'It does not matter to them whether I am mad or bad. They do not know the answer and they do not care just so long as I am kept out of sight and out of mind'. Robert Maudsley.



They called him 'Blue' because that was the colour the face of his first victim had turned as he slowly strangled him. Then he became known as 'Spoons' after killing again and leaving the body with a spoon sticking out of the skull and part of the brain missing.

His third and fourth victims died on the same afternoon and soon afterwards Robert Maudsley acquired the nickname that has stuck: Hannibal the Cannibal.

Although he is now nearly 50 and has not committed a crime for more than 25 years, Maudsley is officially classified as Britain's most dangerous prisoner, a man said to represent such a high risk to those around him that he has spent the past quarter of a century in virtual isolation. With no prospect of ever being released, he will remain in prison in isolation until he dies.

Maudsley's bizarre and tragic story will be highlighted by Channel 5 next month as part of its Hideous Crimes documentary series. Using unprecedented access to members of his family, friends and former inmates, as well as Maudsley's own letters and psychiatric sessions, the programme paints a startling portrait of the abusive childhood that turned the man into a killer.

It will also mark the start of a new campaign to improve Maudsley's quality of life, on the grounds that his treatment could lead to further mental breakdown and is therefore a breach of his human rights.

'The prison authorities see me as a problem, and their solution has been to put me into solitary confinement and throw away the key, to bury me alive in a concrete coffin,' Maudsley wrote recently. 'It does not matter to them whether I am mad or bad. They do not know the answer and they do not care just so long as I am kept out of sight and out of mind.

'I am left to stagnate, vegetate and to regress; left to confront my solitary head-on with people who have eyes but don't see and who have ears but don't hear, who have mouths but don't speak. My life in solitary is one long period of unbroken depression.'

It is a situation that has appalled his supporters, who say that Maudsley is the victim of an uncaring and unsympathetic prison system that virtually denies him treatment and does nothing to assist in his rehabilitation.

Maudsley is housed in a 'glass cage', a two-cell unit at Wakefield prison that bears an uncanny resemblance to the one featured in The Silence of the Lambs. It was built for Maudsley in 1983, seven years before the film was released. At around 5.5m by 4.5m, the two cells are slightly larger than average and have large bulletproof windows through which inmates can be observed.

The only furnishings are a table and chair, both made of compressed cardboard. The lavatory and sink are bolted to the floor while the bed is a concrete slab.

A solid steel door opens into a small cage within the cell, encased in thick Perspex, with a small slot at the bottom through which guards pass him food and other items. He remains in the cell for 23 hours a day. During his daily hour of exercise, he is escorted to the yard by six prison officers. He is not allowed contact with any other inmates. It is a level of intense isolation to which no other prisoner, not even Myra Hindley, has been subjected.

Maudsley has a genius-level IQ, loves classical music, poetry and art. He is keen to take an Open University degree in music theory. Friends and family describe him as gentle, kind and highly intelligent. They enjoy both his company and his sense of humour.

'Since getting to know Bob, I have seen many prison documents about him,' says Jane Heaton, who began writing to Maudsley three years ago and has visited him several times. 'Everyone concentrates on the crimes he committed 25 years ago.

'It's as if they are living in a time loop and no one is prepared to look at how he is now. I would like to see him get an independent review of his condition and find a suitable course of treatment for him.'

The most recent pictures of Maudsley are more than 20 years old and were taken from a documentary made about his time in prison a few years into his regime of solitary. The rigours of solitary have taken their toll and today Maudsley looks far older than his 49 years. He has a grey beard, his hair is long and wispy and his skin, pale from lack of sunlight, is sucked in across his cheekbones.

During his last murder trial in 1979, the court heard that during his violent rages Maudsley believed his victims were his parents. The killings, his lawyers argued, were the result of pent-up aggression resulting from a childhood of near-constant abuse. 'When I kill, I think I have my parents in mind,' Maudsley said. 'If I had killed my parents in 1970, none of these people need have died. If I had killed them, then I would be walking around as a free man without a care in the world.'

Maudsley was born in June 1953, the fourth child of a Liverpool lorry driver. Before his second birthday, Robert, his brothers Paul and Kevin, and sister Brenda were all taken into care after they were found to be suffering from 'parental neglect'.

