Loveinia Grace Mackenney says she is ready to marry Robert Maudsley, Britain’s longest serving prisoner, but they are unlikely to tie the knot due to laws introduced in 2024.
The loving partner of Britain’s longest-serving prisoner, a quadruple killer dubbed Hannibal the Cannibal, is ready to marry him – but the prison authorities will not allow it.
Loveinia Grace MacKenney, 71, has been writing letters to Robert Maudsley, 72, for more than five years. They have never met and there is no prospect of him ever being freed. He is serving a full life term, and is banned from getting married under new laws introduced in 2024.
The new laws mean the UK’s most ‘heinous killers’ cannot tie the knot behind bars. But Londoner Loveinia, a mum-of-one, told the Mirror that all she wants now is to ‘give him a hug and show him that I love him’.
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She added: “If I could see him, if they would let me visit him, I would be on the train there tomorrow. If he wanted to marry and I thought that was going to help him, then I would say yes.
“I know that sounds crazy; to really understand life sometimes maybe you have to be a bit crazy yourself.” She feels an ‘unconditional love’ for Maudsley, and is trying to help him as much as she can. “I feel that I am doing the right thing by him,” she added.
“I am not one of these people who is trying to make themselves famous. I feel an unconditional love for Robert and that is what he deserves as far as I am concerned. I want to get him better treatment, for him to be treated like a human being.
“He has never been able to tell anyone that he loves them. But he said ‘I love you Loveinia’. And I told him that I love him as well. I know that the prison service records our calls.
“Even if they are listening in, it is important that he knows someone loves him and he is not alone.”
Maudsley considers Loveinia to be his ‘partner’ and regularly writes her love letters from prison. He has spent 43 out of 51 years in what is effectively solitary confinement.
But he keeps in touch with Loveinia with letters and calls; their favourite songs are ‘Someday We’ll be Together’ by Diana Ross and ‘Catch the Wind’ by Donovan.
There was an “instant connection” after Loveinia saw the 2020 TV documentary ‘The Killer in My Family’. She described Maudsley as a loving and caring person who suffered terrible abuse going back to childhood.
He was moved from Wakefield, the jail dubbed “Monster Mansion’ because it holds so many dangerous offenders, 125 miles to Whitemoor in Cambridgeshire last April.
Maudsley was locked up in Broadmoor hospital in 1974 after being convicted of manslaughter for strangling child abuser John Farrell, 30. But in 1977 he and another patient killed another man inside Broadmoor. Maudsley was sent to Wakefield; he killed two fellow prisoners in 1983 and was said to have told a guard: “There’ll be two short on the roll call.”
He earned his ‘Hannibal the Cannibal’ nickname after one victim was found with a spoon in his skull, leading to rumours – later proven false – that he had eaten the man’s brains.
In his letters to Loveinia, he has told her: “All the kindness, thoughtfulness and love you have shared with me through these last short years can get me through anything.”
He added: “My beautiful Loveinia, the more love we experience in our lives, the more the bad experiences tend to fade into the distance and we can live our lives to the full.
“Thank you for being there for me, and for giving me so many beautiful and wonderful dreams; I hope dearly I have done the same for you when you think of me.”
Whole Life Order prisoners like Maudsley are now blocked from marrying behind bars. The Government introduced a new law to end “torment for victims and their families” in August, 2024.
The ban on marriage and civil partnership came into force with immediate effect. Maudsley became the longest serving prisoner in our penal system after the death of Moors murderer Ian Brady, who served 51 years, in 2017.
