Paedophile Richard Huckle was strangled, stabbed and assaulted by prisoner, court hears 

A prisoner who strangled a ‘notorious predatory paedophile’ in his cell said he would have gone on to kill other inmates but he was ‘having too much fun’, a court has heard. 

Britain’s most depraved paedophile Richard Huckle was raped and strangled to death in his cell during a ‘carefully planned’ attack by fellow prisoner Paul Fitzgerald.

His 30-year-old alleged attacker wanted his victim to ‘feel what all those children felt’, a Hull Crown Court was told. 

Huckle was serving 22 life sentences for abusing 191 children when he was allegedly attacked in his cell by Fitzgerald.

A court today heard Fitzgerald, himself a sexual offender, strangled Huckle, 33, forced a pen up his nose into his brain and sexually penetrated him with a kitchen utensil.

Jurors were told that Huckle was murdered in a ‘prolonged attack designed to humiliate and degrade him’ at HMP Full Sutton, in East Yorkshire, in October 2019. 

Prosecutor Alistair Neil Macdonald QC said the attack by Fitzgerald, who was jailed indefinitely in 2009 for a sex attack on a dog walker, was also ‘a form of punishment’ for the crimes Huckle had committed.

The evidence was heard this morning at Hull Crown Court on the first day of the murder trial. Fitzgerald denies the offence.

Mr Macdonald told the court Huckle was killed in his own cell at HMP Full Sutton, a Category A facility near Pocklington in, East Yorkshire, between 10.30am and 11am on October 13 last year.

He said Huckle had also been stabbed in the neck with a weapon made from inserting a screw into a melted toothbrush. 

He said fellow inmate Ronald Mariner who discovered Fitzgerald straddling Huckle, who was face down. 

His hands and feet were tied and he was being strangled with a ligature with a pool of blood around his head, Mr Macdonald said.

Two prison officers rushed to the cell, it was heard, and discovered Fitzgerald in the same position with his face up against Huckle’s.

They told police the attacker appeared to be whispering into the ear of his victim, although it is not known what was said.

After being forcibly removed from the cell Fitzgerald told the officers, ‘I think I’ve killed him, he’s dead’, Mr Macdonald said.

A search of his person revealed three weapons, a vape, two condoms and a guitar string and a bottle of lubricating jelly.

Prison staff attempted to give Huckle CPR and use a defibrillator on him but he was pronounced dead at 12.30pm that day.

A post-mortem concluded he died from strangulation using a ligature in the form of the electrical cable sheath.

He had bruises and abrasions over his body and had been penetrated with a four inch-long object.

Mr Macdonald said that one day after the killing Fitzgerald told the Full Sutton mental health care manager Mr Brennan that he had planned to murder two or three people but found he was having ‘too much fun’ with Huckle.

According to the prosecutor, he also said he would have liked to cook bits of the body.

Fitzgerald allegedly told the doctor he had been having thoughts of killing people and eating them for a long time.

Mr Macdonald said: ‘He concluded his account by saying that he felt as high as a kite when he had done it and felt amazing and that he would recommend it to anyone.

‘He also said that he was only pleading not guilty because the court can send him to hospital.’

Senior nurse manager Mr Brennan described the demeanour of the defendant when he was making these revelations as calm and measured with no remorse, the prosecutor added.

Mr Macdonald said: ‘Mr Huckle was notorious in the press. He was what was called a predatory paedophile.

‘This was a carefully planned and executed attack in the course of which Mr Huckle had been subjected to a prolonged attack also designed to humiliate and degrade him.

‘The insertion of an object into his anus, and possibly into his brain as well, was, say the prosecution, a form of punishment associated with the offending which had led Mr Huckle to prison.

‘All this was most carefully planned and considered by the defendant.’

The court was told that he said he carried out the sexual assault to give his victim ‘a taste’ of what he had subjected so many children to.

In an interview with a consultant called Dr Shenoy, Fitzgerald said his attack was ‘poetic justice’, Mr Macdonald told the court.

The defendant told her: ‘This is a man who rapes and abuses children for fun. He could have killed them as well. I’m inclined to think he did worse than just raping them.

‘When he was laid down with his pants down and he knew what was coming, he did not enjoy it I am sure. I knew what it feels like, but he doesn’t.

‘Rape was more about him getting a taste of that.’  

Mr Macdonald told the jury they must decide whether Fitzgerald is guilty of murder, as he claims, or manslaughter by diminished responsibility, as contended for by the defence.

It was heard that at the time of the killing the defendant was suffering from mixed personality disorder, psychopathy and gender identity disorder.

Huckle was given 22 life sentences at the Old Bailey in 2016 for an unprecedented number of offences against children aged between six months and 12 years.

The freelance photographer, from Ashford in Kent, targeted vulnerable youngsters while volunteering in orphanages in Malaysia. 

The trial, expected to last five days, continues.