'BRAIN EATER' SERIAL KILLER KEPT IN A GLASS CAGE

is there such thing as a justified murder does anyone deserve to be murdered well the man that we're about to talk about today seems to think that some people do he wanted to eliminate all of the people that made this world an unsafe and scary place to be even if it meant getting his hands dirty and eliminating those people himself today we're going to be talking about robert maudsley also known as the brain eater so today's video is going to be another solved true crime kiss but before i say anything else let me just let you know that my new halloween merch is live right now we have sweatshirts and hoodies to keep you warm while you're trick-or-treating we have a mug for you to drink your witch's brew in it we have some other stuff as well but i can't think of any other like halloweeny little advertising puns um we've got loads of merch it's all on screen right now we have the phone case we have long sleeves short sleeves sweatshirts hoodies all of it it's all so cute we have the keep it spooky design in a little pumpkin which i think is the cutest thing ever and october 31st because halloween is 365 days a year for me personally i don't know about you the link to shop the new merch collection is down below in the description or it's eleanor neil dot shop you can just type that in on a browser and it'll take you right there if you get something make sure to tag me in your pictures i really want to see you all in this halloween merch i love halloween so much and i think you're all going to look super cute so yeah ellen o'neill.shop or the link is down below in the description but like i said today we are going to be talking about the brain eater which is a uk true crime case that i've wanted to cover for so long now so before we get into it i just want to give my usual disclaimer that i mean absolutely no disrespect to anyone that i talk about in this video this video is for educational purposes and everything that i'm about to say is just information that i have found on the internet and i'm compiling into one video i just want to give a couple of content warnings before we get into this one because this one is very dark at a lot of points so today we're going to be talking about themes of child abuse and neglect sexual abuse and rape and suicide attempts so if any of that is something that you feel like you can't really listen to right now please do click out of this video and look after yourself your mental health is the most important thing i'm sure i can see you again at some other point with a different case but if you're still here let's get on with the case so robert john maudsley was born on june 26 1953 in liverpool england to parents george and jean mardsley and his home life was never a happy one right from day one i mean especially because of his father his father was so old-fashioned in his beliefs that children only learn through punishment and beatings like physical beatings so whenever any of the kids did anything even slightly wrong they would be beaten by their father even as babies that's how much this man just didn't understand how to parent your children like when they were babies and they would cry and they would act out he would you know beat them like they're babies they don't know any better they can't understand what's going on they can't understand you hitting them and that's a form of punishment to not cry again they don't understand that they're literally crying because they need their basic needs met and this man just abused his babies he was awful and robert's mother gene she stood by and watched this abuse and just let it happen i think she just supported her husband and things i don't think she ever hit the kids or if she did it wasn't as frequent as her husband but she didn't do anything about it she actually neglected the kids quite badly like neglected their emotional needs their physical needs she didn't really care for them she didn't spend time with them she didn't talk to her kids really at this point in time i think it was robert who was the youngest and then he had two older brothers and an older sister so there's four of them and he's the baby but luckily the children would be saved from this abusive household when robert was just six months old when one of their neighbours phoned social services to inform them of the abuse that was going on they were all put into a catholic children's home and there they were raised by nuns so it wasn't like they had parents or parental figures or parental love they were raised by staff essentially the staff didn't act as parents to them but at least here they weren't faced with physical danger every single day they weren't getting those emotional needs met but at least now they were safe and like i said robert was six months old when he was put into this home his brothers and sister were a bit older than him but he was too young to even know what had happened he was too young to remember his parents in fact all the kids just said and believed that they were orphans for a long time none of them had many memories of their parents they had trauma very evident trauma but i don't think the kids themselves even remembered where that trauma came from which is a silver lining i guess so for about 10 years robert and all of his siblings were raised in this catholic children's home and they fully just believed that they were orphaned they didn't know who their parents were they didn't know anything about them they never thought they'd see them again but then one day one of robert's older brothers was put up for adoption he was the first of all the kids in the children's home to actually be put up for adoption he could be leaving them but as soon as that happened the adoption center got a call telling them to stop the whole thing take that child off of the adoption thing and it turned out that this call was from the maudsley children's biological grandparents and their grandparents were saying that they wanted all four of those children back and so it was granted i mean this catholic children's home saw these two loving grandparents being like we want our grandchildren back and they granted it but that's not actually where the four kids ended up going robert and all of his siblings were actually sent back to live with their abusive parents now ten years later they were just moving back in with well people that felt like strangers robert hadn't seen his parents since he was six months old of course he didn't remember so the kids are just moving in with this what feels like a random man and a random lady they're told that these are their biological parents but they don't feel anything because they don't know them and it really didn't take long for the abuse to begin again in this household again it was just beatings for absolutely anything and everything anything these kids could do even slightly wrong whether it was on purpose or an accident or anything they would be beaten for everything but that was only one of their many struggles that they now had to face the family was also very financially disadvantaged they were in serious poverty in fact their father would encourage his kids to steal food from shops throughout the day so that the parents wouldn't have to provide for them because they couldn't really afford and from time to time the kids would get caught stealing and the police would bring the kids back to the home tell their parents and the dad would be so mad and he would beat them but not because they'd been stealing remember he'd encouraged them to go and steal he would beat them because they got caught stealing he didn't want the kids to have the police round at the house so he would beat them for not being good enough at breaking the law it's such an interesting way to raise your children an awful way and despite the parents hardly being able to keep these four kids alive with what little money they had they decided that they were just gonna keep having kids anywhere they had eight more to be exact so that is now 12 children in total sleeping in this very tiny house