Britain’s longest-serving prisoners: As Charles Bronson bids for release, the monsters who have spent decades locked up – including Hannibal the Cannibal, the wedding day killer, and White House Farm murderer
- READ MORE: Why has Charles Bronson spent nearly half a century in jail?
Charles Bronson launched a new bid for freedom yesterday after serving nearly 50 years behind bars.
One of the UK’s longest serving inmates, he has spent most of the past 48 years behind bars, apart from two brief periods of freedom where he reoffended.
During the time he has been incarcerated, he has held 11 hostages in nine different sieges – with victims including governors, doctors, staff and, on one occasion, his own solicitor.
But addressing a parole hearing yesterday, Bronson insisted he is now a ‘man of peace’ and asked to be freed for the sake of his 95-year-old mother, who he called ‘the duchess’.
While Bronson has spent one of the longest total periods in prison of anyone in Britain, plenty more people have received longer sentences for individual crimes.
Below, MailOnline looks at the horrific offending of the UK’s longest serving prisoners.
Charles Bronson has spent most of the past 48 years behind bars, apart from two brief periods of freedom where he reoffended
Robert Maudsley: Hannibal the Cannibal
50 years
Robert Maudsley has killed four men and is considered one of the most dangerous inmates in Britain today. He has been detained since 1973.
Infamously known as Hannibal the Cannibal, the 69-year-old from Liverpool murdered his first victim John Farrell in 1973 while working as a male prostitute.
It was determined that Maudsley was not fit to stand trial and he was sent to Broadmoor psychiatric hospital.
Robert Maudsley has been detained since 1973 after he garrotted a man who had hired him as a prostitute. He is considered one of the most dangerous inmates in Britain today
‘I’ve had more porridge than Goldilocks and the Three Bears – and I’m sick of it’: Bronson’s fight for freedom
Maudsley claimed the reason he killed Farrell was that the labourer had shown him images of children he had previously abused.
However, in 1977, while in Broadmoor, Maudsley and a second inmate took a paedophile hostage and killed him over the course of nine hours.
When prison officers managed to get into the cell, they found the victim with a spoon stuck in his skull.
It led to Maudsley being nicknamed ‘The Cannibal Killer’ as it was rumoured he ate his victim’s brain.
The killer will live out the rest of his days in a 18 foot by 15 foot cell, which was built especially for him in 1983 and is protected by bullet proof glass.
He spends 23 hours of each day in the cell, sleeping on a concrete slab and using a toilet and sink which are bolted to the floor.
When he exercises outside his cell he is accompanied by six prison guards.
Robert Hutchinson: The wedding day killer
39 years
Triple murderer Arthur Hutchinson has been locked up since 1984 after killing a couple and their son
Triple murderer Arthur Hutchinson has been locked up since 1984, having been convicted of the slaying of a couple and their son.
He had previously spent five years in prison for the attempted murder of his brother-in-law and was about to be charged with rape and burglary in 1983.
Excusing himself to go to the toilet, he fled from Selby Police station and went on the run.
Hutchinson broke into the home of Basil Laitner, 59, his 55-year-old wife Avril, and their 28-year-old son Richard via a patio window, and stabbed them to death.
The family had just finished celebrating a loved one’s wedding in a marquee in their garden when Hutchinson crept into the house.
He also raped their 18-year-old daughter Nicola at knife-point before fleeing the murder scene in Sheffield.
After two weeks on the run, he was captured on a farm in Hartlepool on November 5, 1983.
Found guilty of all three murders in September 1984, he was jailed for life with a minimum of 18 years.
Home Secretary Leon Brittan said his life sentence should be just that and ordered that he never be released.
Hutchinson twice appealed against the life sentence only to lose.
The 82-year-old took his case to the European Court of Human Rights and earlier this year they also rejected his plea.
Jeremy Bamber: The White House Farm murderer
38 years
Few murders attracted as much attention as those carried out by Jeremy Bamber in 1986 when he was just 24 years old. Wielding a shotgun, he killed his adoptive parents, sister and her twin sons in a shocking massacre at their Essex farmhouse.
The motive for the horrific killings was his desire to become rich and live a playboy lifestyle – and by wiping out his family, it cleared the way to inherit a fortune.
