A former inmate of Broadmoor has shared his chilling “Silence of the Lambs” experience when he witnessed Yorkshire Ripper Peter Sutcliffe being attacked in the psychiatric hospital’s canteen. Ovie Peddy, a convicted killer, was taken aback by the luxurious surroundings of Broadmoor compared to a regular prison when he first arrived.
During his time at the Berkshire institution, he saw some horrifying violence. Serial killer Sutcliffe had been targeted by other inmates multiple times since his incarceration for his grisly crimes.
He suffered facial cuts requiring around 30 stitches after an attack by James Costello at Parkhurst. After his transfer to Broadmoor, Sutcliffe was assaulted in his cell by Paul Wilson, who tried to strangle him with a headphone cord.
In March 1997, Sutcliffe lost sight in his left eye after being stabbed by fellow inmate Ian Kay. Ovie revealed to podcaster James English that he had a close-up view of the attack on Sutcliffe.
(Image: Anything Goes With James English/YouTube)
He said: “It was like a scene out of a Silence of the Lambs. I was talking to the guy who done it, just before. It was a big dinner night: it was steak or cauliflower steaks there’s chips and peppercorns,” reports the Mirror.
“But he [Kay] was walking up and down, all angry so I say ‘Sit down man,’ but he goes ‘I don’t want this food I want liver.’ I said ‘If you want liver, you have to order that from the kitchen. It’ll probably be tomorrow now.’
“So he looked at me, and goes ‘No that’s what I did I cut someone and I ate their liver’ so I said ‘Bro, if you want to talk like that, leave me alone because I’m having my food. Later on we’ll talk about all your mad killings and all that’.”
(Image: Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
It was then, Ovie says, that the man snapped. He recalled: “He’s come up behind Sutcliffe held him there took his eye out with with a fork. The nurse is standing there, and the pus from the eyeball is going into her face.
“So she’s run off the ward all the staff ran off the ward and left all the patients there. I didn’t give a f***, man. I just ate my dinner. Peter’s just crying. The cord of the eye was still connected to him. It was just savage.”
After that horrifying incident, Ovie says, he realised that any moment in Broadmoor could be his last: “I always thought to myself ‘What is the last thing you’re going to think, if one of these psychopaths kill you? Let it be about God let it be about your mum or your family or your granddad’ because you never know when you’re going to die.”
Peter Sutcliffe died in November 2020 aged 74 while imprisoned at HMP Frankland in County Durham.