The Real Hannibal: Robery Maudsley

0:40 Nineteen sixty one, Liverpool, London. An eight year old boy and his three older siblings stand outside the Nazareth House, a Roman Catholic orphanage, waiting to go home. For many children in the childcare systems around the world, this would be a happy occasion, but for Robert Monseley this was one of the worst days of his life. Robert was fourth in line of what would eventually be twelve children born to George Mauldesley, a man whose name would become almost as infamous as one of his own children would later on. The truth is that Robert and his older siblings had been taken into care because of the dire conditions at home, and particularly because of the way George treated them.

1:26 Older brother to Robert, Paul Maudesley, spoke about their childhood and said, at the orphanage we had all got on really well. Our parents would come to visit, but they were just strangers. The nuns were our family, and we all used to stick together. Then our parents took us home and we were subjected to physical abuse. It was something we'd never experienced before. They just picked on us one by one, gave us a beating and sent us off to our room, but it was Robert who seemed to be the biggest target of all. All I remember of my childhood is the beatings, he later said. Once I was locked in my room for six months and my father only opened the door to come in and beat me four or six times a day. He used to hit me with sticks or rods, and once he busted a twenty two caliber air rifle over my back. Robert also claimed that during this period he was sexually abused and raped by his father, and that was the life that waited for Robert and his siblings back at home, and it was the life that he would return to whenever the Liverpool child Care Services would send them back to the Maudsley household for trial periods. These periods were never permanent, but the damage inflicted during most of them certainly was During the late nineteen sixties, when Robert became a teenager, he decided that enough was enough. He moved to London to finn for himself and resorted to selling himself to men on the London streets just to get by. Crippling drug

3:00 addiction quickly followed, and Robert found himself seeking help after several failed suicide attempts. It was while he was in care for these attempts that he admitted to doctors that he heard voices that were telling him to kill his parents. If I had killed my parents in nineteen seventy he later said, none of these people would have died. What Robert had meant by that statement started in nineteen seventy four with a man named John Ferrell. John solicited Robert's services in wood Green, London, and for whatever reason, decided to show Robert pictures of young children. John claimed to have been sexually abusing. This confession made a switch flip in Robert's mind and there was no going back. Robert then attacked John and strangled him with the garrot until he was dead. Instead of running, John then surrendered himself to the police. He confessed to the murder and asked to be admitted into psychiatric care. That was a request that the courts granted when they found that Robert was unfit to stand trial, and they sent him to Broadmoor Hospital, the oldest high security psychiatric hospital in England. Robert spent three years there in relative peace, but that all changed when another patient crossed him the wrong way. His name was David Francis, and his crime was child molestation. Upon learning this, Robert and another patient named David Cheeseman, who was ironically serving a sentence for the rape and sexual assault of a

4:31 sixteen year old girl, took matters into their own hands. When David Francis was admitted into Broadmoor Hospital, he already had one strike against him for his crimes, but after the alleged attack and rape of two other inmates for David, Robert believed that there would be no redemption. Robert and David Cheeseman cornered David Francis and slowly tortured and killed him over a period of nine hours. The discoververy of Robert Maudsley's new crime marked the end of his psychiatric care. Robert was then charged with manslaughter and transferred to Wakefield Prison. A later sentencing made the transfer permanence, and he was sentenced to life imprisonment with a recommendation that he should never be released. The courts threw the book at him.

5:19 For some this would have been the end of their story and the end of their crimes, but Robert Maudsley was far from finished. Within the year, he had struck again, and this time, he had bigger ambitions than ridding the world of one measly criminal. This time, Robert planned to take out seven, and he started with Souney Darwood. On the surface, it looked like Soundly and Robert were actually friends. He would regularly give Robert French lessons, but Robert was only biding his time. One day, he invited Soundly over to his cell, where he suddenly a viciously attacked him. He first strangled him with a garrot and then stabbed him with a shank until he was dead. Robert then hid his body under the bed so that he could continue his killing spree undisturbed. Unlike the first two, Soudney was not a convicted child molester or abuser. This time Robert's victim was imprisoned for killing his wife.

