Twisted monsters who died behind bars – padlock pummelling to rest room bludgeoning
Some call it karma. Others say they should be left to rot behind bars. But over the years, a number of high profile inmates have met their grisly demise behind bars at the hands of their fellow prisoners.
From sick serial killers being bludgeoned in the bathroom to evil child murderers being speared with a broom and even elderly mob mosses in wheelchairs being battered to death, some of the most notorious jailbirds have come to a sticky end in jail.
Here, your Daily Star takes a look at some of the most infamous cold-blooded criminals who were dealt prison justice as they served life sentences for their crimes.
Dahmer was locked up for life after gruesomely slaughtering 17 people over a 13-year period(Image: Channel 4)
Jeffrey Dahmer
Evil Jeffrey Dahmer, nicknamed the “Milwaukee Cannibal”, murdered, dismembered and ate the flesh of his 17 male victims 1978 and 1991. He was caught after one escaped and raise the alarm, leading cops to find a severed head in his flat, among other body parts.
He met his own gruesome end aged 34 while he served multiple life sentences at Columbia Correctional Institute in Wisconsin. He was killed by fellow lag Christopher Scarver, who beat him over the head with a 20in metal bar while they were left alone in a bathroom.
Scarver, himself a convicted murderer, told guards: “God told me to do it.” He later claimed Dahmer had angered him by shaping his food to look like the body parts of his victims, decorated with ketchup, in the prison canteen. Scarver, 56, is still behind bars.
Pickton was butchered with a broom(Image: Getty Images)
Robert Pickton
Callous Robert Pickton took female victims to his pig farm during a crime spree near Vancouver, Canda in the late 1990s and early 2000s. He was arrested when the body parts and possessions of dozens of missing women were found at his property.
He bragged of killing 49 women – many of them sex workers – over 15 years to an undercover cop. He was convicted of six murders and sentenced to life in prison in a case that sparked global headlines and made him one of Canada’s most notorious serial killers.
He was himself butchered behind bars in 2024, aged 74. He was speared in the head with a broken broom handle by another inmate at the Port-Cartier Institution in Quebec.
Boston mobster James “Whitey” Bulger was found dead in prison(Image: AFP/Getty Images)
James “Whitey” Bulger
The former boss of Boston’s Winter Hill Gang was notorious for his chilling “death stare” as well as torturing and strangling victims. He was once top of the FBI’s “most wanted” list and was finally convicted of 11 murders in 2013, after years spent living in hiding.
Bulger – an Irish-American who was said to have raised money for the IRA during the Troubles – had plenty of enemies waiting for him on the inside and his luck ran out on October 30, 2018, when he was transferred to Hazelton prison in West Virginia.
The 89-year-old, by then using a wheelchair, was cornered by a group of inmates who dragged him to a spot out of the view of cameras. They beat him round the head with a padlock attached to a belt until he died. His eyes were also gouged out.
Graduates Richard Loeb and Nathan Leopold brutally kidnapped and murdered 14-year-old Bobby Franks(Image: Corbis via Getty Images)
Richard Loeb
Graduates Richard Loeb and Nathan Leopold wanted to pull off the “perfect crime” in 1924, so they brutally kidnapped and murdered 14-year-old Bobby Franks in Chicago “just for kicks”.
They smashed his head in with a chisel, dumped his body in a ditch, covered it with acid and then tried to collect a ransom from his dad. But the corpse was quickly found, along with Leopold’s glasses and the pair were jailed for life.
Loeb met his end in the shower room at Statesville Prison, Illinois, in January 28, 1936. His throat was slashed by inmate James Day, who claimed the killer made sexual advances towards him. Day was later sensationally found not guilty of murder.
Self-confessed Boston Strangler Albert DeSalvo was stabbed in prison(Image: Getty Images)
The Boston Strangler
The notorious serial killer dubbed the Boston Stranger tortured the city in the 1960s when he murdered 13 women. He brutally attacked and sexually assaulted them, usually after breaking into their homes.
Ex-soldier Albert Desalvo confessed to the crimes but could only be convicted of lesser assaults and sex offences due to a lack of evidence. He was jailed for life in 1967 and later recanted his confession.
But on november 25, 1973, the 42-year-old was found stabbed to death at the infirmary of the Walpole maximum security prison after being caught up in a row over drug sales. His alleged killer, a mobster, escaped conviction over the death after a hung jury.
In 2013, DNA tests from one of the strangler’s victims confirmed Desalvo was guilty of her murder.
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