List of prisoners with whole-life orders

Table columns:
Name
Nickname
Year
Died
Notes

Table rows:
cells: John Straffen
1952
2007
Britain's longest serving prisoner, who spent 55 years in prison until his death. Straffen was convicted of murdering two pre-teen girls in July 1951. The following year, he escaped for a four-hour period and was convicted of murdering another girl during this short spell at large, although he long proclaimed his innocence. Straffen was reprieved from a death sentence owing to learning difficulties, and instead remained in prison for the rest of his life. He died, aged 77, at Frankland prison in November 2007.[3] For the final five years of his life, he was the oldest prisoner known to be serving a whole life-tariff, following the death of Archibald Hall.
cells: Ian Brady
Moors murderer
1966
2017
One of the Moors Murderers who was convicted, in May 1966, of murdering three children between 1963 and 1965. He was convicted just six months after the abolition of the death penalty, and less than two years after final executions in Britain. His trial judge said it was unlikely that Brady could ever be rehabilitated and considered for parole. With accomplice Myra Hindley, he buried the children in shallow graves on Saddleworth Moor. From 1985 until his death he was held in a mental hospital and was on long-term hunger strike, which led to him being force-fed through a tube. In 2001, he published a book on serial killing. The body of one of his victims, 12-year-old Keith Bennett, remains undiscovered on the Moor, despite Brady's and Hindley's own heavily guarded efforts to locate the remains themselves after they admitted two further murders in 1986; they did, however, guide police to the buried body of 16-year-old Pauline Reade in 1987. In 2006, Brady wrote to Keith Bennett's mother to claim he remembered enough to be taken to within 20 yards of the grave, but was not permitted to do so.[4] Brady died, aged 79, at Ashworth Hospital in May 2017.[5]
cells: Myra Hindley
Moors murderer
1966
2002
The other of the Moors Murderers, Ian Brady's girlfriend and accomplice who was involved in all five murders with Brady. She was convicted of two of three murders which were detected in 1965, and of being an accessory in the third murder, as she was not present when Brady committed the murder. The convictions of Brady and Hindley came just six months after the abolition of the death penalty, and less than two years after the last execution in Britain - although more than 10 years had passed since the last execution of a woman in Britain. In 1986, she and Brady confessed to two more murders and returned to the moors to help police find the body of one of the victims, although the final body has still not been found. Hindley's trial judge recommended she should serve at least 25 years in prison, which was endorsed in 1982 by the Lord Chief Justice. Reports suggested that Hindley was rehabilitating in prison and had found religion and rejected Brady and her past, but her tariff was increased to 30 years in 1988 and, finally, to a whole-life tariff two years later, although she was not informed of the whole-life tariff until 1994. Hindley's supporters, including penal reformer Lord Longford, journalist David Astor and prison governor Peter Timms, claimed that the increase in Hindley's sentence was the response of a succession of Home Secretaries to public opinion, as there was widespread public opposition to Hindley ever being released. Relatives of the Moors Murders victims were at the centre of a campaign to keep Hindley imprisoned and several of them vowed to kill her[6] if she was ever paroled. Hindley subsequently made three appeals against the whole life tariff, but each appeal was unsuccessful she died in jail at the age of 60 in November 2002, less than two weeks before a law lords' ruling which could potentially have secured her freedom.[7] Her case prompted more debate than that of any other prisoner of notoriety, with some high-profile backing from the House of Lords, but vitriol from the press and the public, as well as the families of her victims. Lord Longford, who died just over a year before Hindley, regularly condemned the media for their "exploitation" of Ann West, mother of one of the victims, who gave regular newspaper and television interviews to argue against any suggestion of release from prison, and vowed to kill Hindley if she ever was released. Her death left only Rosemary West (jailed for life for 10 murders in 1995) as a confirmed female prisoner serving a whole-life tariff, until the addition of Joanne Dennehy, in 2014.[8]
cells: Donald Neilson
Black Panther
1976
2011
The Black Panther, nicknamed for wearing a black balaclava, shot dead three postmasters during robberies in various areas of the country, then abducted a 17-year-old heiress from her Shropshire home. He attempted to ransom the heiress, but her body was found two months later in a drain in Staffordshire, being convicted in July 1976 after being caught when two police officers he took hostage overpowered him in December 1975. In 2008, Neilson lost an appeal to have his tariff reduced to 30 years. He remained in prison until his death three years later, having served 35 years.[9][10]
