Wakefield, England – A notorious British killer, Robert Mawdsley, now 70 years old, has marked the 50th year of his incarceration, with 45 of those years spent in solitary confinement. Mawdsley, also known as ‘Hannibal the Cannibal’ due to false reports that he had consumed a victim’s brain, was imprisoned at the age of 21 for the murder of John Farrell in 1974.
After being placed in solitary confinement just four years later for killing three people inside the prison, Mawdsley has spent his days in an 18 foot by 15 foot cell protected by bulletproof glass, specially built for him in 1983.
The criminal was initially ruled unfit for trial after the murder of Farrell and was sent to Broadmoor Hospital in Berkshire in 1977. From there, he went on to kill a fellow inmate before being transferred to Wakefield prison in West Yorkshire, where he murdered two more inmates, leading to his solitary confinement in 1978.
Mawdsley’s nephew, Gavin, revealed in a Channel 5 documentary that his uncle, despite being content to be locked away from the outside world, expressed his willingness to continue killing child offenders if surrounded by them. The killer previously stated both contentment and feelings of being buried alive in his small space.
In 2021, Mawdsley lost his appeal to spend Christmas with other people and was informed that he would remain in his ‘glass box’ until his death. The Ministry of Justice denied the existence of solitary confinement in their prison system and clarified that some offenders may be segregated if they pose a risk to others.
After trying to campaign for better treatment during his early days of confinement and launching a legal bid to be allowed to die in 2000, Mawdsley is believed to be Britain’s longest-serving prisoner after Moors murderer Ian Brady, who served 51 years, and US prisoner Albert Woodfox, who held the world record for solitary confinement at 43 years before his release in 2016.