Dr Lecter, the literary creation made famous in the hit movie, Mawdsley is said to love books, poetry and art.
His nephew Gavin Mawdsley, from Liverpool, told Channel 5’s Evil Behind Bars that his uncle had accepted his fate.Gavin said: “He’s asking to be on his own because he knows what can happen.
“Put him on a wing surrounded by rapists and paedophiles – I know this because he told us – he was going to kill as many paedophiles as he could.
“I’m not condoning what he did. He did very bad things. But he didn’t kill a child or woman. An innocent person didn’t go to work that day and never return home. The people he killed were really bad people.”
A murderer who spent time in the cell next to Mawdsley told the programme: “I felt we were being psychologically murdered. The system’s treatment of Bob was totally dehumanising.
“To hold someone in an underground cage for over 40 years. It is unforgivable.
“What Bob did in terms of murdering sex offenders is obviously wrong.
But what the system has done to Bob amounts to psychological torture.
“There are other ways of dealing with prisoners like Bob.”
Mawdsley has clung on to what life he has and turns 70 in June. Jailed 49 years ago in 1974, he is believed to be Britain’s longest serving 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 on his 69th birthday. He died last year.
