A former healthcare assistant who worked at Broadmoor Hospital for five years has shared his experiences with Yorkshire Ripper Peter Sutcliffe – and revealed what the serial killer was really like as a patient
A former healthcare assistant at Broadmoor Hospital has disclosed that the most infamous “patient” he ever encountered was Peter Sutcliffe. Robert Knox, who worked at the Berkshire facility for five years, has now shared his experiences with the Yorkshire Ripper.
The serial killer, responsible for the murder of 13 women, spent 32 years within the high-security psychiatric hospital, before being transferred back to prison in 2016. He died four years later.
Robert, on the other hand, served at Broadmoor between 2005 and 2010 — and he stated that Sutcliffe bore no resemblance to the images he had seen in the media. When asked about his initial impressions of the murderer, he succinctly described him as an: “Old fat bloke.”
Speaking on Break The Ice, he further noted Sutcliffe’s large beard and greying hair, recalling: “I mean at first, I didn’t recognise him, but I was told who he was and so I said, ‘Oh, yeah, of course.’ I knew him from then. I didn’t have any issues with him the times I met him and the rest of the time he kept himself to himself really.”
He spoke with Sutcliffe a few times and emphasised that although he held no respect for him due to his gruesome past, he maintained professionalism at all times, keeping his personal opinions to himself.
Regarding his impression from their interactions, he added: “He was secluded in the sense of he kept himself to himself. Non-remorseful and just not a nice person to be around really.”
When asked to elaborate on whether he expressed any regret, Robert continued: “No, not really. He said he had voices in his head that told him to do it really but many years later they found that he wasn’t mentally ill hence why he was released from there. But no, he wasn’t remorseful about what he did.”
Sutcliffe murdered 13 women and attempted to kill seven more between 1975 and 1980. Upon his eventual arrest, he infamously confessed to the police that he was a “beast” driven by a “devil” within him. He passed away in hospital in 2020 at the age of 74 after declining treatment for Covid-19.
During Robert’s interview about his time in Broadmoor, he also discussed how Southport murderer Axel Rudakubana would spend his days there after being transferred from HMP Belmarsh last month.
Regarding his own recollections, when asked about his most terrifying experience, he said: “I do remember this one time there was one patient and he was in the seclusion and that and he was a self harmer and this one time he was just sat on the side of the bed and he was just staring into something towards me and got his arm and he suddenly took a chunk out of his arm and that and then spat it out.
“So then I went and sounded the alarm to get assistance from staff and everyone came rushing and we had to go in the room and had to restrain him and to stop him from harming himself and spent most of the day trying to stop him from self-harming. So that was certainly shocking for me to experience.”