The young Robert spent most of his infancy at Nazareth House, a Roman Catholic orphanage run by nuns in Liverpool. During that time he formed a close bond with his brothers but barely knew his parents, who used to visit occasionally. Several years later, during which time they had eight other children, they took the first four back home.

It was to be the start of a horrific campaign of physical abuse. His brother Paul remembers: '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.'

The worst, however, was reserved for Robert. 'All I remember of my childhood is the beatings. Once I was locked in a room for six months and my father only opened the door to come in to beat me, four or six times a day. He used to hit me with sticks or rods and once he bust a .22 air rifle over my back.' While his brothers had some vague memories of his parents, Robert had been too young and never knew them at all.

He was eventually taken away by social services and placed in a series of foster homes. His father told the rest of the family he had died. Robert drifted down to London at 16, developed a massive drug habit and spent the next few years in and out of psychiatric hospitals after repeated suicide attempts. On numerous occasions he told doctors that he could hear voices in his head telling him to kill his parents.

Working as a rent boy to support his growing drug habit, Maudsley committed his first murder in 1973 after being picked up by labourer John Farrell for sex. When Farrell produced pictures of several children he had abused, Maudsley flew into a rage and garrotted him.

Declared unfit to stand trial, Maudsley was sent to Broadmoor hospital for the criminally insane and remained there for three years. What happened next has become the stuff of prison legend. In 1977 he and another psychopath took a third patient, a paedophile, hostage and barricaded themselves into a cell. They then tortured their victim for nine hours before garrotting him and holding his body aloft so that guards could see him through the spy hatch. According to one guard, the man was discovered with his head 'cracked open like a boiled egg' with a spoon hanging out of it and part of the brain missing.

Ironically, despite killing a patient in Broadmoor, Maudsley was found fit to stand trial. Convicted of manslaughter, he was sent not to hospital but to Wakefield Prison, otherwise known as the Monster Mansion. Maudsley arrived at Wakefield to find his reputation had preceded him. Dubbed 'cannibal' and 'brain-eater', he had been at the prison for only a matter of weeks when he set off on another killing spree.

According to other inmates who were there at the time, Maudsley set out to kill seven people that day. The first was Salney Darwood, imprisoned for killing his wife. He lured him into his cell and cut his throat, then hid his body under his bed. Maudsley then spent the rest of the morning trying to find other people to lure back, but no one would go with him. 'They could all see the madness in his eyes,' said one.

Eventually, he sneaked into the cell of 56-year-old Bill Roberts and attacked him as he lay on his bunk, hacking at his skull with a makeshift knife and then repeatedly dashing his head against the wall.

He then calmly walked into the wing office, placed a serrated home-made knife on the desk and informed the guards that they would be two short when it came to the next roll-call.

Convicted of double murder, Maudsley was inexplicably sent back to Wakefield Prison. Unable to mix with others for his and their safety, he was moved into solitary confinement and has remained there ever since.

During a spell in Parkhurst, on the Isle of Wight, Maudsley met psychiatrist Dr Bob Johnson, who, after three years of interviews and counselling, believed that he was making great progress and was three quarters of the way through removing the aggression and latent violence that made Maudsley such a danger. But then, without warning, the treatment was cut off and Maudsley was moved back to Wakefield.

'As far as I can tell, the prison authorities are trying to break him,' says his brother Paul. 'Every time they see him making a little progress, they throw a spanner in the works. He spent a time in Woodhill prison, and there he was getting on well with the staff, even playing chess with them. He had access to books and music and television. Now they have put him back in the cage at Wakefield. His troubles started because he got locked up as a kid. All they do when they put him back there is bring all that trauma back to him.'

Maudsley himself agrees: 'All I have to look forward to is further mental breakdown and possible suicide. In many ways, I think this is what the authorities hope for. That way the problem of Robert John Maudsley can be easily and swiftly resolved.'

· 'Hideous Crimes' begins on Channel 5 on 6 May.



• This article was amended on 13 August 2013 to correct the crime committed by Maudsley's victim, Salney Darwood.