they don't have the money to feed or clothe these children the kids were literally sleeping on the ground no mattress no blankets or anything some of them had to have like a coat as a blanket all the kids had one outfit each and they had to wear it during the day they had to sleep in it it barely ever got washed because the kids always needed clothes so this was the kind of lifestyle that robert mordsley was raised in the kids had nothing they didn't even have their basic needs met most of the time that mixed with the constant fear and physical pain of the abuse they were constantly terrified that they were gonna make their dad angry and then there was the emotional neglect from their mother they weren't getting love or protection from anywhere the two people that were supposed to make sure that they were safe in this world were abusing them or turning a blind eye to the abuse and now their father as time was going on he was coming up with new ways to abuse his children especially robert all of the siblings said that robert marsley would get the worst of the abuse out of all 12 children it seemed that his father just hated him he would lock him in a room for weeks at a time and only go in there to give him food or drink or sometimes to rape him to rape his own son he also started introducing weapons when he would beat robert he would beat him with his cane or even the butt of an air rifle and you know how serious hits with a gun can be it can fracture your skull it can do all sorts robert was severely severely abused at this point he's like 10 11 12 years old and then after a year of this after a year of the children being back with their parents social services were brought in once again because how had this been allowed to happen by the way if social services have been in contact with the parents once and taken four kids away from them how were these four kids allowed back to them i just find that insane but thank god social services were brought in once again and all of the kids were taken away once again this time they were put into foster care and they stayed in foster care for a good few years until kind of their mid to late teens they were all about 15 16 maybe 17 and at that point they all decided to run away foster care must have not been a very nice experience i couldn't find much on his foster care experience to be honest but i imagine it wasn't very good because they all ran away in their own ways some of the siblings ran back to liverpool because that was where they were kind of brought up but some of them just went all over the uk they were just finding any city that they could escape to and robert marsley at 16 years old he decided to run away to london age 16 he arrived on the streets of london with no money no belongings literally just the outfit that he was wearing and he was gonna try and build life for himself down there so in order to make some money robert began pickpocketing stealing you know anything to get him that little bit of cash but it wasn't enough at all for him to live on he knew that he needed to do more and that was when he found himself falling into the world of sex work on the streets of london and for a 16 year old boy it was so dangerous there was a very prominent drug scene surrounding the sex work that he did and so at a very young age robert was developing all kinds of addictions and dependencies to alcohol and cocaine and all different kinds of drugs after just a few months of arriving in the capital robert marsley was getting drunk all day every day he had to do drugs to be able to do the work that he was doing because it was so dangerous and scary by the age of 18 he was full-time with prostitution he would often pick up clients in bars because he himself was an alcoholic he would go out drinking in bars all day get talking to a man there and then offer his services and then they would end up going home together and through all these different corners of his life the sex work the alcoholism the drug dependencies they would get him into such dangerous situations every single day remember this is a teenage boy as well he just faced so much violence and terror on the streets of london every single day he was beaten he was robbed he was harassed and blackmailed for drug money he was even raped by one of his associates at one point and because of all of this because of robert's completely traumatic life he never had a second of peace in his whole life by the time he got to his late teenage years he was suffering so bad with different mental illnesses depression there was a lot more going on behind the scenes than just depression psychiatrists looked at robert all the way through his life and said that there was something for sure going on whether that was schizophrenia or something else it wasn't ever fully diagnosed and then in his late teenage years robert maudsley attempted suicide multiple times eventually he was hospitalized and kept on a psychiatric ward for some treatment and this went well for a little while this was the first time that robert had ever opened up to anyone about what was going on inside his head and this was long overdue after the childhood that he'd had he needed a therapist or something way before now but at least now he was getting it and in hospital he was telling this therapist that he actually heard voices in his head and these voices in his head would tell him what to do and they would tell him to do some horrifying things one of the biggest things that they would tell him to do over and over again was to kill his parents and by now in the case he hadn't seen them in years so they weren't in his life anymore to keep doing this to him but the trauma that they'd inflicted on him must have been so deep that it was still affecting him even when they're not around anymore he still feels constantly terrified and on edge it scarred him on such a deep level that he just could not get past it he felt like he was in constant danger of his parents that he needed to kill them to feel comfortable in his life and as though he can move on with his life without ever having to deal with them again so all of that is what he admitted to a psychiatrist that he heard voices that he wanted to kill his parents that he wasn't over all of his trauma and he wanted to get to them but surprisingly after all of that he wasn't even diagnosed with any kind of mental illness in fact he wasn't even kept there at the hospital for much longer they listened to him say all of these very dangerous and scary things and then they were like okay cool nice meeting you get back out on the street now his mental health was very clearly declining at a rapid rate and it was making him a danger not only to himself but to others but for some reason the hospital just didn't treat him and they just sent him on there on his way and now robert marsley is back out on the streets of london he continued his sex work until late 1973 when he met a man named john farrell now john farrell was a lot older than him he was in his 30s at this point robert was about 20. and john farrell was a very wealthy older man because he i think he worked in construction maybe owned his own construction company he had a lot of money he lived on the outskirts of north london and he would often solicit robert marsley for sex and this became quite a regular thing he was a regular client until one day he turned to robert and he was like i don't want to do it like this anymore i just want you he was quite attached to robert marsley and he asked him if he would consider quitting sex work just to be like his full-time boyfriend and he would compensate him for that so kind of like a sugar baby sugar daddy kind of relationship and this wasn't something that robert marsley had ever thought about it had never even crossed his mind because in his mind he wasn't looking for a relationship or intimacy or anything on an emotional level at all he saw sex and giving away his body as just a commodity it was literally just the way that he made money and so this guy was saying i want you like i want your intimacy i want