UK's most dangerous prisoner's disturbing love letters to new girlfriend

Daily Mirror

26-04-2025

Robert Maudsley, once the UK's most dangerous prisoner, has found love according to a series of cards penned behind bars and seen for the first time by the Mirror
The quadruple killer dubbed 'Hannibal the Cannibal' has found love after 51 years behind bars.
Robert Maudsley, 71, the UK's longest serving prisoner once identified as the most dangerous inmate in the country, never sees his 'sweet girlfriend' Loveinia MacKenney, a mum-of-one. But for the past five years, he has written a string of letters to pledge his undying love for her. In his last one, after being moved from a 'glass cage', the perspex box in Wakefield jail where he was held in solitary confinement, he told her: "Due to certain restrictions I am not able to write as freely as I would wish to. "But you already know how I would love you, if I was there with you." The besotted single mum told how they had formed a special bond. He had spent 46 years in solitary confinement before his transfer to Whitemoor jail in Cambridgeshire on April 8.
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In March, he told her: "All the kindness, thoughtfulness and love you have shared with me through these last short years can get me through anything."
He adds: "My beautiful Loveinia, the more love we experience in our lives, the more the bad experiences tend to fade into the distance and we can live our lives to the full."
His letters and cards are full of tenderness. Yet they have never seen each other in person, and accept that they may never meet.
Loveinia says: "I have so much love for him. I know that is unbelievable given that we have not spoken and have not met. People see him as a monster, they call him Hannibal the Cannibal. I know that he is far from that.
"Bob is a loving and caring person and the letters show that." In his most recent correspondence, he outlines why he went on hunger strike in Wakefield earlier this year, after his Playstation and some of his 'perks' were taken away.
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He tells her: "Sometimes Loveinia we do have to fight for what is right and we believe in..
"We just need you to get better, and take care of us." She received Get Well cards after recent medical treatment, and a Christmas card to 'Someone Special', in which he wrote: "As my sweet girlfriend, you have been there for me."
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He hoped that she would see loved ones during festive season, adding: "I truly hope you can find someone to love you, in a physical sense, as I long to do for you.
"Thank you for being there for me, and for giving me so many beautiful and wonderful dreams; I hope dearly I have done the same for you when you think of me."
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Their songs should be 'Someday We'll be Together' by Diana Ross and 'Catch the Wind' by Donovan, he adds.
Loveinia, who cares for her disabled adult son Thomas, 46, felt an instant connection with Maudsley after seeing the 2020 TV documentary 'Killer in the family'.
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It told of the abuse he suffered in care after being parted from his family in his native Liverpool.
Loveinia believes the conditions in which he has been held throughout his record time behind bars are 'torture', especially his perspex cell in Wakefield jail, known as Monster Mansion because of the highly dangerous inmates locked up there.
"I feel his pain, I cannot put it into words," she said. "He has been victimised yet he has never lost his moral compass.
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"He holds onto his beliefs, he has never said anything wrong or inappropriate to me, he stands strong despite it all. It is love and that is what he needs desperately, and it is unconditional love that we share.
"I have said to him on many occasions: 'There is only one thing I want from you Bob, and that is to know that you are ok'.
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"I could quite easily have ended up like Bob because of what has happened in my life, we have shared so many similar experiences.
"It is only by the grace of God that has not happened to me."
Maudsley became the UK's longest serving prisoner after the death of Moors murderer Ian Brady, who served 51 years, in 2017.
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First jailed in 1974 for killing child abuser John Farrell, 30, he has killed three men while behind bars. He warned his captors that he could not bear being alongside rapists and paedophiles on a prison wing before his move to his specially built cell.
After killing his last two victims, he was said to have told a Wakefield guard: 'There'll be two short on the roll call." After the two murders of 1983, he spent 23 hours a day in a cell 18 ft by 15 ft wide, which he described as being buried alive in a concrete coffin.
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Londoner Loveinia has learned of his early life in detail through their letters. She said: "Imagine what he has suffered down the years.
"I cannot comprehend what he has been through and what he continues to go through.
"He was on his own at first, he had no family visiting. His dad told his two brothers that he was dead, and they believed that for years.
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"He needs all the support he can get. I am not just a pen friend, and if you see the letters from him, you will understand that. My heart breaks for him and my heart goes out to him."
She added: "He came out of the homes at the age of 16, he came to London's West End and was raped. He is not evil, they call him a cannibal and all that, but when he first killed the child abuser, he gave himself up as he knew what he had done was wrong."
She believes that he is 'extremely vulnerable' now in Whitemoor, and is adamant that he should be taken off the wing where he is held with up to 70 other prisoners.
Maudsley murdered the fellow patient in Broadmoor secure hospital in 1974. The victim was found with a plastic spoon blade in his ear, which led to his prison nicknames; first 'Spoons', then Hannibal the Cannibal, amid claims that he had eaten his brain.
The post mortem made clear that was not the case but the nickname stuck. His brother Paul, 74, told of a phone call with him last month when he told him: "Don't be surprised if this is the last time I call you'. Maudsley went on hunger strike; that has now ended.