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00:00If you're ever sentenced to life imprisonment, chances are you'll be locked up here.
00:05It is, in a sense, the English version of Alcatraz.
00:10HMP Wakefield.
00:12Biggest maximum security prison in the whole of Western Europe.
00:17Here, you'll join the worst prisoners in British criminal history.
00:21Weirdos, bad sex cases, rapists, serial killers.
00:25You'd be in a cell next to the prison system's most violent inmates.
00:30He's taken governors hostage, he's taken staff hostage, he's taken other prisoners hostage.
00:35Or in solitary with a four-time murderer.
00:37He likes killing, and he will kill you.
00:40Or you could even come face to face with child killers.
00:43I've seen so many of them get stabbed, scolded, some occasions killed.
00:48You'll be governed by the toughest screws.
00:50If they wanted to be a problem, it was dealt with firmly.
00:53Endure the harshest regime.
00:55I felt that we were being psychologically murdered.
00:59And you'll live with men who have no chance of being released.
01:03The only way he's going to come out of jail is in the coffin.
01:06This is the inside story.
01:08I wanted to grab him and shake the daylight out of him.
01:11From those who are incarcerated.
01:13I was placed into a subterranean couch.
01:17Those who work here.
01:18If a prisoner can injure him in any way, shape or form, they will do it.
01:23And those who know the truth.
01:25He told me in a letter that given the chance, he would kill again.
01:29Welcome to the place they call...
01:33Monster Mansion.
01:38Welcome to HMP Wakefield.
01:42One of Her Majesty's Category A prisons.
01:45Tucked away off the M1 in a West Yorkshire city centre,
01:49this 400-year-old top security jail is arguably the worst place in Britain.
01:54That's Wakefield prison in all its glory.
02:00It's the place I've worked for several years.
02:05Biggest maximum security prison in the whole of Western Europe.
02:12It's an old Victorian prison, you know, extremely high walls.
02:17Looks pretty austere.
02:21It's very foreboding.
02:24If you walk round it, for example,
02:27it really does send a shiver down your spine.
02:30Because there's nothing.
02:32It's unrelentingly gloomy.
02:34It is, in a sense, the English version of Alcatraz.
02:44And like in Alcatraz, sentenced to life here,
02:48you'll have been convicted of the most heinous of crimes.
02:52Wakefield is known colloquially as the Monster Mansion.
02:56Its purpose, to house the people that we fear as a society the most.
03:03There was just over 700 prisoners in there.
03:06Vast majority of them were doing life.
03:09Incredibly dangerous inmates who weren't fit to be out.
03:12You've got the so-called celebrity criminals.
03:15You've got Charles Bronson, Harold Shipman, Robert Mardsley.
03:20You've got the dregs of society.
03:24Levi Belfield, killer of Millie Dowler and two other women.
03:27Jeremy Bamber, guilty of White House farm killings.
03:31Roy Whiting, the killer of Sarah Payne.
03:35I hesitate to use the word, but I sort of believe it.
03:38It's a dustbin.
03:38A warehouse for the worst.
03:40It is asked to house people we do not know what to do with
03:46and for which we have no other place to send them.
03:50And to some extent, Wakefield is the symbol of lock them up and throw away the key.
04:00And keeping everyone locked up in here is the job of over 200 Wakefield screws.
04:06And they've got their work cut out.
04:08In an establishment like that, high security establishment,
04:11your first challenges are always about security and about keeping order.
04:16Especially when you consider that the prison is in a city centre,
04:20people aren't always keen to have a prison in their midst.
04:22So the public has to be reassured that these prisoners are not going to escape.
04:27It is a very, very secure prison.
04:31The walls, they're about 25 feet tall.
04:34And on the top of the walls, they've got an emplacement on,
04:39which is like an archway, which is hollow on the inside.
04:43And it's painted with a specific paint, which doesn't basically dry.
04:49Behind that, you have razor wire.
04:51So it's virtually impossible for any inmate to get over that wall.
04:57Well, it's never happened since Wakefield has been a cut-A prison
05:04that any inmate has ever escaped.
05:06There are three types of categories.
05:09At the very top, you have exceptional risk categories.
05:13That would be the likes of terrorists.
05:15Then you have high-risk categories.
05:18Robbers, armed robbers, or gang bosses and people like that.
05:21And then you have standard category A,
05:23which is just that you've committed a very, very serious
05:27and possibly violent crime.
05:29If you're being sent to a prison for category A inmates like Wakefield,
05:33as soon as you're sentenced, it's in the van and on your way to do your time.
05:38If you are a category A prisoner,
05:41it's perfectly possible that you will be transferred
05:44under armed escort up the motorway to Wakefield Prison.
05:48You get to the prison, then they take you out one by one,
05:51march you in through reception, where the cuffs are taken off.
05:55You would expect to be searched,
05:58what in those days we call the strip search,
06:01now euphemistically known as a full search.
06:03You have to squat to see if you've got anything up your bum.
06:06They're given sterile clothing.
06:08They get told what's expected of them.
06:11Then you'll be marched up onto the wing.
06:13You'll see all the people on your wing.
06:15They'll be shouting, screaming, people running about.
06:17And then everyone will look at you as you come in
06:19in order to see who it is.
06:20Then you'll be shown your cell.
06:22You get a bit of water, close the cell door,
06:24unless you banged up till the next morning.
06:28And as you settle in for your first night,
06:31you'll most likely be bedding down in a cell
06:34near to one of the prison's most reviled criminals.
06:38Wakefield has a particular reputation
06:40as a place which has an over-concentration of offenders or prisoners
06:47who in any other jail would have to be held in solitary confinement for their own protection.
06:52It certainly has more, for want of a better word, dodgy category A prisoners.