i want to be with you and robert was like oh wow i can sell that now instead and this meant that robert would no longer be on the streets of london selling his body to strangers that he doesn't know so he doesn't know how safe it is he got himself into so many dangerous situations and here is this man saying quit all that i'll take care of you financially just spend more time with me of course robert was like yep sold it was more of a casual thing it was exclusive don't get me wrong but it was just more of like a sexual relationship they didn't like go out on dates really but as time went on these meetings got more and more frequent farrell wanted to see robert more and more he was going around to farrell's house like three nights a week they would meet up in the city they would go for drinks at a bar and then they'd always end up at farrell's house every single time and this was their routine for about six months this was going on and remember robert is still very much into all of his drug addictions and dependencies and he would be on these drugs pretty much every single time he met farrell and then one night the men went back to john farrell's home and he sat robert down and said look i've got something to show you he seemed really excited about what he was about to show him he ran over to this chest of drawers and opened one of the drawers and underneath all his clothes he'd hidden a stack of photos he got the stack of photos out and ran back over to robert at this point robert is proper drugged out like he does not understand what's going on but he's letting john do all this thing john comes and presents these photos in front of him and so robert pulls himself up off the chair and his eyes are like trying to focus on this picture it's taking him a while because he's very very intoxicated and then he realized what he was looking at in his hand were further after photo of young children being sexually abused and in that moment when robert realized what he was looking at what his almost boyfriend had just excitedly handed him something just took over robert he suddenly got all these flashbacks from his childhood about his father and all the beatings and the way that his father would lock him in a room to go and sexually abuse him all of this fear and anger was boiling over inside robert marsley and all he could do was just sit and stare at these pictures like he couldn't even look up at john farrell john farrell didn't know what was going on he didn't know what was going on inside robert's head so he still stood there smiling at robert waiting for a response waiting for a reaction but robert is just silent and so farrell asks him he's like well do you like what you see in the pictures and it was at that point that robert marsley just stood up and walked away from john farrell he couldn't even look at him he felt sick that his boyfriend sugar daddy is that kind of person that would have this material he had no clue that this was going on the whole time he'd known farrell farrell shouted over to robert saying that he wanted to recreate some of the pictures that he'd just shown him he's just making it worse and worse and worse by the minute and so robert marsley starts piercing around this room at this moment he doesn't know what to do he's feeling all of this intense rage inside of him and he doesn't know what to do he's trying to come to terms with the fact that the man that he's been sleeping with for six months his like almost boyfriend is an abuser a child sexual abuser just like his father was and those were the people that robert marsley despised the most after the childhood that he'd been through he had zero respect for anyone that could ever do anything like that to a child he hated those kind of people he thought that those kind of people did not deserve to be on this earth anymore he just felt sick for all of the children in those photos that he just saw and he wanted to get some justice for them and it was in that moment that robert turned around and saw a piece of fabric laying on the side of john farrell's home and in that moment he knew what he had to do robert grabbed this piece of fabric turned to face john farrell launched himself at him tackled farrell down onto the bed wrapped this piece of fabric around his neck and started squeezing as hard as he possibly could strangling this man at first farrell thought that this was just a bit of a game he thought that this was robert's reaction to those pictures like a sexual reaction he thought that they were about to have sex and that's why he just tackled him onto the bed and so at first farrell's like flirting with him as robert is about to murder him but when that fabric was tied around his neck that was when he realized what was going on he tried to fight back but this intense rage inside of robert had given him this inhuman strength superhuman strength and no matter how hard john farrell fought against robert marsley he wasn't moving robert just watched as the life drained out of farrell's face he just murdered him but that wasn't enough for robert because there was always the chance that maybe john farrell could just be passed out he could have just passed out from the suffocation he might come back and robert wanted to make sure that that wouldn't happen and so he grabbed a pen knife from his pocket and started frenzied stabbing this man he was just going and going and going stabbing this man in the chest in the neck in the head and then about halfway through this frenzied stabbing attack robert looks up and sees a hammer across the room and so he got up off of john farrell went and picked up this hammer brought it back over and started smashing his skull to pieces with it finally when he was finished robert farrell took a step back and looked at his first ever murder victim he had completely obliterated this man you couldn't even make out his face anymore his skull was crushed that severely he had stab wounds all over him that you could barely even see skin anymore like he had gone savage on this man and john farrell could no longer hurt another child ever again but now this realization sets in for robert marsley as he's staring down at this mangled body of his murder victim he realizes that he's just committed murder this is nothing like anything he's ever done before robert marsley was not a violent person he never got into fights he'd never got a violence charge before in his life the only crimes he ever committed were just things like drugs and theft when he needed to he only committed crimes when he felt he needed to and this time he felt that again he felt he needed to get rid of john farrell from this earth to protect children but still he knew that now that he'd committed murder he knew that murder was wrong he knew exactly what he'd just done and he knew that his life was about to be drastically different no matter what where he went about this he could get caught for this murder and go to prison for the rest of his life his life is drastically different that way or he could try and go on the run and get away with this for the rest of his life but living with that anxiety and having to move around away from the police his life would be drastically different that way he just had to decide which way he wanted his life to be different so robert stayed in the apartment for a little while longer he just sat down and waited for this realization to dawn on him more and more as time was going by he was thinking about his options what he could do deep down he knew that he needed to go to prison for what he'd just done and as the drugs wore off more and more this realization was setting in more and more and he knew that he wasn't getting away with this he wasn't even gonna try and get away with this if he tried to run from the law and get away with murder then really he was no better than any of his abusers because that would mean that he was a murderer and he wasn't serving time there wouldn't be justice served if he ran away from this he knew that he needed to face prison just like his abusers needed to face prison but they