‘Worst paedophile’ murdered in prison

Sex abuser who targeted children in South East Asia for a decade found dead in maximum security prison

Richard Huckle, Britain’s worst paedophile, has been stabbed to death in prison by a fellow inmate using a makeshift blade. The 33-year-old former grammar school pupil was serving 22 life sentences for abusing children in Malaysia. He was attacked on Sunday in his cell at Full Sutton maximum security prison in East Yorkshire and died from multiple stab wounds. A fellow prisoner has been placed in isolation while Humberside Police investigate the killing.

RICHARD HUCKLE, Britain’s worst paedophile, has been stabbed to death in prison by a fellow inmate using a makeshift blade. The 33-year-old former grammar school pupil, was serving 22 life sentences for abusing children in Malaysia.

He was attacked on Sunday in his cell at Full Sutton maximum security prison in East Yorkshire and died from multiple stab wounds. A fellow prisoner has been placed in isolation while Humberside Police investigate the killing.

Huckle, from Ashford in Kent, is considered to be one of the country’s most prolific paedophiles who abused hundreds of boys and girls in South East Asia during a decade of offending.

He first travelled to Malaysia in 2005 on a gap year teaching placement and the following year visited Cambodia where he stayed with a family and took indecent pictures of their three-yearold. He then visited Malaysia regularly, posing as a teacher, photographer and philanthropist to ingratiate himself with a Christian community before raping and abusing their children.

Huckle focused on vulnerable children in a poverty-stricken community in Kuala Lumpur, even boasting of his exploits to other paedophiles online. In one post he wrote: “Impoverished kids are definitely easier to seduce than middle-class Western kids.”

He sold images of his abuse to other child molesters. In one exchange he wrote about “hitting the jackpot” after discovering a three-year-old girl who he said was as “loyal as a dog”.

While his abuse lasted almost a decade he did not come to the attention of British authorities until 2014, when the National Crime Agency received a tip from Australia about his postings on the dark web. They began liaising with their counterparts in Malaysia but the British authorities were powerless to act while he remained overseas.

However, they discovered he was planning to return to Britain for Christmas and arrested him when he landed at Gatwick Airport. When detectives investigated his laptop, camera and phone, they discovered more than 20,000 indecent images of young children. He eventually admitted 71 offences involving 22 children, but it is thought there were many more victims.

Full Sutton is a maximum security prison housing some of the most dangerous and high profile inmates in the country and has earned a reputation for violence, bullying and intimidation, with reports of widespread drug use among the inmates.

A police spokesman said: “Humberside Police are working closely with the prison service to investigate the death of an inmate and at this time we are treating the death as suspicious.”

A Prison Service spokesman said it would be inappropriate to comment.