06:58It's what prisoners refer to as nonces, or sex offenders, or people in prison for serious crimes against women and
07:05children.
07:06Wakefield is where the word nonce for sex offender actually originated.
07:11What they used to do in the old days, the only way to distinguish for the staff who was a
07:16sex offender
07:17and was not to be opened with the rest of the prisoners was they had a slate board outside each
07:22cell
07:23with your name and number, and they would put the letters N-O-N-C-E, nonce on it,
07:28which actually meant not on normal courtyard exercise.
07:33So when the staff came round to unlock everybody for exercise and let them out,
07:38when they see nonce on the door, they would leave them locked up
07:41because they knew if they let them out, the other prisoners would attack them.
07:44So it became the word, the universal word for sex offenders, well, certainly in Britain, it became nonce.
07:55One of Britain's most notorious sex offenders serving life in Wakefield Prison is Roy Whiting,
08:01convicted of abducting and murdering eight-year-old Sarah Payne.
08:06The image of Roy Whiting that always sticks in my mind is of this pale-faced, gaunt-looking man with
08:15lank hair who lived alone.
08:19When Sarah went missing from a field in West Sussex, the entire nation came to a standstill.
08:26The investigation into the disappearance of Sarah Payne is still officially a missing persons inquiry,
08:31but today, 12 days after the eight-year-old went missing here in Sussex,
08:35police gave their strongest indication yet that they believe she's been abducted.
08:40Sarah's mum and dad begged for the safe return of their daughter as search teams scoured the countryside.
08:45But hope turned to despair when Sarah's body was found after an agonising two-week wait for news.
08:53As soon as Sarah disappeared, the police went to look for all those people on the sexual offenders register
09:01who lived in the region, and Whiting was, of course, one of them.
09:06He had a history of sex offences, a known paedophile.
09:13Roy Whiting was sent to Wakefield Prison, where he served in life with a minimum term of 40 years.
09:20It was probably inevitable that Roy Whiting would be sent to Wakefield.
09:24He satisfied so many of the criteria. His crime was heinous, he was a sex offender,
09:30and he was also a convicted murderer.
09:33When Whiting arrived at Wakefield, he soon found that he wasn't welcome.
09:38Sex offenders and people who abuse women and children are hated, hated,
09:45far more deeply and irreconcilably imprisoned than they are out here in the Whiting community.
09:50I've seen so many of them get stabbed, scalded, on some occasions killed.
09:55He was in all the papers, on the television, so he was well known.
10:00People take great offence for that, no matter what their own offences are.
10:15Waking up on the wings at Wakefield, you'll be outnumbered by the majority of sex offenders in here,
10:21and they are hated by everyone.
10:23Prisoners have got a code of ethics, and child murderers, paedophiles,
10:29they are looked on as the lowest form of life.
10:33If a prisoner can get to one of these and injure him in any way, shape or form, they will
10:41do it.
10:42You might be surprised then to hear that despite this animosity,
10:46Wakefield locks up all its inmates together.
10:49One of the more extraordinary elements of Wakefield is that sex offenders are allowed to mix on the wings with
10:59other offenders.
11:01A lot of other prisons, you had your ruffy-tuffies in there.
11:06Any sex offenders would have to be segregated, whereas in Wakefield they weren't.
11:10They were all on normal location up on the main wings.
11:15Tensions on the mixed wings means you've got to keep your wits about you, and Wakefield's screws must stay vigilant.
11:22Luckily, the prison's design helps them to keep order.
11:25The radial design of the wings at Wakefield is a major aid to supervision.
11:31It's a Victorian concept, and it was designed like a cartwheel shape.
11:36Each wing, A, B, C and D, are going off at an angle, like spokes on a cartwheel in the
11:43middle of a central hub.
11:45So one officer, or several officers, can see the end of the wing from the front of the spoke.
11:52So you're looking down maybe 80 yards down one way,
11:56you can see right to the very end without having to go down it.
12:00And it works. It does work.
12:03But with over 700 prisoners, there's only so much the screws can do.
12:08For a high-profile sex offender like Roy Whiting,
12:12it's as impossible to avoid the hate and abuse on the inside as it is on the outside.
12:18More than 100 people gathered outside the court as Roy Whiting was driven away.
12:23Police struggled to keep the crowd from the van carrying him.
12:27A number of eggs and other missiles were thrown.
12:29It's not simply in society as a whole that there will be an urge for vengeance
12:34against someone like Roy Whiting.
12:37Even in prison, and indeed in Wakefield, Whiting has been attacked on numerous occasions.
12:43Roy Whiting has been violently assaulted by fellow inmates on four occasions.
12:48He was permanently scarred after being slashed in the face with razor blades,
12:52and nearly blinded after being stabbed in the eyes with a sharpened toilet brush.
12:57The most recent attack on Roy Whiting was when he was attacked by two fellow prisoners,
13:03armed with weapons, including screws sticking out of wooden implements.
13:10If you're a sex offender in prison, in sub-security prisons,
13:12you get very seriously hurt and on some occasions killed.
13:16People will come up to you in jail, you're on the land, and they'll go,
13:18see him over there. You go, yeah, he's in the rape.
13:21And you go, is he? And the next thing you know, there's a lynch mob.
13:25I've seen it happen. I've done it myself. I've seen so many of them get stabbed, scalded.
13:31The things people do to other people in jail is horrific.
13:35You get hot water, sugary water thrown over people. You get boiling water thrown over them.
13:40They make all sorts of weapons out of the toothbrush handles with razor blades in the end of them.
13:47There's a hierarchy in prison. I mean, I was an armed robber for 30-odd years. And in prison,
13:54they make you believe that you're top of the pecking order. You are somebody.
