Robert John Maudsley (born 26 June 1953) is an English serial killer. Maudsley killed four people, with one of the killings taking place in a psychiatric hospital and two in prison after receiving a life sentence for a murder. Initial reports falsely stated he ate part of the brain of one of the men he killed in prison, which earned him the nickname Hannibal the Cannibal among the British press and "The Brain Eater" amongst other prisoners. However, the Press Complaints Commission records that national newspapers were subsequently advised that the allegations were untrue, according to the autopsy report. Maudsley is the longest-serving British prisoner in solitary confinement. Early life Robert Maudsley was one of 12 children, born in Speke, Liverpool, spending his early years in a Catholic orphanage in Crosby. At the age of eight, Maudsley was retrieved by his parents and subjected to routine physical abuse until he was eventually removed from their care by social services. Maudsley later stated that he was raped as a child by his father, and such early abuse had left deep psychological scars. As a teenager during the late 1960s, Maudsley was a sex worker in London, using his income to support his drug addiction. He was forced to seek psychiatric help after several suicide attempts. It was during his talk with doctors that he claimed to hear voices telling him to kill his parents. He is quoted as saying "If I had killed my parents in 1970, none of these people would have died." Murders In 1974, Maudsley garrotted John Farrell in Wood Green, London. Farrell picked up Maudsley for sex and allegedly showed him pictures of children he had sexually abused. Maudsley surrendered himself to police, saying he needed psychiatric care. Maudsley was found unfit to stand trial and instead was sent to Broadmoor Hospital. In 1977, he and another resident, David Cheeseman, who at the time was serving a prison sentence for rape and sexual assault of a sixteen-year-old girl, locked themselves in a cell with a third patient named David Francis, a convicted child molester. The attack was claimed to be in revenge for a "homosexual attack" on one of the friends of the two men. They tortured him to death over a period of nine hours. After this incident, Maudsley was convicted of manslaughter and sent to Wakefield Prison. He disliked the transfer and made it clear