Random Revelations About Robert Maudsley, The Real-Life 'Hannibal The Cannibal' (15 items)

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  (#14) Maudsley Said He Thought Of His Parents When He Killed People

  According to Maudsley, the physical abuse and neglect he suffered as a child drove him to kill four men, and he thinks that if he'd murdered his mother and father in 1970 - years before he killed his first victim - he wouldn't have taken any more lives. Maudsley has also said that when he's killed people, he's had his "parents in mind."

  Maudsley maintains if he had killed his parents, he would be "walking around as a free man without a care in the world.” 
   
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  (#2) He Was Allegedly Abused As A Child

  According to Maudsley, his father, George, repeatedly abused him and two of his brothers. Maudsley's brother Paul said their father hit them, and sometimes incorporated objects like his belt or a stick. He maintained their mother, Jean, told their father about minor infractions, like not coming right home after school, to incite the beatings.

  Paul also said when they weren't being beaten, both parents ignored the boys, making for a home environment in which they felt unwanted and unloved. Authorities only removed Maudsley from the home to live with a foster family.
   
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  (#1) He Grew Up In An Orphanage

  Shortly before he turned 2, authorities removed Maudsley, his two brothers, and his sister from their family home due to parental child abuse. Child services placed Maudsley and his siblings in a Catholic orphanage in Liverpool, and the children developed close relationships with one another and the nuns who ran the children's home.

  However, Maudsley's parents returned to the orphanage many years later and brought the four children back to their home to live with the additional eight kids they'd had while Maudsley and his siblings were in the orphanage. Not long after Maudsley and his brothers moved back in with their parents, their father allegedly physically abused them. A year later, when Maudsley was approximately 10 years old, authorities placed him in foster care.
   
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  (#10) The Press Dubbed Him 'Hannibal The Cannibal'

  The British press dubbed Maudsley "Hannibal the Cannibal" largely because a guard at Broadmoor Hospital alleged Maudsley ate a portion of his second victim's brain. The nickname is associated with Thomas Harris’s 1981 fictional character, Hannibal Lecter - who Anthony Hopkins portrayed in the 1991 adaptation Silence of the Lambs - because Maudsley’s special cell is also made up mainly of Plexiglas.  Like Lecter, Maudsley murdered people while behind bars, making him a uniquely dangerous criminal.

  Additionally, Maudsley is incredibly intelligent - with a genius-level IQ - and he shares the fictitious doctor's love of art, literature, and classical music. He is reportedly interested in taking college classes on art and music, and the people have remained in contact with Maudsley during his time in prison have described him as distinctly pleasant.
   
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  (#8) He Killed Two More Men While In Wakefield Prison

  On July 28, 1978, while serving his sentence in HMP Wakefield for killing Francis, Maudsley allegedly told his fellow inmates he wanted to murder seven people in a single day. After successfully getting Salney Darwood - a man who had been convicted of killing his wife - to enter his cell, Maudsley slit his throat and hid Darwood's body underneath his bed. 

  According to his fellow prisoners, Maudsley tried to get other inmates to enter his cell, but they all refused. Consequently, Maudsley went into the cell of Bill Roberts. He accosted the 56-year-old with a shiv and beat Roberts’s head against a wall. After killing Roberts, Maudsley gave the makeshift knife to prison authorities, telling the guards he'd murdered two men.
   
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  (#15) He's Said He Wants To Kill Himself If He Can't Have A Pet In Prison

  Depressed and distraught because of decades in solitary confinement, Maudsley has made a number of requests for different remedies to the constant boredom and sadness he's experienced in prison. In 2000, the convicted killer wrote letters to a British newspaper asking for a pet bird to keep him company in his cell, as well as a television and classical music. 

  Maudsley also told prison officials that if they were unable to provide him with the items he'd requested, he would like them to give him a cyanide capsule to end his life. 

  In 2010, Maudsley reportedly asked officials to let him play board games with prison officials, claiming it would help ease some of the gloominess and monotony of life in solitary confinement. However, because of the multiple murders Maudsley committed while behind bars or in a psychiatric hospital, authorities are reluctant to grant his requests.
   

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