6:19 But it looked like Robert had cast the net of potential targets wider than he had before. With Soundee's body still stashed away under Robert's bed, he then tried to lure more inmates into his cell, where he intended to finish them off as well. Perhaps sensing that something was wrong, all of the other prisoners refused to follow Robert, realizing that he would have to work a little harder to get his next kill. Robert then left his cell and went on the hunt. As he stalked the wing, he found William Roberts asleep in his bed. William was in prison for abusing a seven year old girl, and as soon as Robert saw William lying there, he bounced. Robert first stabbed at William's head several times with his shank, and then he began bashing his head into the wall until he was also dead. Roberts, all calm and collected, then walked up to the guard's post, handed over his shank, and told them that the next roll call would be two inmates.

7:18 Short. Needless to say, his confession shocked the prison and the country. That was twice now that Robert had struck right under the administration's noses, and the second time around he'd managed to take out two victims without getting caught. It was clear that the British justice system had no ordinary criminal on their hands, and this was a fact that would later become known nationwide. When his story reached the press. Some outlets published a false report that Robert had actually eaten part of one of his victim's brains and Robert Mautsley turned into an overnight sensation. He was now known as Hannibal the Cannibal, and almost like they were playing into the hype, Wakefield Prison built Robert his own cell. They buried him in the basement, caged in a glass cell with metal bars, and locked him away in solitary confinement. If he is to ever leave a cell, he is to be guarded and monitored by four prison officers at all times. That was the order. Days became weeks, weeks became months, and months became years, and years became decades. Still, Robert Maudsley is in solitary confinement. In two thousand, over twenty years later, Robert begged for the torment to end. Quote. I see this in part as going back to my childhood and going back to the room where I was detained for six months and that torments me, he said. He asked for either conditions

8:50 of his solitary confinement to be eased, or for him to be given a cyanide capsule so that he could end his confinement himself. Both of those requests were re fused, as was another request for him to get a pet bird to keep him company in his cell. That has since become known as the cage. Are we not all products of our environment? Robert later asked in a letter Wakefield prison authorities perceive me as a problem. Their solution to that problem to date has been to bury me alive the cage. Ultimately, for them being my concrete coffin, I'm left to stagnate, vegetate and regress, left to confront my solitary head on with people who have eyes but don't see, who have ears but don't hear, and who have mouths but don't speak.

9:39 Consequently, I too am left with no voice, nowhere to turn. But inward. I had five years sleeping on a mattress on the floor and just a slop bucket in my cell. I complained to the Board of prison visitors, but all they said was, well, you have a bed, what are you complaining for. Robert Maudsley remains the longest prison are held in solitary confinement in Britain to date. He is currently in his seventies and hasn't had regular human contact for over forty years. He says that at this point he would find it very difficult to get used to seeing and talking with the other inmates again, but that he worries for the other younger prisoners who are kept imprisoned under the same circumstances as he is. That's ten minute Murder for today brief and bingeable true Crime. I'm Joe, I'm the host, and thank you so much for taking the time to listen to ten minute Murder.

10:46 And I guess you could consider this this episode a serial Killer Sunday even though I don't really do that anymore. Some of the episodes that you're going to hear me release on Sundays aren't actually serial killers, which you could consider this a serial killer Sunday episode. Robert Maudsley, that's a disturbing story and one that if you kind of have a heart and can I don't want to say look past what he did, but you almost have to look past what he did to see him as a human if you see him as a human being. Let me put it that way, if you see Robert as another human being, you kind of feel for him a little bit, and you don't feel for him. And the fact that you know you don't need to murder people. You've been through a lot. You've been through like the worst that you can go through and still be alive, but killing people is not the answer. And he's obviously mentally unwell, and that's a horrible situation that he has found himself in for over forty years in that prison. Some would say, well deserved. Hey, if you're a brand new listener to the podcast, make sure you hit subscribe wherever you are listening right now. That will more easily help you catch up on all the back episodes and every time there's a new one, you open the app that you like to listen in and then boom, it's going to be right there for you to take a listen to Joe at ten Minute Murder dot com is my email address if you want to get in touch with me. And that's it. That's your episode for today. Thank you so much for listening to ten Minute Murder.