Inside the Southport Ki-ll-er’s Chi-lling Life in Broadmoor: How He Allegedly Exploited the System for Comfort
f the authorities have their way, Axel Rudakubana will be locked up until at least 2076. And, judging how the first two years of his incarceration have gone, he is clearly going to make the coming decades as difficult for everyone as possible.
Until recently, the 19-year-old was being held at HMP Belmarsh, the high security prison in south-east London.
His time there has not been without incident. Last May, it was reported that he had allegedly heated up water in his cell before pouring the boiling liquid over a prison officer.
HMP Belmarsh Prison in south-east London
After an investigation lasting more than a year, it was yesterday revealed that he is to be charged in relation to that attack – as well as a series of others.
These include three alleged assaults on prison staff, including one of GBH, and a charge of possessing an offensive weapon in prison. He will appear before magistrates next month by video-link.
Sources at Belmarsh this week told the Daily Mail of the multiple challenges he had posed since his arrival at the prison.
Initially placed in segregation and on suicide watch after his arrival in January last year, as soon as his round-the-clock supervision was scaled back, Rudakubana’s behaviour deteriorated – his moody, arrogant and egotistical attitude earning him a reputation with staff as a notoriously difficult prisoner.
‘Rudakubana basically sat in his cell 24/7,’ the insider said. ‘He was considered difficult, refused to follow simple commands and had a constant bad attitude.
‘Officers who dealt with him regularly used to joke he was the “Karen of Belmarsh”, a term we usually use for the most annoying person in the room. The only difference, of course, was that most Karens aren’t triple killers.’
The term ‘Karen’ is a derogatory one – often used to describe entitled, demanding or privileged women.
Others likened the sullen and monosyllabic Rudakubana’s behaviour to that of a typical ‘troublesome teenager’ – displaying poor hygiene and leaving clothes strewn around his cell.
Another source added: ‘He didn’t respond to any form of punishment like the removal of privileges or being kept isolated from other prisoners. He didn’t want to mix with anyone and was locked in his own, twisted little world.’
But not any more. And, for the families of his victims, the timing could hardly be more painful.
This week marked the second anniversary of Rudakubana’s murderous attack on a Taylor Swift-themed dance class in Southport.
Sketch of 18-year-old Rudakubana, appearing via video-link during a hearing at Liverpool Crown Court
Armed with knife, he stabbed to death three defenceless girls: Bebe King, six, Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, and Alice Da Silva Aguiar, nine.
The three young girls who were brutally murdered at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class, from left, Bebe King, Elsie Dot Stancombe and Alice Dasilva Aguiar
As the other children ran from the studio, he chased them, stabbing them in the back as they tried to get away. Ten others, including two adults, were wounded and still live with the consequences.
Rudakubana walking towards a bus stop on the day he committed his heinous crime
But as the people of Southport remembered them on Wednesday with a three-minute silence, relatives of his victims were coming to terms with the news that Rudakubana was no longer in Belmarsh.
Last week it emerged that he had been transferred from the Category A jail to Broadmoor Hospital – a high security psychiatric unit in Berkshire, where he will be treated as a patient rather than a prisoner.
Few details have been given about the circumstances of his move.
But it would have been sanctioned by independent medical professionals who judged that Rudakubana’s mental health had deteriorated to such an extent that it could not be dealt with in jail – and that he posed a risk to his own health and safety, or that of others.
While he will be moved back to jail when or if his condition improves, it is unlikely to be soon.
‘He’ll now remain there until he’s better,’ said one of the prison sources. ‘But you are talking years, not months.’
For those whose lives have been so damaged by his actions, the decision is as baffling as it is deeply upsetting.
Questions have been asked as to why Rudakubana is being sent to Broadmoor despite having been deemed fit to stand trial in January 2025. On top of which is the significant additional cost to taxpayers.
Broadmoor Hospital in Crowthorne, Berkshire
A place in a high-security psychiatric hospital costs more than £300,000 a year, compared with around £60,000 to keep an inmate in prison.
Lawyer Chris Walker, speaking on behalf of the bereaved families, said that news of the move, coinciding with the second anniversary of their loss, had ‘devastated’ them.
‘My concern is that this is either an attempt by the system to keep him stable in a less harsh environment or he is deliberately playing the system for better treatment,’ he told the Daily Mail.
‘It’s my understanding from my contacts that the environment is significantly less harsh in the psychiatric unit than the prison.
