The roll call of men locked up at Wakefield prison includes some of Britain’s most notorious and violent criminals.
It is one of the highest security prisons in the UK and holds some of the most dangerous men in the prison system.
A majority of those held have been convicted of the most serious sexual offences though despite its risks, a 2022 inspection report found it to be “settled and comparatively safe”.
Among the rapists, serial killers and terrorists behind bars at Wakefield is Robert Maudsley who murdered three times and has reportedly spent 23 hours a day in a perspex box.
In 1978, Maudsley, now aged 70, killed two fellow Wakefield inmates, one of whom had been teaching him French.
Wakefield has also been home to Charles Bronson, who now uses the name Charles Salvador and was initially jailed for armed robbery in 1974.
His seven year sentence has been extended a number of times because of his violent attacks on other prisoners and staff.
He was denied release by the Parole Board in March and told his request to be moved to an open prison would not be granted.
Twisted GP Harold Shipman, seen as one of the most prolific serial killers with perhaps 250 victims, died at Wakefield in January 201.
He started work as a GP in 1970 and went on to murder his victims with lethal doses of pain killers until his arrest in 1998.
Ian Huntley murdered the schoolgirls Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman in Soham in 2002. A caretaker at Soham Village College, Huntley lured the girls into his house as they walked past on their way to buy sweets.
After reports of the girls’ disappearance, Huntley came forward and spoke to the press, raising suspicions among detectives. He was subsequently arrested and charged with murder before being sentenced to 40 years in December 2003.
Indonesian serial rapist Reynhard Sinaga was convicted in 2020 of 159 sexual offences against 48 men.
He would drug his victims before sexually assaulting them with reports he kept hours of footage from the attacks on his phone.
Sick Sinaga was jailed for life with a minimum term of 30 years in January 2020.
Jeremy Bamber, 62, was convicted of killing his adoptive parents Nevill and June Bamber as well as his sister Sheila and her six-year-old twins, Daniel and Nicholas, in Tolleshunt D’Arcy, Essex, in 1985.
Bamber was sentenced to a whole life tariff, meaning he has no possibility of being freed. Despite this, he has made repeated, unsuccessful bids to get his conviction overturned. Members of his extended family remain convinced of his guilt.
Lostprophets paedophile frontman Ian Watkins was locked up in 2013 for 35 years for 13 offences against children.
He was stabbed in August and taken to hospital after the attack which followed his being taken hostage by three inmates.
A source told The Sun he was screaming and was “obviously terrified” and in fear of his life.
Child molester Sidney Cooke, 96, led a paedophile ring suspected of murdering up to 20 young boys in the 1970s and 1980s.
He is serving two life sentences and in May had his latest bid for freedom rejected by the Parole Board which ruled he still poses a very high risk of serious harm to children.
A former fairground worker, Cooke was nicknamed Hissing Sid and described by The Guardian as “Britain’s most notorious paedophile”.
During the 1970s, he and about a dozen paedophiles started hiring rent boys and kidnapping male children. They went on to drug, rape and abuse their victims.
Cooke was recently named in relation to an unsolved, 40 year cold case involving the disappearance and murder of an eight-year-old boy on the day Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer married.
