Secrets of 'Monster Mansion' prison and the UK's most dangerous inmates

Daily Mirror

6 hours ago

Originally built as a house of correction in 1594, HMP Wakefield was rebuilt in the Victorian era and has a long history of housing our worst criminals, including the longest serving prisoner in the UK penal system
Wakefield jail is nicknamed 'Monster Mansion' because it is home to some of the country's most depraved criminals. Originally built as a house of correction in 1594, it was rebuilt in the Victorian era and has a long history of housing our worst criminals.
The Mirror previously reported how the longest serving prisoner in the UK penal system, "Hannibal the Cannibal' Robert Maudsley, spent his 51st Christmas behind bars last year. He holds the world record for solitary confinement, kept apart from the rest of the prison population for almost 46 years. He was first locked up for murder when he was 21 in 1974.
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On July 28, 1978, already serving life for double murder, Maudsley killed two fellow prisoners in Wakefield. He was said to have told a prison guard: 'There'll be two short on the roll call.' Since that day more than 46 years ago, he has spent his time in solitary.
In 1983, after prison staff, including barbers, declined to see him alone, a special cell was built for him at Wakefield. His former 'neighbour' Charlie Bronson was locked up in the cell next to Maudsley's before he was moved to HMP Woodhill, Milton Keynes.
During his years in Wakefield, Bronson told us about his daily 2,500 press-ups (94 every 30 seconds). He dabbled in his art, wrote for his web site, and worked on books including his life story. The calm voice at the end of the line was at odds with the public persona.
"They call me Britain's most violent man," he told me before he launched his 2008 autobiography. "Every time I see it in the paper I feel like I am reading about someone else."
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Locked away for 23 hours a day in a 24 ft by 10 ft cell "within a cell", the view from his window a brick wall, he used exercise, art and Radio Five Live to beat the dark hours of solitude, and said proudly: "I am the King of Isolation". His stance was simple: "I believe I should have been punished. I have been punished.
"Now it is time to go home, I have done my bird." It is the argument which he will now put before a Parole Board hearing. He was released in 1987 and became a bare-knuckle boxer but was jailed the following year for another armed robbery.
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He has spent most of his life inside for a string of attacks on warders and prisoners, earning him the reputation of Britain's most violent inmate. So far, the authorities have refused to free him due to his violent episodes behind bars. Evil child killer Roy Whiting told prison warders he was too terrified to sleep in a Wakefield cell because it is haunted by the ghost of Dr Death Harold Shipman.
Whiting, who murdered eight-year-old Sarah Payne, was spooked by eerie noises and "strange goings on". He had been moved into Wakefield Prison's cell D336, the place where serial killer Shipman hanged himself 21 years ago. He complained about the 'haunting'.
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Many in Wakefield believed the cell was jinxed. Another inmate was found hanged there in 1987. Shipman, 58, from Hyde, Greater Manchester, murdered 284 of his patients and was sentenced to 15 life sentences.
He worked on a biography of Napoleon while on D-Wing. He preferred to stay inside his cell reading books and newspapers and writing his prison diary. It contained several entries about his suicide plans. In the past, Wakefield has housed Ian Huntley. Mass murderer Jeremy Bamber is believed to still be housed there.
Ian Watkins, the disgraced Lostprophets frontman, served time there after pleading guilty to 13 sex offences. After being caught with a mobile phone behind bars in 2019, Watkins told a court that he was locked up with "murderers, mass murderers, rapists, paedophiles, serial killers". "The worst of the worst," he told the judge, before another 10 months were added to his sentence. In August 2023, the Mirror revealed that Watkins was fighting for his life after three inmates held him hostage at Wakefield. Officers had to wait for an armed 'Tornado' team of specially trained riot officers to break up the situation with grenades. It was claimed that the former musician suffered from stab wounds and beatings. A 2021 Channel 5 documentary, HMP Wakefield: 'Evil Behind Bars', heard how sex offenders were considered the "lowest form of life" in the prison. One contributor to the programme referred to the inmates as the "dregs of society". Maudsley, born Robert Mawdsley on Merseyside in 1953, was first sent to Broadmoor secure hospital in 1974 after garrotting John Farrell who picked him up for sex. He earned his frightening nickname 'Hannibal the Cannibal' after killing three men being detained with him: a fellow Broadmoor patient in 1977, followed by two prisoners in 1978 when he went on the rampage in Wakefield.
His nephew Gavin Mawdsley, from Liverpool, told Evil Behind Bars that his uncle had accepted his fate. He said: "He's asking to be on his own because he knows what can happen. Put him with rapists and paedophiles - I know because he told us - he is going to kill as many paedophiles as he can. "I'm not condoning what he did. But he didn't kill a child or woman. The people he killed were really bad people." A murderer who spent time in the cell next to Mawdsley told the programme: "To hold someone in an underground cage for 40 years is unforgivable. What the system has done to him amounts to psychological torture." The Ministry of Justice insisted there was 'no such thing as solitary confinement in our prison system'.
A Prison Service spokesperson added: "Some offenders will be segregated if they pose a risk to others. They are allowed time in the open air every day, visits, phone calls, and access to legal advice and medical care like everyone else." The placement of offenders in segregation is 'reviewed regularly'.