Yahoo News 'Hannibal the Cannibal' Robert Maudsley forced to give up favourite TV show after prison taunts
Prisoners who shared a communal TV with Robert Maudsley - a notorious inmate held in a glass cell - would often switch off his favourite shows Emmerdale and Coronation Street to irritate him.
Dubbed "Hannibal the Cannibal" and "The Brain Eater", Maudsley has spent 50 years in prison, with 45 of those in solitary confinement.
In the revealing book, Inside Wakefield Prison: Life Behind Bars in the Monster Mansion, authors Jonathan Levi and Emma French offer insights into Maudsley's incarceration. They describe how he lived in a secure "strongbox" cell with Perspex walls but still had visual contact with adjacent inmates.
Jonathan Levi and Emma French spoke to a source from inside the prison known as Pete, who detailed: "They used to share a television and would take it in turns to pick what to watch. It was only up to about 8pm, not like nowadays where they can watch TV 24/7 as they have TVs in their own cells."
Pete explained the system: "If Bob (Robert M) picked Monday, then he would pick Wednesday, Friday, Sunday etc. and would roll over every week. If he was in there by himself, he could choose every night. ", reports the Mirror.
He went on to say: "If he and his neighbour didn't get on, they might stop him from watching shows he liked during their days to choose. Even if they wanted to watch the same things, they might do it to annoy him."
Pete also mentioned that Maudsley was fond of Emmerdale and Coronation Street, but his fellow inmate would spitefully change channels just as the programmes started, much to Maudsley's chagrin.
Maudsley, 70, was convicted of murder in 1974 at the age of 21 and has been kept separate from other prisoners for 45 years after killing three inmates.
He was imprisoned for strangling child molester John Farrell in Wood Green, London, after Farrell showed Maudsley images of children he had abused.
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Maudsley, a Liverpool native, quickly confessed to the police. However, as he was deemed unfit for trial, he was sent to Broadmoor Hospital.
In 1977, Maudsley and fellow inmate David Cheeseman locked themselves in a cell with child molester David Francis.
They tortured him for nine hours before displaying Francis' body. Maudsley was then convicted of manslaughter and sent to HMP Wakefield.
Yet, his killing spree continued just a year later in 1978.
He strangled and stabbed Salney Darwood, 46, and then stabbed paedophile Bill Roberts, 56, before hitting his skull with a dagger and smashing his head into a wall.
Maudsley was subsequently given a life sentence and was reportedly placed in a Perspex box in the basement, measuring 18ft by 14ft, for 23 hours a day.
It seems that staff were particularly cautious around the convicted killer, fearing he would have "killed you and not blinked an eyelid" and "killed anyone he got close to".
A source named Pete, who claimed to be "very familiar" with Maudsley, said: "The sad thing is, if he were living with someone else, he'd kill somebody else. It'd have been more humane to just put him down."