13:58But then, we're human. We need someone to look down on. Yes, I'm a scumbag criminal,
14:03but he's an even worse scumbag criminal. And the burglar who you're pointing at then goes,
14:08yes, I am. But that geezer over there robbed crannies who were coming out of the bingo.
14:12And then he'll go, but him over there, he's raped the five-year-old and killed them.
14:16So that's the hierarchy. So you've always got to have somebody to look down on.
14:20I was in the segregation unit at Parker. And in the cell next door to me was Ian Brady,
14:26the Moore's murderer. And other prisoners who heard me conversing with him were enraged,
14:32absolutely enraged, and demanded to know why I was talking to this beast who should be hung,
14:38drawn and quartered. And I suppose what I found most shocking was that the very people imprisoned
14:43alongside me were expressing the views of most people on the outside. It was probably hang,
14:49drawing, and quartered them as well, regardless of the fact that they were in for armed robbery,
14:53or shooting other gangsters, or shooting policemen. We are all nonces as far as the ordinary
15:00community is concerned, understandably, our listens ahead. Wakefield's inmates have their code,
15:07but the screws have to wrestle with their own conscience every day. You are revolted by them.
15:13We had some seriously sick people carrying out horrendous crimes against kids.
15:19When I first went to Wakefield, there was one young man, his own kitty. The kid had loads of broken
15:26bones. He had cigarette burns all over him. He circumcised him with a pair of nail clippers.
15:33I wanted to grab him and shake the daylights out of him. But you've just got to be professional.
15:40You've got to step back. You've got to get yourself to toe the line, the right side of the line.
15:45You've got to
15:46make sure your staff do that as well. And it's not easy. In fact, it's incredibly difficult on occasions.
15:52Some of the cognitive distortions that there were amongst the sex offenders were quite frightening.
15:58I'll give you an example that I heard from several prisoners convicted of incest. They thought it was
16:04okay to have sex with their daughters in order to teach them about it before anybody else did.
16:10And you have that kind of cognitive distortion thrown at you, which came as a surprise even to me
16:19the first time that I heard it. But all I can say is you have to be professional. And when
16:25you hang up
16:26your keys at night to go home, you have to forget about it and put it into a compartment marked
16:32work.
16:34It ended for me a few years later when I actually attacked a supposed sex offender and then found
16:40out he was innocent. And after that, it kind of changed my outlook on them as well, because so
16:46many people had told me they were innocent over the years. I mean, even when you're beating people,
16:51when you're six, seven handed, and you're beating them with bottles and batteries and
16:55pillowcases full of bars of soap, they're always screaming they're innocent. And I'm thinking,
16:59how many of them were? You know, who am I to be judging jury and do this? And I just
17:03felt really
17:04bad about it. I thought, I'm not doing it no more. And that was kind of the turnaround for me.
17:10After
17:10that, I started changing my life in jail. Whichever wing you end up on at Wakefield, you'll be sharing
17:18with about 160 inmates. And many try to keep a low profile, serve out their sentence quietly and get on
17:26with their daily routine. If you're an inmate on normal location, you go into fairly overcrowded
17:32wings. The cells are all single, because it's top security. You'll have a window, sometimes a window
17:38that doesn't open, sometimes a window that's got no pane of glass in it. And you'll have a table,
17:44an iron bed. They had a picture board in there, they could put the photographs on there. Some of them
17:49decorated it. If they asked for a painting quite often, they could, within reason, decorate their
17:55own cells. It's not the most comfortable. It's not a hotel. It's not designed to be a hotel. It's
18:03there for what it's designed for. It's punishment, basically. But it's made as humane as possible.
18:09They're unlocked in the mornings. They come down for the breakfast.
18:12And then the bell goes. And those that have been allocated workshops, off they go to work.
18:20Any convicted prisoner is expected to work. Once they're given a job, whatever pay they get,
18:26they can spend in the canteen and get their goodies. If they've got private cash, they can actually get
18:31stuff sent in. Argos catalogues get put around on the wings. They can actually buy stuff from Argos.
18:37From sort of six o'clock till nine, they're on free time. You'd almost describe it as youth club stuff,
18:45pool table, table tennis and communal television. Match of the day was recorded for the prisoners
18:52every Saturday night and was available for them to watch on a Sunday afternoon.
18:58That's it. They have a normal life up there, as normal as you can get in a prison,
19:02apart from being locked up at night time. But there's a wing where none of the normal creature
19:08comforts are available. If you misbehave, you'd be sent to Wakefield's notorious punishment block
19:15called F-Wing. Separated from the main prison, it punishes those who break the rules and segregates
19:21prisoners deemed too dangerous to mix with any other inmates. Most prisons, the segregation unit is within
19:29the main prison complex. Wakefield was fundamentally different. The segregation unit was completely
19:36isolated physically from the rest of the prison. It was a prison within a prison. You have no
19:41interaction with a normal prison regime. You don't go to workshops, you don't go to the gym, you don't
19:46go to education. You're held within an isolation cell, which is usually very silent, very quiet,
19:52very isolated. So yeah, it's solitary confinement, basically. Convicted of murder, Mark was sentenced
20:01to life and served 40 years in prison. I arrived at Wakefield and was classified as one of the most
20:09unmanageable prisoners in the system. So I was placed into a subterranean cage, an underground cage,
20:16no natural light whatsoever. We were fed through the bars of our cage door. We were only unlocked for
20:25one hour per day to go on to a tiny enclosed exercise where we would be surrounded by about
20:30six members of staff and would only be exercised individually. They had a silence rule when I was
20:36there. You weren't allowed to try and communicate with prisoners in the cells around you. It was an inhuman
20:45environment. The prison staff who worked in the segregation unit at Wakefield had a very negative
20:51culture. There was an incredible degree of bullying, coercion and intimidation, and the staff thrived on
20:58it, basically. Some prisoners who were taken to what was called a strong box within F-Wing, which was a
21:05cell within a cell with absolutely nothing in it. It was a subterranean concrete box, would be thrown in
21:11there naked. And each day the staff would open the door and hurl a bucket of cold water over them
21:16and
21:16lock the door again. I found it incredibly amusing and hilarious. Former prison officer Mick O'Hagan
21:23spent 21 years at Wakefield and became principal officer of F-Wing. He ensured there was no bullying
21:29or negative behaviour. I was strict, I was firm, but I was very fair. I was good down there,
21:36I can say that. And so were my staff. We had a minimum of fuss down there. If they did
21:42what was
21:43expected of them, not a problem. But if they wanted to be a problem, it was dealt with firmly.