never did and it was also very clear that he was now a danger to society as much as he didn't feel he was a danger to society he didn't know he was capable of murder until well until now until now when he was stood looking at this body he had no idea that he was capable of murder until right now and now that he knew that he was he wanted to be locked away so that he couldn't do this again and so robert marsley decided that he was gonna hand himself into the police he left john farrell's apartment still covered in blood and just walked to the nearest police station he thought that by being honest about this crime first of all he could get some psychiatric help then because this is practically the worst thing that your mental health could lead you to do is murder another human being so maybe finally he would get some kind of treatment and second of all he thought if he was honest about it and just went and handed himself over to the police maybe he would get a lesser sentence because honesty is the best policy i don't know why would anyone get a lower sentence just for that to be honest he actually thought that the police might even be on his side for murdering this man because he rid the world of another pedophile so he was doing the police a favor at least that's what he thought so robert marsley entered this police station he walked up to the front desk and just said very matter of fact i just murdered a sex offender and i need help and police rightly sir were horrified by what they just heard from robert and sir they took him to get changed and then they went and sat in in an interrogation room and they like put all the tips on and stuff they recorded everything that robert was about to say because they had a feeling he was going to be very honest about it since he handed himself over and sure enough he told them everything he told them everything from start to finish about his relationship with john farrell how it all came about that night the photos that he'd been shown and then he told them step by step the way that he murdered him meanwhile another set of police went out to the scene of the crime john farrell's apartment and sure enough the story that robert marsley told the police lined up perfectly with all the evidence he had no reason to lie i suppose police just couldn't believe how cooperative their killer was i mean this never happens if you watch my channel you know this never happens this was gonna be a very easy case to complete a very easy trial since the killer himself is saying yeah i did it lock me up but in order to do that trial they needed to assess robert marsley because it was very clear that he did have some psychological issues going on that were undiagnosed so he was seen by a bunch of psychiatrists to deem whether he was suitable to stand trial or not and this judge took one look at robert marsley's file and said no absolutely not like he cannot stand trial there was physical and sexual abuse since birth he was in and out of foster homes child care homes all his childhood as well there was the involuntary sex work and crime circles that he was in at the age of 16 in london he was also raped by his associates not to mention the drug addictions the neglect that he experienced as a child the suicide attempts the voices in his head i believe he's self-harmed at one point it was just very very clear that robert marsley just did not have the capacity to be able to stand trial he needed serious serious help so the judge decided that instead of sending this murderer to prison he was gonna send him to a psychiatric unit to maybe get that help that he so needed but this wasn't just any psychiatric unit that robert marsley was sent to he was sent to the infamous broadmoor hospital and we've talked about broadmars so often on this channel it's a psychiatric hospital here in the uk that used to be just for the criminally insane so that's serial killers murderers serial rapists child abusers all these the worst of the worst now i think it's just a hospital i don't think you have to be criminally insane to go there i don't think you have to have committed a crime to be treated at broadmoor but back then that was the only patient base in there murderers serial killers some of the notorious killers that have found themselves in broadmoor hospital include the yorkshire ripper peter sucliff there was the devil's daughter sharon carr who was just 12 years old when she committed her murders john straffen the child murderer robert nappa the serial killer that murdered rachel nikel remember i did that three-part series on her there was even ronnie craig from the career twins so when robert mardley was admitted to broadmoor in the 70s he became one of those notorious patients that people talk about now and back in the 70s i don't know what broadmoor is like now but back then it was a horrible place to be it was very prison-esque which i mean it was for the criminally insane after all these people were people that had committed serious crimes so it makes sense to make it like half prison half hospital but the way that they did it was literally awful patients were almost always handcuffed or shackled at any one point they didn't have like physical freedom to move when they wanted to on top of that at the time in the 70s there were also a lot of allegations of physical and sexual abuse from the staff to the patients i don't know if robert marsley was ever faced with any of that but that was something that was well allegedly going on behind those doors and robert just got on with life in the hospital he wasn't doing amazingly well but he wasn't you know acting out he wasn't doing badly he was just getting on getting by and that's how it was for a few years he was very hopeful when he heard that he was going to broadmoor because he finally felt like maybe that would be the start of getting some actual good psychological treatment but he wasn't really getting that it wasn't a very nurturing environment really it was just like oh you're a murderer let's lock you up and we'll give you a counselling session every week it was literally just a place to put these people on medication i suppose so he wasn't really getting the help that he so needed but also at the same time he wasn't coming into contact with people that would trigger him either so he was just kind of cursed in that was until a few years into his hospital stay when robert was 24 years old he'd been in broadmoor for a little while at this point and then a new patient joined and this was 26 year old david francis and david francis was a convicted child molester as soon as robert marsley found this out about their new patient friend he hated him he hated david francis for what he'd done to those children and he felt all these feelings coming back again all those feelings that he had towards john farrell in that moment when he murdered him he was feeling that again for david francis at first he could deal with it he would just take himself away from david francis and try to pretend like he wasn't there but as the days were going on robert found himself just consumed with this anger he hated this man and he wanted david francis to pay for his crimes just like john farrell had and broadmoor hospital was not making him pay it certainly was not the justice that those children needed so robert hatched a plan but he knew that he wouldn't be able to do this alone and so he recruited fellow inmate patient david cheeseman david cheeseman hated broadmoor hospital i mean every single one of those patients did it was an awful place to be but the only way to really get out because all of the patients that are being held there are held there indefinitely a lot of them spend the rest of their lives there there's nowhere for you to get out of there once you're stuck in there in fact the only way to get out of broadmoor is to do something even worse to get yourself put in a prison instead there's no way out you have to just keep going and get worse and worse until they have to lock you up in a prison i don't know what all this was about and so david cheeseman