cells: Trevor Hardy
The Beast of Manchester
1976
2012
Trevor Joseph Hardy murdered three teenage girls between December 1974 and March 1976. Janet Lesley Stewart, 15, was murdered on New Year's Eve 1974 and buried in a shallow grave in Newton Heath, North Manchester. She had been stabbed. Wanda Skala, 17, was murdered in July 1975 on Lightbowne Road, Moston. She was hit over the head with a paving stone and sexually assaulted. Sharon Mosoph, 17, was murdered in March 1976, and dumped in the Rochdale Canal at Failsworth, Oldham. She had been strangled and mutilated after walking by when Hardy was attempting to burgle a shopping centre at night. He was suspected of committing other murders. At the height of the hunt for the serial killer, 23,000 people were stopped and searched. The case is not widely known and only one independent publication exists which covers the case. Trevor Hardy was arrested for the murders of Wanda Skala and Sharon Mosoph during 1976. In August 1976 he confessed to both murders and also to that of Janet Lesley Stewart – who until then had been a missing person. Despite the alibis provided by his girlfriend Sheilagh Farrow, Hardy was found guilty of the murders and sentenced to life imprisonment in May 1978. He remained in prison until his death 36 years later, by which time he was one of the longest serving prisoners in Britain.
cells: Robert Maudsley
Hannibal the Cannibal
1977
Robert John Maudsley (born June 1953) is a serial killer who killed four people. He committed three of these murders in prison after receiving a life sentence for a single murder in the mid 1970s. He was alleged to have eaten part of the brain of one of three men he killed in prison, which earned him the nickname "Hannibal the Cannibal" among the British press. He committed his first murder by strangling labourer John Farrell after he allegedly showed him pictures of children he abused and was declared not fit to stand trial and sent to Broadmoor in 1973. In 1977 he and David Chessman took fellow patient David Francis hostage and tortured him to death and as a result was convicted of manslaughter and sent to Wakefield prison. At Wakefield in July 1978 he killed two fellow prisoners, luring Salney Darwood into his cell and slitting his throat and then smashing Bill Roberts head against a wall at a later time, this time being convicted of double murder at his trial in 1979. He has served much of his sentence in solitary confinement to prevent him from attacking or killing any more inmates, some of it at Parkhurst prison, but mostly at Wakefield prison in a cell said to resemble Hannibal Lecter's in the film The Silence of the Lambs with cardboard furniture. He became Britains longest serving prisoner after the death of Ian Brady in May 2017.[11][12][13][14]
cells: Archibald Hall
Killer Butler or Monster Butler
1978
2002
The Killer Butler or Monster Butler, so named as he committed his murders while working in service to members of the British aristocracy as a butler. Hall, also known as Roy Fontaine, was a Glaswegian thief and confidence trickster with numerous convictions and prison sentences by the time he committed his first murder, of an ex-cellmate, whom he shot and buried after an argument over some jewellery stolen from Hall's employer. Hall moved to London and began serving an elderly ex-MP and his wife, and with accomplice Michael Kitto, he killed and buried them both after late-night plans to rob them were disturbed. They then killed a female acquaintance and dumped her body in a barn after she refused to destroy a fur coat which was potentially incriminating evidence, and lastly Hall murdered his half-brother, a convicted child molester who was asking too many questions, before beginning a journey to Scotland with the intention of again burying the body. Having stopped at a hotel for the night when the weather became too hazardous for driving, Hall and Kitto were caught when the hotelier, concerned that the two suspicious-looking guests might not pay their bill, called the police. They found the body in Hall's car boot, and Hall later showed them the three gruesome burial sites. After trials in London and Edinburgh, Hall received four life sentences and Kitto three at their trial in May 1978, with one judge recommending that Hall should never be freed. This recommendation was upheld when the list of confirmed whole-life tariff prisoners was published, and Hall was the oldest prisoner on the list. He publicly requested the right to die in 1995, and did so of a stroke in 2002, while still in prison. At 78, he was one of the oldest prisoners in Britain. Three years earlier, he had published his autobiography.
