The UK's most dangerous serial killer has just set a chilling new record

Having just spent his 50th consecutive Christmas behind bars serial killer Robert Mawdsley is the longest serving inmate in the UK penal system. The criminal, dubbed Hannibal the Cannibal, has also been in solitary confinement for 45 years, which is thought to be a world record.

Locked up for murder in 1974 when he was 21, Mawdsley was set apart four years later after killing three other inmates. Special provision was made for him at Wakefield prison in West Yorkshire, the Mirror reports.

His cell, including bulletproof windows and a concrete slab for a bed, has been called a glass cage in the cellar.

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In 2018, ex-detective Paul Harrison, who specialised in interviewing mass murderers, said of speaking with Mawdsley: “You’ve got the image of a monster... an evil man. I’d got all these preconceived ideas. If you didn’t know him and what he’d done, and you saw him in the bar... he’s a really intelligent guy, who made you smile.

“He’d talk about everyday things. A lot of serial killers are intense and narcissistic and talk about themselves. I didn’t find him like that at all. I thought, ‘Wow, this is something different to any serial killer’.”

After a horrific childhood in Liverpool, Mawdsley fled to London and became a prostitute. After killing a child sex offender in 1974, Mawdsley was ruled unfit for trial.

He was sent to Broadmoor. At the high-security hospital in Berkshire in 1977, he took a fellow inmate hostage, tortured him and stabbed him to death with a cut-down plastic spoon.

It was said the victim was