was willing to help his friend robert marsley commit murder because that would mean that they would both get taken out of broadmoor and put somewhere else and anything was better than broadmoor even prison so the two men got to work for a couple of weeks they were stealing spoons from the cafeteria bit taking them back to their cell and then sanding them down on the concrete floor to make a sharp pointy edge to make themselves like a makeshift knife and once they had their weapons robert and david cheeseman got to work thinking of a plan on how they were gonna get david francis alone away from all the other patients so that they could commit this murder every week broadmoor patients were allowed one hour out in the yard all together at once and that was for like fresh air recreational activities like sports and socializing and that would be the perfect time to get david francis alone maybe without drawing too much attention because everyone's out there there's a lot of distractions and on february 26 1977 that time finally came the patients all flooded out into the yard and they all played a game of football together and then when they were done they were all sent back to their individual rooms cells kind of thing and so in this big rush there's literally hordes of patients going back to their rooms all at once it's a big distracting mess of people this was the time for robert and david cheeseman to strike robert and cheeseman were walking together and then they noticed david francis slightly ahead the two of them turned to each other and exchanged a look and they knew that it was time and they ran over to david francis robert grabbed david francis from behind and put his makeshift knife to his throat he then dragged him into a nearby star cupboard and david cheeseman followed behind closing the door behind them locking all three of them into this storage room together robert and cheeseman then barricaded this door closed so that no one could get in to save david francis and david francis wouldn't be able to escape and there in that storeroom robert marsley and david cheeseman proceeded to torture david francis for nine hours doing unspeakable things to this man for nine hours they tied him to a chair in the middle of the room and they kicked him punched him beat him they stabbed him with their little makeshift knives they slashed all over his body this was going on for nine hours all of this torture and abuse until finally robert marsley grabbed david francis up off of this chair and started bashing his head against the wall and again he went into this like frenzy he blacked out he was doing it again and again and again with this superhuman strength that he got out of nowhere finally when robert kind of snapped out of this rage that he was in david francis was already dead and he had been for a little while at this point but robert hadn't known he hadn't stopped the attack he just kept going and at this point david francis's head it wasn't even a head anymore his skull was completely shattered his brain was everywhere like his his head was open i think robert even stabbed his knife his makeshift knife into this man's brain a few times just to make sure that he was dead and when david francis's body was found in that stalker bed it still had the spoon inside his brain now this is where robert marley gets the name the brain eater because as soon as broadmoor staff saw a spoon in this guy's brain they just presumed that maudsley had eaten some of this guy's brain and so in immediate reports of this murder in the media they were all talking about this cannibal in broadmoor hannibal the cannibal he was nicknamed the brain brain-eater they all called him all talking about this broadmoor patient that had eaten the brain of another broadmoor patient but robert marsley said that he never actually cannibalized david francis it just so happened that he'd stabbed him in the brain and left the weapon there but he'd never eaten any of his brain he never even intended to that was just the weapon that he used it was just a spoon because that was all he could really get his hands on in the prison so yeah the media reported robert marsley as this kind of insatiable cannibal when really it was just his choice of weapon just kind of looked like he might have eaten the victim but he actually didn't but one thing that always strikes me about this case is how was david francis not saved in nine hours i understand that there were two very dangerous men in there with him that probably would have attacked any police officer that tried to get in but surely they would have been aware because if they would have got in there at any time within that like eight and a half hours they could have saved him it was only in that last half an hour that robert marsley decided to beat david's head against the wall and that was what killed him i don't know if staff even knew that this was going on some reports say that they did and that there was like a window in the door and that they saw the whole thing taking place but i found it hard to believe that they just watched they just sat and watched they didn't even try and do anything i don't know but either way no one was there to save david francis for nine hours and robert marsley now had a second murder victim and once again he was very cooperative with the police because he understood that murder was wrong he knew that what he was doing was wrong and that he needed to be punished and that he needed consequences for his actions but he felt that that punishment and those consequences was worth it for ridding the world of another child sexual predator he felt like the things that he was doing would justified because pedophiles and rapists and child rapists in his mind deserved to be tortured and abused and murdered he was just doing what he felt was right so after this of course he went to trial again and they were like well we can't keep you in a hospital if this is the kind of thing that you're doing and sir robert marsley was sent to wakefield prison and wakefield prison is again one of the uk's most notorious prisons it has a lot of dangerous people in there it's a very high security prison it's actually been nicknamed monster mansion by the media because of its notorious infamous inmates it's housed a bunch of serial killers harold shipman robert black the child killer there's ian huntley the man that killed holly and jessica the sewer murders levi bellfield's been in there millie dowlers killer he's also a serial killer but rather stupidly i can't believe this even happened but they decided to put robert marsley a man that has now committed two murders on an open wing an open wing that meant that he could just kind of free socialize with all of the other inmates on his wing and those other inmates were people like serial killers murderers child molesters child sexual predators and i'm sure you can imagine how this went why on earth they gave this man free reign with his exact victim type i don't know because that's just facilitating it to be honest and robert did actually try to warn the prison that's the thing he sat them down and he said do not put me in an open wing because i will kill again if i find out that there are people on that wing that have molested children raped children pedophiles any kind of people like that he said i will kill them i will commit more murders and police are like no you will we'll just keep security on you did that work no he literally begged the police to just put him in solitary confinement so that he was away from all these men so that he couldn't kill again but they didn't do anything about it and it was only a year after the murder of david francis that robert marsley decided that he was ready to kill again and there were a lot of people around him that he deemed deserved to be murdered he decided that he would go for a very similar method to david francis he was just going to identify the men on his wing that had committed crimes like that and he was gonna gain their trust kind of make a fake friendship with them and then lure them into his