cells: John Childs
1979
John Childs was convicted of the murder of six people in contract killings which were committed between 1974 and 1978; he implicated two others and they were convicted in 1980, but they were released on appeal in 2003 after his evidence was called into question.[13][15] He murdered Terence Eve in 1974, Robert Brown in 1975, George Brett and his 10-year-old son Terry Brett later on in 1975, Fred Sherwood in 1978 and Ronald Andrews later on in 1978 and was jailed in December 1979, with the murders being committed by shooting and stabbing. He confessed to a journalist in 1998 of five more murders while in prison, he appealed against his conviction in 2014 and his whole life sentence in 2016 but was rejected each time on account of his crimes being "exceptionally serious".[16][17]
cells: Dennis Nilsen
Muswell Hill Murderer
1983
-
A civil servant and former policeman who murdered and dismembered 15 young men at his homes in North London, storing the body parts inside and around the residences. Nilsen was arrested after workmen investigating a blocked and odorous drain found human flesh. Nilsen's trial judge originally recommended a 25-year minimum sentence in November 1983, but successive Home Secretaries decided that he should never be released from prison. The November 2002 law lords' ruling meant that Nilsen could have been released from prison as early as 2008; however, this has not transpired and he remains imprisoned. Nilsen has also been denied the right to publish his autobiography in addition to music and poetry from prison.
cells: Arthur Hutchinson
1984
-
A fugitive who in 1983 gatecrashed a wedding reception at a house in Sheffield shortly after the bride and groom had left and stabbed to death the bride's father, mother and brother, before raping her sister at knifepoint. Police quickly labelled him as the killer after identifying a handprint on a champagne bottle and a bitemark in a piece of cheese. He was already on the run from answering a charge of violent rape and had previous convictions for offences of violence, indecent assault and dishonesty. He was convicted in 1984 and sentenced to life imprisonment with a recommended minimum term of 18 years in September 1984. However, he remains in prison more than 30 years on, having been issued with a whole-life tariff by the Home Secretary, Leon Brittan. Hutchinson has since appealed against this ruling twice through the High Court, but the court upheld the decision of the Home Secretary on both occasions, meaning he is likely to die in prison. Appeals to the European Court of Human Rights in February 2015 and January 2017 were also unsuccessful, with the court's Grand Chamber ruling that whole life sentences could still be issued provided they were reviewed within 25 years.
cells: Jeremy Bamber
1986
-
In October 1986, he was found guilty of shooting dead his adoptive parents, sister and six-year-old twin nephews at the family farmhouse in Essex 14 months earlier, in order to claim a six-figure inheritance while also laying evidence to suggest his sister, a schizophrenic, had committed the murders before killing herself. This was the police's original line of inquiry and the media reported the deaths as a murder-suicide, but within weeks of the murders being committed the line of the police investigation had changed and Bamber was charged with five murders. His trial judge said in sentencing him that he found the idea of ever seeing Bamber free again "difficult to foresee", and advised that he should serve at least 25 years behind bars before release could even be considered. Before the law lords' ruling in November 2002, Bamber was told by at least one Home Secretary that his life sentence would mean life.
cells: Anthony Entwistle
1987
-
Entwhistle, then aged 38, murdered 16-year old Michelle Calvy in April 1987, abducting her from a towpath in Blackburn, raping her, and strangling her with her T-shirt.[18] He dumped her body in Tockholes. The murder was 18 days after his release from a 10-year sentence in 1980 for rape, which followed another seven-year sentence in 1974 for sexually assaulting two women. He was found guilty of Calvy's murder at Preston Crown Court in March 1988, and sentenced to life imprisonment with trial judge Mr. Justice Rose recommending a minimum term of 25 years.[18] He was later given a whole-life tariff by the Home Secretary Douglas Hurd.[10][19][20] In 2009, Mr. Justice Davis ruled at the High Court that Entwistle could be considered for release after 25 years (less 10 months spent on remand) if he was judged to no longer be a threat to the public, rather than imposing a whole life tariff, saying that "He can only be released if ever (and it may be never) he is assessed as no longer a danger to the public."[21][22] The parole board turned down his request for release in June 2013.[23]
cells: Victor Miller
1988
-
A predator who abducted, sexually assaulted and battered to death a 14-year-old boy from Hagley in Worcestershire in February 1988. He confessed after being arrested for an unrelated crime soon afterwards and led detectives to the body. Police later revealed they believed Miller was responsible for almost 30 unsolved sexual assaults. In court later that year, he confessed openly to the killing and asked for the maximum sentence available. Although he was set a tariff of 25 years which was reactivated after the November 2002 law lords' ruling, meaning he could be considered for release in 2013. Since his trial, Miller has asked that the appropriate authorities should not consider him for release at any point in the future, and therefore actively wishes to die in prison. Miller's trial judge had also expressed doubt as to whether it would ever be safe to release him.
