Inside HMP Wakefield as new book lifts lid on secrets of jail that houses Britain’s most sick killers and sex criminals
IT is the British jail that houses such evil it is nick-named Monster Mansion.
From one-legged killer Michael Sams to twisted murderer Levi Bellfield, some of the country’s sickest men have festered behind bars at Wakefield Prison.
Now a new book lifts the lid on the secrets of the jail, where pervert Lostprophets singer Ian Watkins pays gangsters for protection, infamous inmate Charles Bronson behaved “like a spoiled brat” and “Dr Death” Harold Shipman once dished out medical advice to fellow prisoners.
It also reveals why sex attacker John Worboys lives in the prison’s medical department and how a “Friday The 13th” killer makes jokes about his murders.
And it details the grisly story of how “Hannibal The Cannibal” killer Robert Maudsley earned his moniker.
Authors Jonathan Levi and Dr Emma French spent months researching their book, talking to insiders, officers and ex-prisoners
Jonathan says: “We got prisoners to tell us what it’s like to live and work there, to tell us what these horrifying inmates — that they see as peers in a way — are like close up.
“What they are like to live with, what they are like as cellmates, as people on the same wing.”
Among those serving time at Wakefield is murderer Michael Sams.
He was sentenced to life for killing Julie Dart, 18, in 1991, after snatching her off the street.
Six months later he kidnapped estate agent Stephanie Slater during a viewing at a property in Birmingham.
Stephanie was handcuffed, gagged and blindfolded while kept in a coffin-style box inside a wheelie bin at Sams’ workshop in Newark, Notts.
After eight days she was released when a ransom was paid.
Friends say Stephanie, who died of cancer aged 50 in 2017, never got over her ordeal
Last year, Sams, 82, was denied parole — and he makes it his life to moan about everything in jail.
A prison officer told the authors: “I remember one particular funny time.
“He came to the office to complain about his mattress.
“Picture the scene, Michael Sams, he’s at the window on his one leg, complaining about the state of the mattress and how he couldn’t sleep and it was unfair and inhumane and all these things against what he had done to his poor victims.
“So this cleaning officer said, ‘Listen kid, you wanna try sleeping in a f***ing wheelie bin’.
“And Christ Almighty I nearly choked on my coffee.
“He just stared at him and walked off.”
Ian Huntley, who murdered ten-year-olds Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman in Soham, Cambs, in 2002, was held in Wakefield until 2008, when he was transferred after constantly threatening to kill himself.
One prison officer called him a “pathetic individual”, saying: “I can’t say anything nice about him because there was nothing nice.
“He was just very needy, always on suicide watch.
“He was such a wet lettuce leaf.”
Other notorious prisoners to have spent time there are Charles Bronson and Robert Maudsley, who is so volatile he has been locked in a special glass cell in the basement of the jail since killing two inmates.
‘HUGE TARGET’
Insiders described Bronson, one of Britain’s most violent convicts — who was first jailed in 1974 for armed robbery — as being “like a spoiled child” who lived in a cell with a TV, phone, nice furniture and his own bedding, with access to the gym and luxury showers.
Yet he still “moans and moans when he does not get his own way”.
Maudsley is said to hate Bronson, and before his glass cell was built in 1983, loved winding him up by playing loud rock music.
Maudsley, 70, earned the nickname “Hannibal The Cannibal” after forcing a spoon into the brain of a child molester he tortured and garroted at Broadmoor psychiatric hospital in 1977.
One of the first nurses on the scene told Jonathan and Emma: “Burly and grizzled as the Broadmoor nurses tend to be, they could not break inside Bob Maudsley’s room.
“The victim, eventually put out of his agony with a makeshift garrotting, was then paraded in front of the cell’s spy hatch for the helpless Broadmoor staff to see.
“When they finally gained access, the victim was partially skinned.
“This flaying had likely taken place while he was still alive, as his screams echoing through Broadmoor during his ordeal had testified.”
The following year Maudsley killed two inmates at Wakefield.
Serial sex offender John Worboys was convicted of attacks, including rape, on 12 women after drugging them in his black cab.
A fellow prisoner says he now lives in the healthcare department inside Wakefield for his own protection.
He told the authors: “Because of his profile he is now a huge target.
“He is petrified of his own shadow, he is no fighter or hard man, very vulnerable and weak.”
Former prison officer Martin Baker described how murderers and sex fiends would take advice from serial killer Harold Shipman, who murdered an estimated 250 of his patients.
He said: “When I was dealing with people down at the gym they were coming in with remedials.
“I’d say, ‘Oh yeah, you might have a slight ligament tear there or something’.
“They would reply, ‘Oh well, Harold Shipman says I’ve got a so-and-so.
“I’d say, ‘Well, he can’t treat you anyway so I don’t care what he says you’ve got!’.”
Martin described triple killer Levi Bellfield, whose victims include 13-year-old schoolgirl Milly Dowler in 2002, as a “typical psychopath”.
‘LIKE A TRAMP’
Meanwhile, Shipman was said to be a friend of sex predator Peter Moore.
Moore murdered four men in North Wales in 1995, but he told the jury at his trial that the murders had been committed by a fictitious lover he called Jason, after the killer in the Friday The 13th horror films.
Insiders say he makes a big deal of joking about an attack on a couple he tied up.
He says that when the man begged him not to attack his wife, he told him: “Sir, how dare you, I’m not here for her, it’s you I want.”
While inmates have no issues asking the likes of Shipman for advice, they hate child murderers and sex attackers.
Wakefield officers claim that Roy Whiting, who killed eight-year-old Sarah Payne in 2000, and Mark Bridger, convicted of murdering April Jones, five, in Wales in 2012, are most at risk of attacks from other prisoners.
Whiting, 65, was stabbed in Wakefield earlier this year.
An insider says: “He never comes out of his cell.
“He just chain smokes.
“He wears prison clothing, he is like a tramp.
“He works in Workshop 8 using a sewing machine.
“He goes to work, comes back and stays in his cell here.
“It is just a matter of time before he is murdered.”
Former Lostprophets singer Ian Watkins, 46, buys protection in jail, according to another prisoner.
The Welshman was sentenced in 2013 after a shocking trial for offences including the rape of a baby.
He filmed himself committing sex acts on a baby boy the day after the band’s final album Weapons was released in 2012.
He was stabbed and tortured in jail last year.
The prison source tells the authors: “He buys his protection, and his recent stabbing was due to a drug debt.
“He is considered vile amongst other offenders.
“He has many female fans and receives letters from a lot of females.
“He maintains his innocence because of the shame of his crimes.
“He is hated by many, but as HMP Wakefield is mixed, i.e. VPs and high-level gangsters, drug importers and organised crime, they just take money off him for his safety.
“He has spent thousands on protection.
“The recent stabbing was a reminder that he needs to pay.
“He took an amount of spice off a prisoner, with a prison value of £150.
“Because it was Watkins he was told he owed £900.
“He was high and refused to pay, therefore he was stabbed in the side using a sharpened toilet brush.”
- Inside Wakefield Prison: Life Behind Bars In The Monster Mansion by Jonathan Levi and Emma French (John Blake, £9.99) is out on Thursday.