Robert Maudsley, 72, nicknamed ‘Hannibal the Cannibal’, has become obsessed with his treatment in a new jail. He is keeping legal documents to record his concerns ‘in case something happens to him’

Britain’s longest serving prisoner has refused all prison meals and is recording details of his regime in a standoff with authorities.

Robert Maudsley, 72, nicknamed ‘Hannibal the Cannibal’ by inmates, has become obsessed with his treatment in a new jail. He is keeping legal documents to record his concerns ‘in case something happens to him’.

He remains in regular contact with his family and his girlfriend Loveinia Grace MacKenney. But she told how he refused all cooked prison meals for three months after moving from his ‘glass cell’ in Wakefield jail, West Yorkshire to Whitemoor in Cambridgeshire in April this year.

Londoner Loveinia Grace, 69, said: “He has sworn affidavits and legal documents which he has sent me so there is a record of his treatment by staff. I speak to him every Sunday and he said ‘if you don’t hear from me, you know that something has happened to me’. He said ‘you know what they did to me when I arrived from Wakefield’.

“He thinks that something is going to happen to him, and did not touch the prison food for three months when he first arrived.” She said that the refusal of food was not a full on hunger strike as he orders food stuff from the prison shop.
Robert Maudsley, 72, nicknamed ‘Hannibal the Cannibal’ by inmates, has become obsessed with his treatment in a new jail. He is keeping legal documents to record his concerns ‘in case something happens to him’

Robert Maudsley seen in his cell during a TV documentary

She added: “He refused all the food cooked for him by the prison kitchen. That went on for three months. The mum-of-one added: “He found an iron bar in his cell and he was sure that he was being set up so he reported it immediately.

“He handed it in and reported it straight away. He is using legal documents to record all of his experiences and is keeping them stored in case anything were to happen to him. I speak to him once or twice a week and send him cards every week but all his letters are being checked and opened before I get them, they are often damaged before they arrive at my address.

Robert Maudsley was moved to HMP Whitemoor in April, but wants to move back to Wakfield jail.

“Again, that is a form of control over him. He says it is very difficult for him, he did not have his post opened in the past before it was delivered to him, but that is the way they are doing it now, for his letters to me and mine to him.”

Maudsley is now Britain’s longest serving prisoner after serving 51 years behind bars. He has spent 47 years in a single cell and has just passed the landmark of 17,000 consecutive days in solitary confinement.

He protested over the removal of his PlayStation, TV and other privileges in March this year. Once regarded as the most dangerous inmate in the penal system, he was then moved from his specially built cell in Wakefield.

He was transferred 125 miles to HMP Whitemoor, and held on F wing, in a unit specifically designed for inmates with personality disorders. In Wakefield, a perspex window for his cell was used to check on him due to his record of extreme violence.

He has access to a phone in his cell and was given his belongings back after ending his hunger strike. Earlier this year, his nephew Gavin Mawdsley (c) told how his uncle had spent almost 40 years in Wakefield, and had not reacted well to the change of his move.

Robert Maudsley was sentenced to life in 1974 for killing child abuser John Farrell, 30. While behind bars he has killed three men he believed to be rapists and paedophiles.

After killing his last two victims, he was said to have told a prison guard: “There’ll be two short on the roll call.” From 1983 to April this year, he spent 23 hours a day in a glass cell 18 ft by 15 ft wide in Wakefield, which he described as “being buried alive in a coffin”.

He became the UK’s longest serving inmate after Moors murderer Ian Brady, who served 51 years, died in 2017

The Ministry of Justice declined to comment on individual prisoners.