cell so that he could barricade the door behind them and then torture and murder them it was july 29th 1978 when robert marsley woke up and decided that he was gonna try to kill as many people as he could that day as many child sex offenders as he could should i say so he went out onto this open wing and he starts socializing he starts talking to all of these friends that he'd made over the last few weeks the who he'd gained their trust and he starts trying to lure them back into his cell but this plan didn't really go as well as he'd hoped because these other inmates they weren't stupid they knew who robert marsley was they'd heard that he'd committed one murder outside and then he got put in broadmoor committed another murder and now he was sent to their prison you know that kind of thing travels they they knew what this guy had done so no one wanted to be alone with him obviously plus on top of all of that everyone believed he was a cannibal as well because that's how the media had portrayed him that's how everyone had talked about him everyone believed that robert marsley was a cannibal and that he just killed because he was just sadistic and loved it so of course no one would willingly come back to his cell with him and this plan failed multiple times that morning but robert kept trying with loads of different inmates until eventually it worked when 46 year old salnee darwood walked into his cell with him sally darwood i don't know about his criminal history so i don't know if he was a sex offender i don't know if he ever committed any crimes against children but the reason that he was in wakefield prison at that time was because he'd actually abused his wife so bad that he ended up killing her and this was actually categorized as manslaughter not murder which makes me really angry but yeah he abused her so bad that he killed her he got manslaughter he was put on wakefield prison ward with robert mardsley and now he was walking into his cell as soon as darwin entered robert turned slammed the door behind them barricaded it and then tackled salney darwood to the ground he grabbed the makeshift knife from his waistband and started frenzied stabbing downward over and over and over again and darwood was desperately trying to get away from him he was wriggling all over just trying to get loose from robert's grasp and this actually only made it worse because this gave robert more surface area to stab sally darwood ended up with stab wounds all over his front all over his back all of his arms and legs from where he tried to get away and that was just like the closest place that robert could stab but the bit that was injured the most on salnee darwood was his face and his neck that always seemed to be the place that robert targeted the most with his victims and i think that'll become a bit more clear later on in the case but every single one of his victims so far has had a lot of injuries to their head or their face whether they'd been beaten against a wall or stabbed in the face or whatever at one point robert even stabbed the makeshift knife into salni darwood's ear and this went all the way through and pierced his brain and somehow he actually survived that for a little while robert got up because at this point he'd been like straddling darwood for a while as he was stabbing him robert got up grabbed darwood by the legs by the feet and started swinging him around the cell bashing his head off the walls like beating him in any way that he could at some point during this attack darwood was knocked unconscious and i think robert knew that he was i think robert knew that he wasn't dead yet and that he needed to continue and make sure that he died so robert grabbed this thin piece of rope that he'd stolen from one of the workshops and he'd been keeping in his cell perfect for a time like this and he wrapped it around salnee darwood's neck and squeezed until his pulse stopped and he'd strangled him to death and once again robert marsley stands up and he finds himself staring at another one of his murder victims this is now his third murder victim he's officially a serial killer after this one probably one of the only if not the only serial killer in the world to have become a serial killer behind bars but in that moment robert was proud of what he'd done he felt like sally darwood deserved it he was ridding the world of one more horrible person i think robert believed that salney darwood was a sex offender or a child sex offender or maybe he knew something about somni's past that we don't i don't know because robert was very specific in the types of victims that he went for it was only child sexual predators so i wonder if sally darwood had said something at some point during his prison time i'm not sure but anyway robert mardsley wasn't even done there because remember what his plan was for the day he set out to try and take as many sex offenders child sex offenders out as he possibly could so he wanted to get back out there and find another victim he was going to try and lure another person into his cell so that he could do the exact same thing again but he knew that in order to do that he was going to have to get rid of this murder scene that he just created in his cell so he pushed sally darwin's body under his bed and then he wiped up all the blood from the floor went over to the sink washed all the blood off of his face and his hands he washed a bit of it out of his hair and everything like this had been such a frenzied attack that there was blood everywhere this was quite a cleanup but when he was done you wouldn't have even known that it had happened robert marsley looked the same as he always did and he set off back out into the wing to go and find his next victim again he's trying to lure all these different men into his cell and it is just not working like i said the men knew his reputation and so robert started thinking man i need another plan i need a plan b and that was when it hit him what if he just took his knife out onto the wing and just killed someone out there like yes it would be over within the matter of like 30 seconds as soon as god saw what was going on he would be stopped maybe he wouldn't actually manage to kill the person in time before he was dragged off them by a guard but it would be quite easy like if he just took his knife out there chose a victim started stabbing them then and there like in the prison yard or just in the prison corridors then that's his second kill done but he knew that if he did go with that method the most people he would be able to kill that day is two he might even only manage one he might only seriously injure his second victim and then police guards might come over and pull him off so he wanted to try and come up with a different plan before that one that was kind of like his last resort plan if he couldn't get another victim all day then he was just gonna go out there and and kill anyone he saw well any child sex offender that he saw out in the wing but he wanted a different plan he wanted you know a bit more of a thought out plan than that so he decided to walk out onto the yard and you know just maybe take a bit of a break maybe see if inspiration struck meanwhile by the way there is a dead body under his bed let me remind you so he goes out into the yard he's just talking to loads of people out there and inspiration didn't strike and so he set off back inside and that was when he walked past a particular man's cell 56 year old william roberts was in wakefield prison for the sexual assault of a seven-year-old girl making him robert marsley's perfect victim and as robert walked past his cell that day william was just asleep on his bunk with the door wide open this was the perfect opportunity for robert marsley to strike again there was no one around no one to know what he was about to do william was defenseless he was asleep he would be a perfect target and so in that split second robert grabbed the knife this makeshift knife from his waistband and he launched at william roberts asleep on the bed and he starts frenzied stabbing him just as