cells: John Duffy
Railway Killer
1988
-
The Railway Killer, who attacked numerous women in the south of England, raping all of them and murdering three, before revolutionary psychological profiling helped police to catch him, although they got no nearer the accomplice they knew Duffy worked with. He was given a 30-year tariff for two murders and seven rapes which, after the law lords' ruling, was reactivated, meaning that he could be considered for release in 2018. After 12 years in prison, Duffy went on a conscience-clearing exercise, admitting to a third killing of which he had been originally acquitted, and implicating schoolfriend David Mulcahy as his accomplice. He also revealed his part in countless other rapes, for which he received a further 12 years. After Duffy gave evidence against him, Mulcahy was jailed for life for three murders and seven rapes in 2001 but is not believed to be among the prisoners who have been issued with a whole life tariff.
cells: Anthony Arkwright
1989
-
Arkwright was arrested after he hacked and battered to death three people, including his elderly grandfather, a two-day killing spree in South Yorkshire during August 1988 when aged 21, which means he is likely to be the youngest offender to have been issued with a whole life tariff by any of the appropriate authorities. He was convicted of all three murders and sentenced to life imprisonment the following year. He was also suspected of a fourth murder committed around the same time but never charged.[24]
cells: Mark Robinson
1989
-
Mark Robinson killed Patrica Anne Wagner at the age of 17 after she threatened to tell his mother about the affair the two were having, to which Robinson responded by strangling her. When he was released in 1989, he met Sharon Morley in Wakefield, with the two moving to Billingham shortly after, however Sharon wanted to move back to Wakefield which caused arguments. On 19 September 1989 he discovered a photo of her former boyfriend and in the argument that followed, he beat and stabbed her to death. He was sentenced to life imprisonment at his trial and was later issued with a whole-life tariff.[25]
cells: Victor Castigador
1990
2017
A Filipino illegal immigrant who led a gang of robbers on a grudge attack at a London amusement arcade where he himself worked. Four members of staff were tied up, locked in a cage within the vault before being doused in white spirit and set alight. Two died, two suffered serious burns. Castigador received an initial 25-year tariff from his trial judge which was duly extended to a whole life tariff, but the November 2002 law lords' ruling means that he could have been released from prison as early as 2015 (by which time he will have been 61 years old) if the parole board decided he was no longer a danger to the public, however Castigador was charged with murder on 20 June 2016 after murdering a fellow inmate.[26] He admitted the murder and was sentenced to another whole-life tariff in October.[27] He died in Woodhill prison in March 2017.[28] One of his teenage accomplices was sentenced to life with a recommended minimum of 20 years; a subsequent appeal against this recommendation at the High Court was rejected.
