A British serial killer who has been locked up for nearly 50 years is believed to be the world record holder for the most time spent in solitary confinement.
Robert Mawdsley has been living out his days for the past 45 years alone in a glass prison cell in West Yorkshire after slaying three inmates, The Mirror reported.
The 70-year-old killer was first locked up when he was 21, in 1974, for murdering child predator John Farrell.
After being deemed unfit to stand trial, Mawdsley was sent to Broadmoor, a high-security psychiatric hospital in Liverpool, where took an inmate hostage and stabbed him to death with a shaved-down spoon in 1977.
After being convicted of manslaughter for the Broadmoor killing, Mawdsley was transferred to Wakefield prison in 1978, where he killed two more inmates, landing himself in the box.
The bloodthirsty criminal has been spending his days underground in a custom-built 18-foot by 15-foot glass cage cell, complete with bulletproof windows and a concrete slab for a bed, along with a table and chair made of compressed cardboard, the outlet reported.
The slayer’s nephew Gavin Mawdsley told the Channel 5 show “Evil Behind Bars” if his uncle had not been isolated, he’d continue to kill child sex offenders in prison.
“[If you] put him with rapists and pedophiles, I know because he told us, he is going to kill as many pedophiles as he can,” Gavin Mawdsley said. “I’m not condoning what he did, but… the people he killed were really bad people.”
A spokesman for the Ministry of Justice insisted to The Mirror there is “no such thing as solitary confinement in our prison system.”
“Some offenders will be segregated if they pose a risk to others. They are allowed time in the open air every day, visits, phone calls, and access to legal advice and medical care like everyone else,” the spokesman said.
Albert Woodfox, who was held at the Louisiana State Penitentiary on armed robbery charges, was previously thought to hold the world record for solitary confinement, at 43 years.
Woodfox was put in solitary after he was convicted of murdering correctional officer Brent Miller in 1972, which he continued to deny after his release in 2016 and his death in 2022.