21:48Well, if an inmate assaulted an officer, he'd be controlled and restrained. It was three men
21:55teams going in and doing it. One man controlled a head, two men controlled each wrist, and they get
22:03taken to one of the punishment cells where there was nothing in there at all. It's very painful for
22:09the inmate, but you can't do them any damage. You really don't want it done to you very often.
22:14Can't break bones doing it. It was purely against the joints. You just bend the thumb back against the
22:21thing. If sent to F-Wing, you'll join some of the most disruptive inmates in the prison system,
22:28and one who is deemed to be Wakefield's most dangerous. There is one inmate who is segregated from
22:37his fellow prisoners. Not so much for his protection, but for theirs.
22:50F-Wing at Wakefield is a prison within a prison for the most unmanageable inmates.
22:57There were two underground cells in F-Wing, reserved for the most disruptive offenders.
23:03Ex-inmate Mark was placed in one, and his neighbour was a four-time murderer so dangerous,
23:09he'd already killed two inmates inside the prison.
23:14I was placed into the cell next door to a prisoner called Robert Maudsley.
23:18I'd heard about him before I'd got there, and I had this image of this almost demon-like creature,
23:25which is how the media portrayed him. Referred to as Britain's most dangerous prisoner,
23:31Robert Maudsley has been locked up in solitary confinement for the last 45 years.
23:36In all this time, one of the very few people to have ever set eyes on Maudsley is his nephew
23:42Gavin.
23:43My name's Gavin Robert Maudsley, I was named after him. He's my dad's younger brother,
23:47my dad's his older brother. And that's my connection.
23:51I always knew I had an Uncle Bob, and I knew that he was in prison and that he'd done
23:56wrong,
23:57but I didn't really know the details of his crimes. And it was when I was in senior school,
24:04there was a double article in one of the newspapers. One of my friends was reading it and said,
24:08hey, Garth, is this Hannibal Maudsley, your uncle? And there was a picture of him,
24:13and one of the other guys said, please, Nellie, looks like you. And I knew straight away,
24:17that's my Uncle Bob. And it was only once I read that article that gave me an insight into what
24:23he'd actually done and how serious it actually was and stuff. That's a great cloud that hangs
24:28over my family, if you like, you know? Nicknamed Hannibal the Cannibal by the tabloids,
24:34Robert Maudsley committed his first murder in 1974 when he was working as a 21-year-old rent boy
24:41in London. So the story as I first heard it, and this is in my uncle's own words,
24:45because he told me this in a letter that he wrote me. Bob was abducted by a gang of pedophiles
24:50when he came to London. And they sexually abused him. And he swore revenge. He said he would hunt
24:58these guys down and he would take revenge on them. Luckily for them, he only managed to get one of
25:02them and kill one of them. But given the chance, he would have killed all of them. He handed himself
25:07into the police and he said, now will you help me? I need help. They put him in Broadmoor. In
25:12Broadmoor,
25:13it's my understanding that he wasn't given the treatment that he was still asking for. And
25:17him and another prisoner took a sexual offender into one of the rooms, and they barricaded themselves
25:22in. And this was a nine-hour siege. And terrible things happened in that room on them nine hours,
25:29you know. This guy was tortured. And the story goes that this is where they found a spoon hanging
25:37out of the victim's head. And that's where they tried to say, my uncle's a cannibal. And that's where
25:41the cannibal Maudsley comes from. The legend grew up that Maudsley had eaten the brains of the man
25:53with a spoon. He did do an incredible amount of damage to the top of one of these victims' heads.
26:03So there was brains on view, apparently. But whether he actually took a spoon to it and net it,
26:09it only knows. What Maudsley had done was he'd finally killed the man using a sharpened plastic spoon,
26:18which he'd shoved into the man's ear. And so his nickname became Hannibal the Cannibal. And among
26:25other inmates, he was always known as Spoons. It wasn't based on reality, but the myth was forever
26:34associated with Robert Maudsley. And now they sent him to Wakefield. They call this place the Monster
26:42Mansion. It's full of murders and rapists and nonces. So what do you think's going to happen
26:47when you send them from there to Wakefield? Bad things. It doesn't take a genius to work that out.
26:53Got sent to A-Wing, which in hindsight was not a good idea. He's asking to be put on his
27:00own
27:01because he knows what can happen. At this point, everybody knows what can happen, to be honest.
27:07Put them on the wing, surrounded by rapists, paedophiles. So he wakes up one morning and I know
27:14this because this is what he's told us. He was going to kill as many paedophiles as he could get
27:18his hands
27:19on that morning. But he only managed to get his hands on two. Walked down to the wing office on
27:25a
27:25Saturday lunchtime, dropped a lump of metal on the desk in front of the senior officer and said,
27:32I've done two up on the threes. They went running up there with two bodies. He'd taken almost the top
27:38of
27:39the head off one of them. And the other one had been stabbed all over the chest.
