The girlfriend of Britain’s longest-serving prisoner is asking justice chiefs to let her visit the quadruple killer, saying she believes a meeting would give him strength and take negative energy from his mind.
Loveinia MacKenney, 71, from London, has been writing and talking on the phone to Robert Maudsley for nearly six years, and they say they are in love. But she has been told there is no chance of them meeting.
“Part of me is with him”
Mum-of-one Loveinia said: “I feel that part of me is with him and part of him is with me.”
“I feel in my heart that if he has the visits he has been longing for, it would give him strength, make him feel better and take all the negative energy from his mind.”
“He would be more positive and feel better in his mind and in his soul. I believe we are dealing with a demonic system.”
“They do not want him to feel any love whatsoever or have a visit from me. All the time they keep him away from me, I believe they are trying to destroy him.”
“But I believe that Robert is very, very resilient. I know that my love will keep him strong. People need to read his past and see what he has been through.”
52 years behind bars
Maudsley, 73, has been behind bars for 52 years and will never be released after killing three of his fellow inmates. He was sent to Broadmoor for killing child abuser John Farrell in 1974, then killed another paedophile, David Francis, at the hospital in 1977.
He was moved to HMP Wakefield, where in 1978 he killed two more sex offenders, Salney Darwood and William Roberts, on the same day. Since then, he has spent a record 17,500 days either in solitary confinement or segregation.
Prison officials installed a perspex shield in his cell, leading to comparisons with cannibal killer Hannibal Lecter from the 1991 movie Silence of the Lambs.
Waiting for a first meeting
Loveinia contacted him almost six years ago after seeing a documentary about his life story. Maudsley, originally from Liverpool, has use of a phone while being held in segregation at HMP Whitemoor, Cambridgeshire.
He was granted a visiting order for Londoner Loveinia earlier this year. But she has been unable to get permission from authorities for their first ever face-to-face meeting, despite months of trying.
In an interview this week, Maudsley said: “At the moment, I am waiting to see Loveinia. They have put me on segregation.”
“If I see her now, there would be a two-inch gap at the top of the glass between us on a semi-open visit.”
“My last visit was back in about February 2025 from my brothers Paul and Kevin and my nephew Gavin at Wakefield.”
Maudsley, who says he was abused as a child, was moved to Whitemoor in April 2025 and says his new location means it is “just too far” for his family to travel.
“He is not a monster”
Loveinia said: “They keep on making him out to be a monster. But he is not a monster, it is the system that is inhumane.”
“I know that what he has done is wrong, but he should be able to see the people closest to him.”
“He has never had a bad word to say about anybody and he has never lost his sense of humour.”
“He was pushed to the extreme by what happened to him in his childhood. He should never have been held alongside child sex offenders, that was all wrong.”
She has a series of letters and cards from Maudsley, all marked Prisoner A9888AA. The latest card states simply: “I love you so much”.
Loveinia hopes people understand that the early childhood abuse Maudsley suffered shaped the rest of his life. “I feel that if he had received proper treatment and help early on in life, none of this would have happened to him,” she said. The Prison Service declined to comment on individual prisoners.
