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 12 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 with staying with his parents. At the age of eight he was retrieved by them and beaten regularly until he was eventually rescued by social services.
During the late 1960s, as a teenager, Maudsley was a rent boy in London. He developed a deep hatred of pedophiles, as well as a drug habit, from his years of prostitution.
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 guards eventually smashed their way into the cell, the hostage's skull was found cracked open and a spoon 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 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 now held in solitary confinement and is unlikely to 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.