27:44I'm not condoning what he did. He'd done very bad things. But I have to look at the other side
27:50of
27:50the coin and tell myself, well, he didn't kill no child, no woman, no innocent person left for work
27:56that day and didn't return home. The people he killed were really bad people. This is kind of glossed
28:03over in this story, I think. As a serial killer, Maudsley was given a whole life sentence, meaning
28:10he will never be released from prison. When murderer Mark arrived at the underground cells in F-Wing,
28:16Maudsley had already lived in isolation for years.
28:19I felt literally that we were being psychologically murdered, basically. So I had a straight choice
28:27to conform and obey and suffer extreme mental illness and probably kill myself or fight back.
28:36So I decided to fight back. While I was there and able to organise some degree of collective resistance,
28:42Bob became involved. During the demonstration at Wakefield, some of us stripped naked and covered
28:50our body in our own excrement because that would make staff reluctant to have any contact with us
28:57or to physically brutalise us. In fact, during a dirty protest, it almost becomes a form of empowerment
29:04to use your body waste to make life as unpleasant as possible for the prison officers. It becomes a weapon.
29:10And it's the only weapon you have, your own body waste. Robert hadn't been involved in any protest
29:17up until I arrived and it actually had an incredibly dynamic, positive effect on his character and
29:23personality. He suddenly felt part of a human group. He was no longer totally isolated. And then one day,
29:29they brought in the riot squads and every single one of us in the unit was transferred to other prisons
29:36overnight. They moved Bob as well, but unfortunately, they took Bob back and placed him back into the
29:41underground cage, whereas I was very fortunate to move on and eventually find my way out of solitary
29:48confinement and finally out of prison eventually.
29:54Robert Maudsley is kept in a perspex walled cell with a steel door. You have to go through 17 steel
30:03doors to get to Maudsley. He has his own dedicated team of prison officers. No one is allowed contact with
30:15him. He has to take what exercise he gets on his own. He lives in a box in which the
30:20everything is
30:21constructed of cardboard. And he's been kept in that condition for many, many years.
30:28I would argue that it is a form of punishment that is extraordinary.
30:37They did purpose-build that cell for him in 1983. And it's also said that that's where Thomas Harris
30:44took inspiration from for Silence of the Lambs. So that came out in 1991, it was. So again, that's also
30:51a bit of a thread to the Hannibal Lecter thing, not just the cannibal stuff, you know.
30:57Maudsley's routine was pretty basic. He could come out for his hour exercise a day. For years,
31:03he didn't bother. He just used to be in his cell listening to his radio, writing a few letters,
31:09reading a lot. He wasn't a great conversationalist anyway. Never went into any depth about it. I never
31:16asked him why he did what he did. Maudsley's reputation and perceived risk to the staff
31:24affected the way Wakefield treated him. For many years, he was persecuted by the guards and stuff
31:30like that. They'd give him a real rough time. And, you know, they would spit in his food and then
31:35slide
31:35his food through. So he wouldn't eat for months. They would hold back his tobacco. So he quit smoking.
31:42And that was the only thing he had. I said, oh, did you quit smoking, Bob, when it was the
31:46only
31:46thing you had? He said, well, that's the answer. It's the only thing I had. So it was the only
31:49thing
31:49he could take. So he said, okay, well, fuck you. I don't smoke no more.
31:54The system's treatment of Bob was totally dehumanising. To hold someone in an underground
32:01cage for over 40 years, I'm sorry, is unforgivable. What Bob did in terms of murdering
32:10sex offenders obviously was wrong. What the system has done to Bob is equally as bad. It amounts to
32:18psychological torture. His conditions aren't great, but what you're going to do with him,
32:21you can't put him on normal location. They tried that and he kills people. He kills them
32:25in Broadmoor as well. So that's not an option. So what do you do with him? I don't think there's
32:32any option but to keep him in those conditions. Severe they might be.
32:37There are other ways of dealing with prisoners like Bob. They can be treated with some degree of
32:44humanity without a risk to anybody. I don't think there's a limit to rehabilitation.
32:50Yes, you can rehabilitate some lifers. You certainly can. Serial killers? I don't think so.
32:59They actually enjoy what they're doing. That's why they do it more than once.
33:03And he's killed people on three separate occasions with a total of four people.
33:08There's a lot of... That takes some rehabilitating that. He likes killing and he will kill you.
33:15And I think he still would. I used to go in cells on my own, more than I should have
33:21done on occasion.
33:22But I would never have gone on Maudsley's cell on my own.
33:26I would never ever go in there on my own. Maudsley once put it himself, when he said,
33:33the prison service doesn't know what to do with me. They just want to put me out of their mind.
33:40There's two options in my book. Keeping him in the conditions he's in or death penalties.
33:48People go, oh, not the death penalty. That's barbaric. Yes, I was killing four people.
33:55Maudsley's whole life sentence is the most severe punishment in English law
33:59since the death penalty was abolished in 1969. It's a sentence currently bestowed on the 75 worst
34:07prisoners in Britain. And one of them is another Wakefield inmate, Jeremy Bamber.
34:14Bamber was guilty in what was famously known as the White House farm killings in Essex,
34:20of dispatching his adopted parents, his sister and her two children,
34:29in one bloody night, one massacre. And he was one of the first murderers to be effectively given a
34:38whole life term. The only way he's going to come out of jail at the moment is in the coffin.
34:45But refusing to accept a lifetime in prison, serial killer Bamber has become more well-known
34:51for his fight to prove his innocence. Bamber is nothing if not an active campaigner.
34:57He was always appealing this and appealing that. There are miscarriages of justice in jails,
35:02but Jeremy Bamber is not one of them. No.
35:12HMP Wakefield is where serial killer Jeremy Bamber is currently serving his whole life sentence.