But based on circumstantial evidence – which Bamber has protested is wrong – he ended up being convicted of one of the most notorious murders of the 1980s.
The killing took place at White House Farm, near the village of Tolleshunt D’arcy in Essex in August 1985.
Jeremy Bamber killed his adoptive parents, sister and her twin sons in a shocking massacre at their Essex farmhouse. He has tried, and failed, to have his whole life sentence overturned
When police found the bodies of former RAF pilot Neville, his wife June, daughter Shelia and her twin six-year-old sons Daniel and Nicholas, all evidence pointed to a domestic tragedy.
Former model Shelia Cafell, 28, had previous mental health problems and police were told by Bamber that his father had called him to say his sister had ‘gone berserk’ with a gun.
The telephone line went dead before he could say anything else. When police raced to the farmhouse, they discovered a scene of utter horror with the twin boys shot multiple times as they slept in their beds.
Initially, police suspected Sheila, who had been hospitalised with schizophrenia.
But as they observed the cool and calm nature of Bamber, they began to think otherwise. It was after his girlfriend Julie Mugford told police Bamber had talked about killing his family that he was arrested.
Bamber protested his innocence and more than 25 years after being jailed, continues to claim that he had nothing to do with the five murders.
Support for Bamber, now aged 57, has come from many people as it appeared Essex police had carried out a botched investigation, coupled with missing vital evidence.
The bodies of the victims were cremated within days and Bamber’s clothes he wore hours before the shootings were never examined. Despite his not guilty plea, Bamber was convicted in October 1986 by a majority of 10-2.
Home Secretary Douglas Hurd later decided he would never be released. Bamber’s case went to the Court of Appeal in 2001 with his lawyers saying they could show flawed forensic evidence meant he should get a re-trial.
But the three Appeal Court judges threw out the appeal saying they were more convinced than ever that Bamber was guilty.
Six years later, he lost another appeal to have his whole life sentence overturned.
Rose West
28 years
After Myra Hindley, she is without doubt the most reviled female prisoner currently serving a whole life tariff.
Together with her evil husband Fred West, she was responsible for murdering, sexually assaulting and dismembering young girls they lured back to their home in Gloucester.
As Britain’s most prolific female serial killer she will never be released. Her victims included her own daughter as well as the daughter of her husband from a previous marriage and his mistress.
A sexual deviant, West took pleasure in assaulting the women as well as watching her husband rape them while held captive in the basement of their home in Cromwell Steet. It later became known as the ‘House of Horrors’ due to the appalling treatment of the women. Several of the victims were buried under the patio at the home.
Rose West protested her innocence but she stood trial alone after her husband escaped justice by hanging himself in his cell in January 1995
The majority of her 12 victims were killed between 1973 and 1979 with the women suffering horrific sexual violence before being killed. They had been picked up at bus stops with Rose often pretending to befriend them and offer a place to spend the night.
Once inside, they never left – with Fred West using the women to satisfy his sexual urges before killing them.
Those killed included Charmaine West, the daughter of Fred’s previous wife Rena. Another was her own daughter Heather, who was murdered in June 1987 at the age of 16 after being abused by her parents all her life.
The bodies of several victims including Shirley Robinson and Therese Siegenthaler, a 25-year-old student, were found beneath Cromwell Street.
The couple’s sordid life was uncovered after West was arrested for raping his 13-year-old daughter and police began to look into the disappearance of Heather, who had not been seen since 1987.
Rose protested her innocence but she stood trial alone after her husband escaped justice by hanging himself in his cell in January 1995.
At her trial, the public were shocked by the depravity of the couple and cruelty to their own children. Rose, who never gave evidence, was convicted of nine murders. Sentencing her to life, the judge Mr Justice Mantell told her: ‘If attention is paid to what I think, you will never be released.’
In 1997, then Home Secretary Jack Straw later gave her a whole life tariff. It was only the second time in British criminal history that a woman had been condemned to die in prison – the first being Myra Hindley.
John Childs
44 years
Hitman John Childs was convicted of six contract killings during the mid-1970s
Hitman John Childs was convicted of six contract killings during the mid-1970s after he had been dismissed from the Army for burglary.
Among those he killed was 10-year-old Terry Brett, who was murdered to prevent him from telling police that he had witnessed him killing his father George.