cells: Malcolm Green
1991
-
Malcolm Green was jailed for life in 1971 for the brutal murder of a Cardiff prostitute. He spent 18 years in prison before being released on parole in 1989. Soon afterwards, he bludgeoned to death a young tourist from New Zealand. Green dismembered the body, wrapped it in plastic bags, and dumped it in different places along a road in South Wales. He was sentenced to life again in October 1991, with a recommendation that he should serve a minimum of 25 years, but was given a whole-life tariff by the Home Secretary.[29]
cells: Colin Ireland
Gay Slayer
1993
2012
The Gay Slayer, who set about achieving a New Year's resolution to become a serial killer by targeting patrons of a public house frequented by gay men. Ireland pretended to be homosexual in order to be taken to each of his victims' homes, where he took advantage of their desire for S&M activity to truss, torture and murder them, often then robbing them to cover his travelling expenses as he was unemployed. He was able to continue as police found initial difficulty in linking the killings to one perpetrator. Ireland was caught when he visited police to try and explain his sighting on closed-circuit television with his final victim, however his fingerprint was subsequently matched to one found at the man's flat. He confessed to the other murders while in custody and pleaded guilty to all charges in court. His original recommended tariff was never publicised. Ireland remained in prison for nearly 20 years and died behind bars on 21 February 2012 at the age of 57.[30]
cells: Colin Hatch
1994
2011
A paedophile who was convicted of sexual assault on boys in 1991 and 1992 but jailed for only three years after it was decided he was not dangerous enough to be held involuntarily in a Secure Hospital, against the advice of the psychiatrist. He was paroled early and committed the sexually motivated murder of seven-year-old Sean Williams in summer 1993, for which he received a whole-life tariff; Judge Lowry said it was "not possible to envisage" a time when Hatch could be released safely, so "life should mean life". He remained imprisoned until his death in February 2011; he was found dead in his cell and it was reported that he had been murdered by another prisoner. His killer was convicted robber Damien Fowkes, who also wounded another child killer, Ian Huntley.[31]
cells: Robert Black
1994
2016
A paedophile who abducted, raped and killed four girls aged between 5 and 11 years between 1982 and 1986 before dumping all three at roadsides hundreds of miles from their homes. He was already serving a life sentence for a 1990 attempted abduction when he was convicted of three murders (and one further abduction of a girl who survived) in 1994, and the trial judge recommended a minimum term of 35 years - which would make him ineligible for release until 2029 and the age of 82. He was later given a whole life-tariff by the home secretary, although the November 2002 law lords' ruling means that he could still receive early release. Black has been long suspected of involvement in the disappearances of numerous other children in the 1970s and 1980s including the disappearances of Genette Tate and April Fabb, but questioning of him has proved inconclusive; no bodies have ever been found in these cases and the files remain open. In 2011 he was convicted of the murder of Jennifer Cardy a nine-year-old girl in 1981 and sentenced to 25 years in prison. He died on 12 January 2016 in HMP Maghaberry Northern Ireland of natural causes at the age of 68, weeks away from being charged with the murder of Gennette Tate.[32]
cells: Rosemary West
1995
-
Convicted in November 1995 of the murder of ten women and girls at her home in Gloucester, including one of her daughters and a step-daughter, between 1970 and 1987. Her husband, Frederick West, committed suicide in jail before he could stand trial for a total of 12 murders (two of which occurred just before the couple met in 1968). Hindley's death in November 2002 left West as the only confirmed female prisoner on the whole-life tariff register,[10] until the addition of Joanne Dennehy, in 2014.[8]
cells: Peter Moore
The Man In Black
1996
-
Moore murdered four men in apparently sexually motivated attacks in Wales. He confessed to police but claimed at trial it was in fact a fictional lover, "Jason", who had killed them. Following his conviction the judge said he would urge the Home Secretary to impose the whole-life tariff; it was revealed in 2011 that he remained subject to this after the press reported he was one of three prisoners challenging the legality of the order before the European Court of Human Rights.[33]
cells: Anthony Sawoniuk
1999
2005
Belorussian Nazi collaborator who was convicted of murder committed outside the UK against non-UK citizens, during the Holocaust, based on the principle of universal jurisdiction. He is the only person sentenced to a whole life tariff under the War Crimes Act and was one of the oldest prisoners in Britain when he died aged 84 in Norwich L wing, for elderly men serving life or other long sentences, in 2005. He had been in prison for six years.
cells: Harold Shipman
Dr Death
2000
2004
Former GP who was convicted of killing 15 of his patients at his surgery in Hyde, Greater Manchester, in the 1990s, giving them lethal doses of diamorphine. Suspicion was raised in 1998 when the daughter of his last victim found that Shipman had crudely forged her mother's will. Shipman was sentenced to life imprisonment at the end of his trial in January 2000, with the trial judge recommending that he should never be released, and two years later the Home Secretary agreed. An official inquiry in July 2002 concluded that there was enough evidence to decide that Shipman had killed 215 of his patients, making him Britain's most prolific serial killer, and that he had committed his first murder in 1970 when practicing in North Yorkshire. Some reports claimed that he may have committed over 400 murders. Shipman, who never confessed to the murders, hanged himself in his prison cell on 13 January 2004 and the full extent of his crimes will probably be never known as a consequence.

Questions about this table:
originalText: who is the longest serving prisoner in the uk
answer: answerTexts: John Straffen