35:19So far, he's spent 37 years in prison. In a way, probably inevitable,
35:25that Bamber should end up in Wakefield because he satisfies at least two of the principle criteria.
35:31He is the killer of children and he is a multiple killer. That makes him almost a perfect fit
35:39for Wakefield. Journalist Eric Allison has been communicating with Bamber for over 10 years.
35:47He believes that he's innocent. Until he was convicted of the murders at White House Farm,
35:54he believes that. Jeremy had led a privileged life. He went to a private school. He's opinionated,
36:02there's no question about that. He's different from the average prisoner. Most people in prison are
36:08working class people and they don't like him. Jeremy Bamber, incredibly arrogant man. In his own book,
36:16he was vastly superior to all the inmates, all the staff. He was a cut above the rest. You know,
36:23he just strutted around the wing. That doesn't sit well with staff in Wakefield. Leading up to Christmas,
36:30one of the governor grades decided to send him down F-Wing. And I was there to greet him. I
36:37said to him,
36:38right, what's your name? And he looked at me, as I say, well, surely you should know my name. Of
36:44course,
36:44I knew his name. I knew very well who it was. So he said, my name is Bamber. I said,
36:51oh, I said,
36:51what sentence are you doing? He said, life times five. I said, life times five. I said, who did you
36:57kill?
36:58He said, I killed five members of my family. So I looked at him and said, oh, think of the
37:04money you
37:05saved at Christmas. And the look on his face, he just head dropped. And all my staff was like,
37:13and he cut his legs straight out from here. He thought, oh, yeah. That's the Wakefield way.
37:21Cut the legs out. Don't do arrogance. Through his letters and calls with Bamber,
37:29Eric Allison has formed a completely different view of him. He's a model prisoner. He conducts
37:34himself while in prison. He's good natured. He gets on with staff and inmates. He's worked in a shop
37:41that provides instrument for braille. You know, Jeremy's a man who cares about people.
37:48Outside of his daily prison duties, Bamber has devoted the rest of his time inside to fighting to
37:54overturn his conviction. Bamber is nothing if not an active campaigner, even though he is
38:01in Wakefield. He's one of the only prisoners with a whole life term to continue to maintain
38:08his innocence throughout. From day one, he's turned himself into an expert, if you like. And he's
38:17studied literally hundreds of thousands of pages of documents in his cell. No laptop, no internet,
38:26you know, no facilities. He managed to rub people up the wrong way all the time, staff mainly. Governor
38:33grades quite often, because he was always appealing this and appealing that. Bamber is currently waiting
38:39on the outcome of his sixth application for an appeal since he was first convicted in 1985.
38:46I know that I was outside with the police when they saw someone moving around in the house,
38:52when they were talking to someone inside the house, when they saw my sister in the kitchen,
38:56when they went into the house. And so not only do I know I didn't murder my family, but I
39:01know
39:01that they know I didn't murder my family. This time, I'm sure it's different. The evidence now
39:10overwhelmingly points towards his innocence. I'm aware that there are people who are convinced of his
39:18guilt and therefore convinced that he's where he should be. Bamber's as guilty as sin. Everybody
39:25knows that. You know, I was in jail with the guy. I was on a wing with him. I know
39:29how sneaky and
39:30manipulative that that man can be. Think about this. If you're Jeremy Bamber, yeah, and you're never,
39:37ever, ever getting out, what are you going to spend your life doing? Trying to convince people you're
39:42innocent so you can get out. You know, that's what you do in prison. And I've seen it done a
39:46million
39:46times and I've done it myself. You look through all your statements a couple of years after the
39:50case and you go, oh my God, if I'd have said that in court, it might have been different because
39:54they put the wrong number on that document. Clutching at straws. You've had your trial,
40:00you've had your appeal. You know, there are miscarriages of justice in jail. Seriously,
40:04there are, but Jeremy Bamber is not one of them. Another of Wakefield's inmates campaigning for his
40:11release is Charles Bronson. He's one of Britain's longest serving prisoners and in exclusive calls
40:19from inside, he offers first hand insight of his time there. In the last 46 years, I've probably spent
40:2820 years in Wakefield prison. When you first went in the cages, it was cold in there, dark, gloomy.
40:38There was four sets of bars on the windows stopping the air coming through. There's a cage outside the
40:45window, cage on the door, cardboard furniture, cardboard table, cardboard chair, a kiss pot, jug of water.
40:56If you've got a library book, you're lucky. Principal officer Mick O'Hagan was tasked with locking up Bronson.
41:05Sally Bronson came to Wakefield with a horrendous record of violence. To say he had a bad track
41:11rule could be an understatement. I think he'd been kicking off in virtually every prison he'd been in at that
41:17stage,
41:18smashing places up, running amok, covering himself in butter,
41:24so staff couldn't get hold of him, just violence. In the past, he's taken governors hostage,
41:32he's taken staff hostage, he's taken other prisoners hostage. He's in isolation 23 hours a day,
41:38locked in a concrete box, and while he's in there, he can't do any damage. Sentenced to seven years in
41:441974
41:45for armed robbery, Bronson's still in prison, because he's carried out nine rooftop protests,
41:52attacked over 20 prison officers, taken inmates and staff hostage, and claims to have caused the
41:58prison service millions of pounds worth of damage due to his unpredictable violent outbursts.
42:04We were very cautious of him, yeah. When he first arrived, he turned up at Wakefield in a shell suit,
42:09in a body belt, and I thought, he's really not going to like what I'm going to tell him now,
42:15so we half expected it to go badly, right from the off. I said to him, you can get that
42:22off,
42:22and he said, well, I said, that shell suit, you're not wearing that in Wakefield prison.