Childs also murdered Terence Eve, Robert Brown, Frederick Sherwood and Ronald Andrews.
The men were shot or strangled with Sherwood killed over a £7,000 debt.
Their remains have never been found as Childs dismembered their bodies and burnt them.
After being convicted in 1979 of the six murders, Childs turned Queen’s evidence to name those who had hired him to carry out the contract killings.
He is currently serving a whole life tariff.
Roy Whiting
22 years
Few criminals elicit such revulsion as a child killer.
Roy Whiting became the most hated man in Britain after he was jailed for a minimum of 40 years for the murder of schoolgirl Sarah Payne.
The labourer was already on the sex offenders’ register and had served half of a four and half year sentence for abducting and sexually assaulting an eight-year-old girl.
Although he could have been jailed for life, he was given the lenient sentence for pleading guilty to the 1995 offence.
When eight-year-old Sarah Payne went missing in July 2000 near Littlehampton, West Sussex, he was one of the first people visited by police.
An undated photograph of Roy Whiting, 61, who is serving a life sentence for the abduction and murder of eight-year-old Sarah Payne in 2000
Officers who quizzed Whiting were troubled by his apparent lack of sympathy and he was later arrested as he tried to leave his flat in his van.
Even though a petrol receipt placed him within three miles of where Sarah went missing, there was not enough evidence to charge him.
Sarah’s body was discovered just over two weeks after she had gone missing while out on a day trip with her parents. Whiting denied any involvement and was not charged but later ended up being jailed on motoring charges in February 2001.
While serving a 22-month sentence, police forensic teams re-examined his van and he was charged with her murder.
At his trial at Lewes Crown Court, the jury heard a blonde hair from Sarah was found on Whiting’s T-shirt. Fibres from her shoe was also found in the van.
On December 12, 2001, Whiting was convicted of the abduction and murder of Sarah and was sentenced to life imprisonment.
The trial judge, Mr Justice Curtis, said that it was a rare case in which a life sentence should mean life. Home Secretary David Blunkett ruled in 2002 that Whiting should serve a minimum of 50 years.
John Duffy
35 years
For more than four years, John Duffy roamed across London and the Home Counties raping and killing young women.
With his childhood friend David Mulcahy, they shared a sadistic streak that first showed itself as 13-year-olds when they tortured animals. But in 1982, the pair had graduated to rape and later murder.
Their first victim was a 23-year-old woman who was raped near a railway station in North London. Over the next year, they carried out further attacks, almost all near a mainline railway station and close to Duffy’s home in Kilburn, north-west London.
John Duffy roamed across London and the Home Counties raping and killing young women
Police launched the biggest manhunt since the Yorkshire Ripper investigation but had little to go on as the pair wore masks and left behind little forensic evidence. They became known as the ‘Railway Rapists’. By 1985, at least 18 women had come forward to police to reveal details of their rape attack.
Police believe there were many more who were too terrified to come forward.
During the rape spree, Duffy was questioned by police and even appeared in a line-up after one such assault but his traumatised victim was unable to pick him out.
By 1985, rape did not provide enough of a thrill for Duffy and he killed his first victim, egged on by his friend. On December 29, 1985, Alison Day, 19, was dragged off a train by Duffy and Mulcahy, and raped repeatedly.
She was then strangled with a piece of string after the pair realised she could identify them.
Months later, Maartje Tambozer, 15, was knocked off her bicycle as she rode to her home near Horsley station in East Surrey.
The Dutch teenager was raped and strangled and her body was set on fire to destroy any evidence. His third victim in May 1986 was TV presenter Anne Locke, 29, who was abducted and killed as she got off a train late at night in Hertfordshire.
Six months later while stalking another victim in a park, Duffy was held by police. He was charged with the three murders and multiple rapes. His accomplice Mulcahy was also arrested but released due to lack of evidence.
Duffy remained silent at his trial where he would stare at the jury earning him the moniker ‘Laser Eyes’. Sentenced to a minimum of 30 years in February 1988, this was later extended to a whole life sentence.
Duffy kept silent about his accomplice until 15 years later in 1997 when he implicated his childhood friend and gave evidence against him. Mulcahy, who was said to despise women, was given three life sentences.
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