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This is the terrifying dungeon where would-be cannibal Geoffrey Portway planned to act out his sick fantasies on innocent children.

Shocked US police uncovered the evil lair after a two-year crackdown on paedophiles led them to the British-born pervert’s home in Worcester, Massachusetts.

They found the place strewn with indecent images of children – and a fully equipped “torture chamber”.

FBI pictures show how he had built a staircase leading down to a hidden, sound-proof cellar.

Inside was a “child-sized homemade coffin” covered in wire mesh and fitted with padlocks. It had six metal rings inside to act as restraints.

Alongside the cask was a steel cage 3ft wide, 4ft long and 2ft high. It, too, was fitted with locks.

Investigators also found bondage equipment, knives, handcuffs, castration tools, butchery equipment, two large freezers and disposable scalpels.

Portway has already pleaded guilty earlier this year to plotting to kidnap a child and to distributing and possessing child pornography.

On Tuesday prosecutors will demand that he serves at least 27 years in prison before being deported back to the UK.

In court papers filed earlier this week it emerged that he used the alias Longpig – the cannibal name for human flesh – as he chatted online with other paedophiles.

One of his contacts was sex offender Ronald Brown, jailed for 20 years in Florida this month for plotting to kidnap youngsters through his local church.

He is said to have sent Portway a picture of a young boy with lines drawn on it to show how the body should be sliced into various cuts of meat.

The pair also discussed taking a child to a rented house in the Everglades, mutilating him, eating him, then feeding the “leftovers” to alligators.

Portway wrote: “Just need to open a mortuary. Any boy who is scheduled to be cremated, disappears.”

Federal agents began investigating the pervert in 2012 after linking him to an internet chat room obsessed with cannibalism and child rape.

He would trade sick images and videos of youngsters being horrifically abused.

In one internet conversation the computer programmer talked about children he knew, identifying them as potential victims.

A paedophile told Portway it would not be hard to find out where a particular boy lived in Baltimore.

He asked: “Question is, would you go that far to snatch him?”

Portway replied: “I might – if I could get him.”

US Attorney Carmen Ortiz said: “Clearly, the facts of this case are very disturbing. We are grateful our law enforcement officers acted when they did.”

Special agent Bruce Foucart added: “Since we began this operation a worldwide network of offenders has been and continues to be unravelled.”