A new TV documentary has revealed the shocking story which led to Liverpool serial killer Robert Maudsley being known as "Hannibal the Cannibal".
Maudsley has been housed in a "glass cage" at HMP Wakefield after killing four men in the 1970s. The murderer, from Toxteth, is believed to be so dangerous that he is no longer allowed to associate with other prisoners or even guards.
Maudsley first killed in 1974 having fled home at 16. He became trapped in a spiral of drug abuse, funding his habit through sex work. One of his clients, John Farrell, was his first victim.
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Maudsley garrotted him after he showed him photographs of children he had sexually abused. He was jailed to life and sent to Broadmoor Hospital, which housed some of the country's most dangerous prisoners.
It was at Broadmoor where Maudsley earned his nickname and the myth about cannibalism originated. Speaking on Channel 5's HMP Wakefield: Evil Behind Bars, Maudsley's nephew Gavin Maudsley revealed how his uncle became known as a cannibal.
He said: "In Broadmoor, it's my understanding that he wasn't given the treatment that he was asking for. He and another prisoner took a sexual offender into one of the rooms and they barricaded themselves in.
"This was a nine hour siege. Terrible things happened in that room in those nine hours.
"This guy was tortured and the story goes that this is where they found a spoon hanging out of the victim's head and that's how they tried to say that my uncle was a cannibal. That's where 'Cannibal Maudsley' comes from."
Author and journalist Geoffrey Wansell added: "The legend grew up that Maudsley had eaten the brains of the man with a spoon. "What Maudsley had done is that he had finally killed the man using a sharpened plastic spoon, which he'd shoved into the man's ear.
"So his nickname became Hannibal the Cannibal and among other inmates he was always known as "Spoons". It wasn't based on reality, but the myth was forever associated with Robert Maudsley."
After killing the man at Broadmoor, Maudsley was then sent to HMP Wakefield, where he remains to this day. The glass cage that he lives in is said to have inspired Hannibal Lecter's cage in author Robert Harris' novel The Silence of the Lambs.