42:26And he said, well, this is what I wear. I said, not in here, you don't. You wear prison-issued
42:30clothes in Wakefield,
42:31there's no exceptions. And he sort of gave me the look, and I thought, oh, here we go.
42:35And I said, well, because you're not conforming, that entitles you to nothing while you're here.
42:40I said, you'll get no visits, you'll get no exercise, and we really, all of us expected,
42:45we were all in the starting blocks, thought, he's going to go. And I said, if you come to me
42:51a bit,
42:52I'll come to you a bit. I said, no, I don't do that very often. I said, you're a keep
42:57fit fanatic.
42:57I said, you wear prison-issue overalls, and I'll put you out on the exercise yard for an hour a
43:02day.
43:03And he sort of thought about it for a bit and said, yeah, okay. So that was the first
43:08coming together as it was. I'll never forget, I've just arrived there. I've just taken Governor
43:14Boris hostage, and I've arrived in Wakefield, Monster Mansion. I've got a broken jaw, a couple
43:20of broken fingers, two black eyes, a discolated nose. I'm in a terrible mess. So they swung me in
43:27the cage, and a couple of days later, Mick O'Hagan's come to my door. I thought, I'm going to
43:33try something
43:34here. And I've been asked many times why, because he was probably the most unlikeliest prisoner in the
43:40prison system to try it with. And I opened the outer door and said, you've been in solitary for 21
43:48years. I said, don't you want to get out? He said, well, of course I do. I said, well, you're
43:52going the wrong
43:53way about it, aren't you? All this kicking off and assaults and hostage-taking. I said, why don't you start
43:58using your loaf? And I said, start boxing clever. Oh, he says, you're never going to get out, mate.
44:05They will never free you. He said, why don't you do something positive and creative? I said,
44:12what? Write what? He said, writing, poetry, art. So the next day, I took a sketch pad and some
44:22coloured pencils and stuff down. And I said, see what you make of that? He said, I can't effing draw.
44:27I said, well, if it's no good to you, forget it. I said, but just see you get on.
44:34Two days later, he showed me this piece of work, first thing he ever did. And he said,
44:39what do you think? I said, I thought you couldn't draw. He said, I didn't know I could.
44:45And it took over his life. He sat all day long at his little table, he's doing all this stuff.
44:52I started doing a bit of doodling here and a bit of doodling there. And all these years later,
44:59I've now got 19 published books. I've won 11 customer awards for my art and my poetry.
45:08When I got locked up in 1974, it was for a pump-action shotgun, 12-4 sawed off. And I've
45:16got rid of that
45:16now and now I've got a sawed off paintbrush. So really speaking, it was down to Michael Hagen that
45:23I really, you know, become a better person. We got a, there was a mutual respect going on.
45:31He's the only prisoner I've ever done anything like that with. And it played dividends as far
45:36as we could, and none of my staff ever got assaulted by him. He was about the only prison he's
45:40never
45:40kicked off in. While in F wing, Bronson became Robert Maudsley's next door neighbour in the
45:46underground cells. The two original cages, what me and Bob was in, inside the cell,
45:53you've actually got a two inch piece of glass. There was a, like a, a gap between the two.
46:03They could actually see each other. They could converse. There was a television in the middle.
46:10They could choose what programmes went on.
46:13We always used to end up arguing because Bob would want to watch Emmerdale and I'd want to watch
46:19Coronation Street and things like that. Bob would want to watch something else and I'd want,
46:25and there's arguing all the fucking time, mate.
46:27On one occasion while watching TV, Bronson made a discovery he didn't expect.
46:33I did a TV series several years ago called Confessions of the Paparazzi and Charlie was
46:38watching the programme in his cell and he recognised my name, George Bambi, and he had me invited over
46:45to the prison to go and visit him. So I went to the prison on a visit on the assumption
46:50that he just
46:51liked my antics on this TV show. So I got to the first gate and as I walked in, I
46:57got into F-Wing,
46:58they've opened the door, I've walked in and then I've just looked and there's a wall in front of me
47:02and there's a hole in the middle with loads of bars in it. I've looked through the bars
47:05and there's a bloke stood there opposite me and he went, all right son, nice to meet you, I'm Charlie.
47:12What happened next was to change George's life forever.
47:15Kept talking, joking and got on really well and before we left the first visit that we had,
47:21he opened half a sandwich that I had left and he spat inside the sandwich and closed the sandwich
47:26and he got a bit of hair from his tash, put it into a handkerchief, put it on top of
47:31the sandwich
47:31and said, take that with you. And when I got home, I got a phone call, it was Charlie and
47:37he went,
47:38you know that thing I gave you today, you need to get it tested. And I actually thought that they
47:44were poisoning him or they were doing something to him, but then he told me that I needed to get
47:49it
47:49tested because he thought I was his son. So I swabbed his saliva and then I swabbed inside my mouth,
47:58whatever, sent it all off. And then I got a thing back a few days later and it just come
48:02in,
48:02Charles Salvador, George Bambi, like father, 99.98% match.
48:10Unlike serial killers, Maudsley and Bamba, Bronson is eligible for parole,
48:17but he's been refused time and time again.
48:21Charlie spent 48 years in prison, 30 plus of that is spent in solitary isolation.
48:28He's not any problem to anyone, doesn't cause any problems to the staff. He gets some of his artwork,
48:33he eats his dinner, he goes out a day, every day for an hour, does his press-ups and his
48:37sit-ups.
48:38To be fair, he's rehabilitated himself. The question is, why is Charles Bronson still in prison?
48:47If I spoke to someone down the road and said, Charles Bronson, they'd go,
48:50oh, that guy that's murdered 15 people. And I'd go, what? No, that's not Charles Bronson,
48:55that's Charles Manson. That's what everyone confuses him with.
