Robert Maudsley’s brother committed his first murder in 1974 when he was 21 years old (Picture: Collect/Liverpool Echo)
The brother of ‘Hannibal the Cannibal’ said he is ‘happy’ locked up in one of Britain’s maximum security jails.
Robert Maudsley has been locked up in a specially-built glass cell since 1983 after being handed a life sentence for killing three people.
The cell is in an underground box, which measures 18ft by 14ft, and is in the basement of maximum security Wakefield Prison.
Robert’s brother Kevin said his killer sibling is ‘happy’ to be behind bars and would never apologise for his crimes as his victims were ‘all paedophiles’.
Kevin visits him once a month, talking to him through metal bars.
‘He’s settled in – he wouldn’t want to move,’ Kevin said.
Robert Maudsley has not been pictured for over 40 years (Picture: BBC)
‘He’d rather be on his own than in the normal prison. He just likes it.
‘I have visits. He’s in one and we’re in another, with bars. He seems happy enough in there. He seems alright, we have a good laugh.
‘We just talk about things like outside – what’s it like, what’s going on, things like that’, he told Mail Online.
Robert Maudsley was branded with the nickname ‘Hannibal the Cannibal’ after false reports emerged that he had eaten the brains of one of his victims.
During his 40 years in prison Maudsley has only been pictured once, when he was being filmed for a documentary.
Despite what his brother says, Maudsley’s accounts paint a very different picture of his attitude to imprisonment.
The inmate has campaigned to move to better conditions, saying in a letter 20 years ago: ‘The prison authorities see me as a problem, and their solution has been to put me into solitary confinement and throw away the key, to bury me alive in a concrete coffin.
‘It does not matter to them whether I am mad or bad. They do not know the answer and they do not care just so long as I am kept out of sight and out of mind.
‘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.
‘My life in solitary is one long period of unbroken depression.’
After being convicted of manslaughter, Maudsley was sent to the ‘Monster Mansion’ HMP Wakefield (Picture: HM Chief Inspector of Prisons)
Maudsley sleeps on a concrete slab and uses a toilet and sink which are bolted to the floor.
The cell is made of Perspex, and contains compressed cardboard furniture.
The killer and his siblings had an ‘unhappy’ start to life and were put into care at a young age, after they suffered ‘physical abuse’ at the hands of their parents, who were found to be neglectful.
During his murder trial in 1979, Maudsley said he believed his victims were his parents.
‘When I kill, I think I have my parents in mind. 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,’ he said.
Maudsley also launched a legal bid 20 years ago, requesting that he be allowed to die.
In a letter, he said: ‘What purpose is served by keeping me locked up 23 hours a day?
‘Why even bother to feed me and to give me one hour’s exercise a day? Who actually am I a risk to?’
The serial killer went on to question why he couldn’t have a pet budgie, which he promised to love and ‘not eat’.
Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk.
For more stories like this, check our news page.