he had his other victims again mainly focused on his face his head his neck chest kind of area and after about one or two maybe three stab wounds william wakes up of course and he tries to defend himself he tries to put his hands up and this doesn't stop anything robert marsley whenever this thing took over him he would have this superhuman strength and so he's just moving his hands and continuing to stab him robert stabbed him over 20 times and then he felt william robert's pulse and he was dead robert marsley had just claimed his fourth victim but even then robert wasn't done even though his victim was dead robert still had these these feelings this rage this this anger in him that he wanted to take out on this victim and so he grabs william robert's lifeless head and starts bashing it against the wall of the cell over and over and over brutal savage to the point where again his skull is completely smashed his brain is exposed he would completely disfigure the faces of his victims and we would later come to find that the reason he did that was because he used to see his father's face on his victims as he killed them it felt like he was killing his father and after this murder the second murder of the day like i said he was planning to do upwards of like seven eight nine murders but this was his second one of the day and after beating his head against this cell wall so savagely robert looked at his victim and he was actually satisfied he didn't feel like killing anymore although this wasn't his initial plan he was satisfied with two victims so satisfied in fact that again he decided to give himself up so robert walked downstairs walked straight into the head prison guards office which i don't even think he was allowed in there i don't think inmates were allowed in there but he went in anywhere and he just slammed his makeshift knife on the table still covered in blood and gore so is he he is covered in blood just imagine the shock on this officer's face seeing this walking into the room he slammed this knife down and then robert marsley said to the prison officer i think he's going to be too short at roll call tonight and that was robert's way of telling him that he'd just murdered two of the other inmates and so within a minute robert was tackled he was handcuffed he was shackled but he was cooperative as he always had been because again i keep saying it he fully knew that what he was doing was wrong he knew that murder was wrong but he felt it was justified and so he was happy to take the consequences which was being handcuffed and shackled and arrested put in prison he was happy to do all that if it meant that the world was now free of four child sex offenders or at least people that he thought were for child sex offenders so for the time being police put robert marsley in solitary confinement until they figured out what to do with him and this was gonna be a tricky one they knew that they had to do something big to be able to stop robert mardley he had now killed four people and he was showing no signs of slowing down three of those people had been during his time incarcerated or in hospital times when he is supposed to be getting better he went into prison or went into hospital a one-time murderer and now he is a full-blown serial killer police just didn't know what it was gonna take to be able to stop robert mardley it was very clear that he was a danger to everyone every other inmate in any prison that they could put him in so what is the answer there was talk of just sending him back to broadmoor even though that clearly hadn't worked the first time though his defense team robert's defense team said in court that this was only happening because of his horrific mental health and that if he was to get some help for that in broadmoor if he was to get some treatment then he would no longer be a danger to these people so they were telling police that they need to work on prevention send him to a hospital to prevent him committing more murders don't just lock him away and wait for these thoughts and these triggers to come back so that he'll act a fifth time so robert marsley was sent for a trial to see what was gonna happen to him now and of course his defense team was pushing sending him to hospital they were saying that this man wasn't a monster robert marsley was not a monster he was just a very traumatized individual that with the level of mental illness that he had he didn't know how to deal with that trauma and that trauma whenever it was triggered by you know a sex offender nearby he would get all these flashbacks of his father and then that trauma would manifest in murder so they need to deal with the trauma to stop the murder and like i said when robert would kill people he would see his father's face on them and that was why he always aimed for the face that was why he always stabbed their faces or smashed their heads against a prison cell wall until they were disfigured and that's because he was trying to deal with the trauma that his father gave him even robert marsley himself stood up in court and said if i had killed my parents in 1970 none of these people would have died so his team are really pushing for him to go back to hospital and as much as the court agreed that robert mardley was very severely traumatized he had severe mental illness he needed psychiatric help but also hospital clearly wasn't the answer he'd shown them once before that they cannot trust him in broadmoor hospital so they weren't gonna send him back there but then there's the same issue with prison because they sent him to prison and he's proved that he can't be trusted there either so what else can they do while robert marsley is around he is a constant and severe risk to other patients or other inmates the only other option is to put him somewhere where there aren't other patients or inmates for him to even potentially do this to her the only option left was to put robert marsley in permanent constant solitary confinement for the rest of his life in 1983 a decision was made to custom build a pretty large perspex glass cell to keep robert marsley in a see-through glass cell because that would be the safest thing for everyone if robert had absolutely no privacy then he can't get up to things without police's knowledge they would be able to see him in his cell trying to fashion a a knife out of a spoon or trying to hide a body or trying to lure people in he wouldn't have any of those opportunities because eyes are on him 24 7 in that glass cell this cell was nicknamed the glass cage it has bulletproof and shatterproof glass in between four big steel beams it's literally just like a fish tank it's kind of like the cube you know if you've seen the show the cube and this glass cage is kept in the basement of wakefield prison so he's still in the same prison just away from all the other inmates and like i said there's guards on him 24 7. he is looked at 24 hours a day he has no privacy he is categorized as a double category a prisoner which is the top top of the most dangerous prisoners in the whole prison system so it makes sense to have to go to these measures to keep him confined but i think one of the most interesting parts about this whole case that i know i've emphasized a little bit here and there is that robert marsley the brain eater also known as hannibal the cannibal isn't actually a cannibal remember he didn't eat anyone as far as we're aware and as far as he says the autopsy came back of david francis his second victim the broadmoor victim where the spoon was found in his brain and there wasn't a piece of his brain missing it seems that the media literally just got that first report of there being a spoon found in the brain and they just ran with it and they branded this guy a cannibal called him the brain eater and now that's just what we all know him as because that's what we've been told to know him as i mean there's always the chance that robert could be lying maybe he did eat a little bit of the brain and then maybe the autopsy just didn't realize because everyone's brain mass is different