Robert Maudsley
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Robert John Maudsley (born June 1953) is a British serial killer responsible for the murders of four people.
He was one of twelve children, born in Liverpool, and spent most of his early years in Nazareth House, a Roman Catholic orphanage run by nuns. He reportedly found the orphanage relatively pleasant compared to staying with his parents - he was retrieved by them at the age of eight years old. Maudsley was beaten regularly by his parents until he was eventually rescued by social services.
During the late 1960s, as a teenager, Maudsley was a rent boy in London. He often suffered sexual abuse at the hands of older men, which developed in him a hatred of paedophiles, and he also developed a drug habit.
In 1974, aged 21, Maudsley killed a man who picked him up for sex. Maudsley was arrested and sent to Broadmoor Hospital for the criminally insane. In 1977, Maudsley and another inmate took a third prisoner hostage and locked themselves in a cell with their captive, whom they tortured and killed. When the prison guards eventually smashed their way into the cell, the hostage was found to have had his skull cracked open and a spoon was wedged in his brain. Maudsley claimed he had eaten some of the victim's brain.
After this incident, Maudsley was convicted of manslaughter and sent to Wakefield Prison. He disliked the transfer and made it clear he wanted to return to Broadmoor.
In 1978 he lured fellow prisoner William Roberts to his cell and brutally stabbed him to death. Maudsley then went on the prowl around the wing hunting for a second victim, eventually cornering and stabbing to death prisoner Stanley Darwood. Put into solitary for these killings, Maudsley told prison guards, "I adore the sight of blood."
Maudsley is currently held in solitary confinement and is unlikely to ever be released.
His crimes were largely ignored by the British press until 1993, when a tabloid newspaper ran a sensationalised article on him, dubbing Maudsley "The Real Hannibal Lecter", a reference to the fictional cannibal killer in the 1991 movie The Silence Of The Lambs.