Broadmoor Hospital, pictured in an aerial photo, is said to be significantly less harsh than Belmarsh Prison
‘It is our view that if he is a danger to other staff, then he has to be left in solitary confinement 24/7 and fed through a letterbox.’
It was a point echoed by Mark Fairhurst, chair of the Prison Officers’ Association.
‘This vile offender has played the system and will now enjoy the freedoms that are afforded mentally unwell patients in secure psychiatric hospitals,’ he said.
Broadmoor is an NHS high-security psychiatric hospital
‘My members will be placed at risk without the protections afforded to staff in prisons, because he is now classed as a patient. He should spend his entire sentence in a prison in solitary confinement.’
While the Ministry of Justice insisted that the transfer had only taken place following a ‘robust independent clinical assessment’, it is not the first time that Rudakubana has been accused of trying to bend health care professionals to his will.
The first phase of the public inquiry into the Southport killings heard evidence of his earlier interactions with doctors and mental health workers.
Three years before the murders, Rudakubana demanded to see a consultant psychiatrist as part of his treatment after violent acts at school.
A young Rudakubana at school
Dr Lakshmi Ramasubramanian, a consultant psychiatrist, described their first appointment July 2021.
‘He articulated symptoms of anxiety as if he had rehearsed it from a book or from the internet,’ she told the inquiry. ‘It was very apparent that he was trying to convince me and persuade me that he needed medication…
‘He was certainly demanding, argumentative and tried to dictate treatment. I wouldn’t use the word “manipulative”. It felt like he needed to be in control of the session.’
Dr Anthony Molyneux took over Axel Rudakubana’s psychiatric care in July 2022 and discharged him in April 2024, three months before the then 17-year-old’s killing spree.
The doctor told the inquiry: ‘The level of studied manipulation of presentation is something – at a level – and again, it is only possible to see this I think with the benefit of hindsight, but it is something that’s there at a level that I have never experienced before.
‘The sense in retrospect, through having worked with AR [Axel Rudakubana] and his approach to medications, was that he almost seemed to have a shopping list for what exactly he wanted in terms of medications.’
In his conclusions, inquiry chairman Sir Adrian Fulford observed that one of the ‘defining hallmarks’ of the killer’s personality was that he was ‘deeply manipulative and routinely untruthful’.
According to one of the sources at Belmarsh, opinion was split amongst staff over Rudakubana’s mental state.
‘I think there were staff here who felt that he needed to be put in a straitjacket and kept in a padded cell,’ he said.
‘Others thought it was all part of some elaborate ruse designed to get him out of Belmarsh and into somewhere like Broadmoor.
‘I’m not sure – I think he’s one of those rare people who are both mad and bad.’
And he added: ‘Is it all just gaming the system? Possibly, but he would need to con a lot of highly qualified medical professionals.
‘The thing is there are lots of people in Belmarsh who are clearly mentally unwell and dangerous. I don’t know what boxes Rudakubana ticked, but he is now going to have a very different life.’
Dashcam footage of Rudakubana in the taxi he took to get to Hart Street, Southport, on the day of the stabbings
One of three such psychiatric hospitals in the country, Broadmoor moved into purpose-built accommodation on a new hospital site in 2019.
Those treated at the ‘old’ Broadmoor included Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper, and gangland boss Ronnie Kray.
Infamous broadmoor patients
Peter Bryan
The cannibal killer who murdered a friend and cooked and ate part of his brain
In 1993, Peter Bryan was admitted to Rampton secure hospital after beating shop assistant, Nisha Sheth, to death with a hammer.
Eight years later, mental health experts decided he could live in the community and in 2002 he moved to a hostel in north London.
Robert Napper
Serial killer and rapist who murdered Rachel Nickell
In the summer of 1989, warehouseman Robert Napper confessed to his mother that he had raped a woman in Plumstead Common. Despite his mother reporting the crime to police, no action was taken.
There began a series of rapes and sexual assaults carried out on women, primarily young mothers, in southeast London which became known as the ‘Green Chain Rapes’ – named after the Green Chain Walk pathway where Napper would attack his victims.
Michael Adebowale
Lee Rigby killer
Michael Adebowale and Michael Adebolajo were sentenced to life imprisonment in February 2014 over the murder of Fusilier Lee Rigby.
While Adebolajo was given a whole life order and sent to prison, Adebowale was sentenced to a minimum of 45 years and it is understood he is currently held at Broadmoor.
Today the living conditions are very different – and a sharp contrast with those at Belmarsh.