isn't it i suppose how would they know if any of it was gone oh probably because there'd be like rips in it oh no but he was stabbed in the brain anywhere i'm literally just thinking out loud at this point maybe robert is lying though maybe he did cannibalize one of his victims but also what reason would he have to lie maybe because he wants to be seen as some kind of justice getter because then if he cannibalized his victims then he does look like a cold-hearted serial killer doesn't he whereas if he didn't cannibalize his victims then some people i'm sure would just view him as this guy that's just like riding the world of all these horrible people hmm sorry i will get back on track with the case i don't know why i just went informal for about two minutes robert marsley is actually still alive and in that glass cell as we speak right now he is 68 years old he's been in the glass cage for about 40 years now i think in about six more years he will have the world record for being the longest serving prisoner in solitary confinement i don't know who currently has that record but that's insane 40 years in solitary confinement sounds like absolute hell i understand that it's what they've got to do for people like this but jesus that's a long time for many of the years that robert was in this glass cell he i think he lost a lot of hope and like well i don't know he knows that he's gonna be in that glass cell for the rest of his life his life is never gonna do anything other than just sitting in this cell every day until he dies and so he decided that there was no point in him you know grooming himself or exercising or you know looking after himself in any way shape or form because he was never going to do anything other than the cell and so for that reason robert marsley started to grow all of his hair out he stopped shaving stopped getting haircuts stopped showering and he was this like very pale sickly looking man with massive dark matted hair this massive dark beard and for that he gained the nickname the wolf man of wakefield he eventually shaved it all off again i think when his brothers started visiting him in prison he like actually got a grip and like shaved and everything and he no longer looks like that anymore but yeah his family are very much in support of him and they always have been which is quite interesting both of his older brothers and one of his brother's sons so robert's nephew in fact those are the only three people that are allowed to visit him you have to go through like an extensive process to be able to visit robert maudsley in prison and those are the only three men that have ever done it like even their wives and stuff can't go along i don't think and the reason his family are in support of him is because they understand why he did what he did they also think that all of robert mordsley's victims were very bad people that deserved to be tortured and murdered the world needed rid of those people and robert was just the guy to do it his family have that same you know a train of thought as he did and i know a lot of people in the uk think like robert marsley a lot of people in the uk do actually think that he's done the right thing he is one of the most interesting serial killers i've ever researched and i love talking about him to other people because i love hearing other people's opinions on what he did especially here in the uk there are a lot of people that do think that sex offenders and especially child sex offenders should be killed for what they've done and so a lot of people are in support of him it's really interesting even though he is a serial killer robert and his two brothers and his nephew that all go and see him they also write letters back and forth because they can't go and see him all that often he doesn't get granted visits all that often for obvious reasons i mean it's a big operation whenever anyone goes to visit robert marsley there's like 12 guards in the room like it's a big thing but in the meantime they send letters to each other particularly robert and his nephew i think his name is gavin but he was actually named after robert maudsley i think his name is actually robert gavin maudsley but he's swapped around gavin and robert for obvious reasons because you wouldn't want to be named after your serial killer uncle obviously he was probably named before his uncle became a serial killer i would you would like to hope wouldn't you actually but yeah robert and gavin write to each other all the time and these letters are very normal robert's telling gavin about all these shows that he's watching in prison because he's got tv in there telling him about all these shows he's catching up on he's telling gavin oh you need to catch up with this and gavin's like you need to catch up with the formula one like proper just normal letters between an uncle and their nephew like i wonder what kind of life robert's actually living in there he's watching all the same programs that we are up here up here as well because he's in the basement from these letters we have been able to find out that robert maudsley's favorite shows to watch on tv are nature shows he really likes all the david attenborough documentaries he also really likes fine art and poetry he loves talking about all that kind of thing with his nephew and robert signs off every single letter that he sends with wolfie you know derived from his nickname the wolfman of wakefield even though all his hair is shaved and it has been for years now that name's just kind of stuck and i think he's very proud of it as well because a wolf is a very like scary dominant figure i think he liked that people were referring to him as a wolf but right now robert marsley is aged 68 still in that glass cell and people in the prison say that he is doing really well he's very calm he's very relaxed he hasn't relapsed in any kind of way in years and years and years but at the same time is he only calm and relaxed because he's on a lot of medication possibly his family said that he is a completely different person to the young man that had that kind of momentary episode of madness and killed all those people and now he's just some old man in prison that realizes that what he did when he was young was bad and now he's just dealing with the consequences but despite any changes in his personality whether he's become calmer or not robert marsley still has that same level of surveillance every single day 24 7 in that cage because let's be honest all it takes is just one bad day for robert and then someone else could lose their life thank you so much for watching this video a quick reminder that the halloween merch is available right now there's a link down below in the description or you can go to eleanor neil dot shop if you want to shop the new merch a huge huge thank you to all of my channel members for supporting me and helping decide the cases that i cover especially my tier 2 members whose names are all on screen right now if you want to become a channel member you can click the link to do so in the description or you can click the join button if you're on a desktop but yeah thank you so so much for watching if you enjoyed please leave a thumbs up down below if you want to subscribe there'll be a link to do so right here if you want to subscribe to my second channel there'll be a link right there and if you want to watch a new true crime video there'll be a playlist on screen right now bye

Channel: Eleanor Neale

Views: 2,614,646

Keywords: eleanor, neale, eleanor neale, eleanor neale true crime, mystery, unsolved, unsolved mystery, true crime, solved, documentary, killer, murder, serial killer, buzzfeed, buzzfeed unsolved, podcast, true crime podcast, bbc, itv, netflix, forensic files, dateline, interview, news, brain eater, hannibal the cannibal, robert maudsley, broadmoor, glass cage, glass cell, glass box, 2021, wolf man of wakefield, cannibal, wakefield prison, monster mansion, broadmoor hospital, true crime daily, maudsley

Id: 777nG4ubWVA

Length: 67min 32sec (4052 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 23 2021