48:58It makes no sense to me. You hear about some of the other stuff that's going on,
49:04and we just recently, we've had the Pitchfork thing. Brutally murdered two 15-year-old lasses.
49:13Got released. No. Did Charlie kill anybody? No. 46 years.
49:22But for the first time in years, things might be different.
49:27I once had a plane fly over there with a flag, free Bronson.
49:32Around Bronson, there's this huge sort of industry almost. There are petitions to free Bronson.
49:38You know, he's got a chance here, he might get out. What we did was take on the judicial system
49:44and try and get Charlie in front of a judge. I think Charlie now has got the best possible chance
49:51of ever being released. But not everyone is so sure.
49:55I think to myself, why are you wasting your time? They're not able to release him.
49:59Because Charlie, the prison system and the press have built him up as this huge big ogre and monster
50:04that the public would go, oh, hold on a minute. You know, you're releasing him. What's going on here?
50:16After almost 50 years in prison, one of Britain's longest-serving prisoners,
50:22Charles Bronson, has high hopes for his upcoming seventh attempt at parole.
50:36What we did was take on the judicial system and actually try and get Charlie in front of a judge,
50:44not three people from the parole board. As soon as you hear the name declined, declined, declined.
50:48Fortunately, we actually won the case. And now, next year, Charlie's parole is going to be heard
50:56in a courtroom. I think Charlie now has got the best possible chance of ever being released.
51:03But even though Bronson hasn't killed anyone, will this new approach make a difference?
51:08It's very difficult for anyone in authority, whether it's the courts or the home secretary
51:13or the prison authorities, you know, who's going to make that decision? Who's going to say,
51:18we're prepared to take that risk? I mean, who is going to decide to take that risk? It's,
51:26you know, if that goes wrong, that's a hell of a responsibility.
51:32Unfortunately, and it's a really sad thing, I think he's going to end up like Reg Cray, his mate,
51:36who, when he's, like, old enough and infirm enough not to even walk on the street, they'll suddenly
51:41give him a blessing and let him out. Look at us, we'll let you out because you're about to die
51:45next
51:46week. And that's what the prison system do with people like that. I don't want to think about him
51:50not getting out of prison. When he gets out, all he wants to do is find a nice little cottage
51:55down in
51:55Devon near us, where we can keep an eye on him, away from the city, away from all the idiots,
51:59away from all these plastic gangsters and all the rest of it. And he just wants to do his artwork.
52:04You're going to get two dogs and call them Ron and Reg after his two mates in prison.
52:08And we always say the same thing. We're going straight down to the nearest cafe and having the
52:13biggest fry up we possibly can. Bronson is now 69. This could be his last chance of parole.
52:21If it gets denied, prison, his home for the last 48 years, could be where he remains to the end
52:28of his
52:28days. Alongside Whiting, now aged 63, Bamber aged 61 and Maudsley aged 68, Wakefield now has another
52:38role to play. An old people's home for aging inmates. With someone like Robert Maudsley, he's never coming
52:45out again. There's no chance of him ever coming out. It really is a case of risk management. You need
52:52to
52:52house him somewhere. You need to contain him. In my humble opinion, we can't do what Adolf Hitler did.
52:59We can't just throw him away and throw away the key. With people like that, you have got to lock
53:07them up,
53:07yeah, but you've still got to give him some quality of life. They're not animals. You've got to treat
53:14him as human beings.
53:18Private letters written to nephew Gavin reveal for the first time how Wakefield's incarceration of
53:24Robert Maudsley is no longer as bad as we've been led to believe.
53:28People would be shocked to read those letters, actually. In one of his letters, he's given me
53:33an example of, like, his daily routine. He watches his TV. He listens to music on his music system.
53:41He's got a PlayStation 2. He plays his video games. He could play that for 24-7 if he wanted,
53:47but he doesn't. He goes to bed at, like, 10pm, I think he told me he goes to bed.
53:52For Robert Maudsley, Wakefield Prison is his home. Over than the Screws, the only contact he has
53:59with people is with his family on their occasional visits. We have to get him his banana milk.
54:07That's his favourite drink. We'll get him his banana milk and several chocolate bars and normally,
54:13like, a sausage roll or something. He'll bring a flask of hot water with him and some tea bags,
54:18so he'll make us a cup of tea. He likes to complain that I eat his chocolate bars, but
54:24I already tell him, Bob, I've compensated for this and bought double, you know. We're going there
54:30and it's all banter and having a laugh and taking a piss and who's going to get it this month,
54:35you know,
54:35who's going to be, who should we censor that now? Will it be Uncle Kevin, me dad, Uncle Bob?
54:41Time for crying and doom and gloom. That was so long ago, I'll believe and forget about it, you know.
54:46For me personally, I'm trying to move the grey cloud that's been hanging over the family and,
54:51no, it's not as bad as what people are making out, you know.
54:55You know, Wakefield used to be his hell, but now it's settled down and he's comfortable
54:59and he's treated as a human being.
55:04He knows he's on a whole life tariff and he's told me he will save out that sentence
55:09to the best of his ability because he knows what he done was a terrible thing.
55:15He never tries to justify it in the way I justify it.
55:20He's in his safe space and that probably sounds crazy to a lot of people
55:23because solitary confinement in Wakefield Prison isn't a safe space for many people.
55:29But for him, that's his safe space. He told me in a letter that given the chance,
55:34he would kill again. And I believe that.
55:43From custody suite to control room, we go behind the scenes of Lincolnshire's busiest Nick.
55:48A new series of Inside the Force 24-7 begins next Monday at 9.
55:53Unravelling an investigation that became an international manhunt,
55:57getting away with murder, the killing of Mary Goff is brand new tomorrow at 10.
56:00Next tonight, casualty 24-7, every second counts.