As a source at the hospital told the Daily Mail: ‘I think the first thing people need to understand about Broadmoor is that it is not a prison in any sense of the word.
‘Broadmoor may still summon up images of a decrepit, Victorian asylum where screams can be heard through the day and night from mentally-deranged patients but nothing could be further from the truth.
Founded in 1863, Broadmoor today is a far cry from the original Victorian asylum and more like a hotel
‘Today it’s more like a hotel or a student union at a modern university. There are lots of bright colours on the walls. The communal spaces are open with great views across gardens.
‘A lot of the patients in here haven’t committed any crimes or been through the court – they are just ordinary people with severe mental health problems who have become a danger either to themselves or other people.
‘But we also have some very dangerous, highly unpredictable patients who have received lengthy prison sentences.’
Make no mistake, the conditions those patients are kept in can be austere.
Take Jonty Bravery who, like Rudakubana, started his sentence at Belmarsh before being moved to Broadmoor.
In 2019 he hurled a six-year-old French boy from a viewing platform on the tenth floor of the Tate Modern, inflicting life-changing injuries.
He is deemed so dangerous – in November he was convicted of attacking two female nurses at Broadmoor – that he is kept under round-the-clock supervision in a room that is almost entirely bare.
Another patient is Michael Harkin. While being held at HMP Bristol in 2023, he strangled his cellmate to death with a TV cable before proceeding to ‘tuck’ him into bed and then attack another prisoner.
Schizophrenic patient Michael Harkin strangled his cellmate to death
The 37-year-old, who was convicted of manslaughter by diminished responsibility, carried out the attack while suffering from schizophrenia, mistakenly believing that his victim was a paedophile.
Jonty Bravery is under constant surveillance at Broadmoor
Then there is Sekai Miles, a paranoid schizophrenic who in 2024 launched a random attack on an 87-year-old pensioner, gouging out his eye, stamping on his head eight times and then beating him to death with his own walking stick.
Given the myriad risks Rudakubana poses – and faces, even here – insiders at Broadmoor say he will be monitored around the clock.
It is believed Rudakubana will receive round-the-clock supervision at Broadmoor
‘At the moment he is being rigorously assessed and, if in the coming months and weeks it becomes apparent that he has managed to fool whoever carried out the psychiatric evaluation at Belmarsh, then he will be sent back,’ the source said.
‘He will also be sent back to prison if in the years to come he responds to treatment and gets better so he is no longer a threat.
‘It’s important to remember that he is a dangerous individual, so his being sent here isn’t a case of a few prison officers at Belmarsh saying “This guy’s a nutter he needs to be got rid of” or indeed Rudakubana just pretending he’s gone mad.
‘He is now subject to quite a strict regime in the psychiatric intensive care unit and he will be subject to either a six or three-person “unlock”, meaning that there always needs to be a team with him when he leaves his room.
‘Once his condition has stabilised he will be moved to the high dependency unit, where he is probably going to stay for a very long time.’
Sekai Miles, a paranoid schizophrenic, is another dangerous patient at Broadmoor
The spokesman for the MoJ stressed that Broadmoor should not be viewed as a softer option: ‘The families of those murdered and injured in Southport will be in this country’s heart forever and our thoughts remain with them.
‘The offender who carried out these vile crimes will rightly spend the entirety of his 52-year custodial sentence locked up, and is unlikely to ever be released.
‘High secure hospitals are not places of freedom. He will remain under constant supervision in a high-security psychiatric unit and be returned to prison as soon as possible.’
When, and if, that days comes, where he would be held is unclear.
The Daily Mail understands that before his transfer to Broadmoor he was being assessed for a move to another maximum security prison, including HMP Wakefield, West Yorkshire, which houses some of the UK’s most dangerous killers and sex attackers.
However, the fact Rudakubana would be an obvious target for other inmates was a constant concern.
Last year Lostprophets frontman Ian Watkins, who was serving a 29-year jail sentence for child sex offences, including the attempted rape of a baby, was fatally stabbed in the neck at Wakefield.
Another option, HMP Frankland, County Durham, was where Soham murderer Ian Huntley was battered to death with a metal bar in March.
One theory among staff at Belmarsh is that this could be the real reason for transferring Rudakubana to Broadmoor.
The source said: ‘Putting him in Broadmoor, with its tight security, is an obvious way of keeping him out of the normal prison system and perhaps reducing the risk of him being attacked.’
But, whether he spends the coming decades in hospital or prison, half a century is a long time to be constantly looking over your shoulder.
