UK paedophile who abused 200 kids stabbed to death in jail

A custody picture of Richard Huckle who admitted a string of charges of sexual crimes against children in Kuala Lumpur and was sentenced to life in prison. PICTURE: NATIONAL CRIME AGENCY/AFP

A custody picture of Richard Huckle who admitted a string of charges of sexual crimes against children in Kuala Lumpur and was sentenced to life in prison. PICTURE: NATIONAL CRIME AGENCY/AFP

Published Oct 15, 2019

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London - Britain's worst paedophile who abused up to 200 children, some as young as six months, has been stabbed to death in jail.

Richard Huckle, 33, was found dead in his top-floor cell on Sunday after being knifed with a homemade blade.

The former grammar schoolboy’s bloodied body was discovered at Full Sutton prison near York, where he was serving 22 life sentences. Another inmate at the Category A jail has been placed in isolation while police investigate.

Huckle was 19 when he started backpacking around the world preying on youngsters in South East Asia, where he amassed 20,000 images of child abuse which he sold.

Working as an English teacher and a photographer in Malaysia, he infiltrated impoverished communities, targeting care homes and orphanages where he filmed himself raping children and babies, awarding himself ‘PedoPoints’ for his depravity.

The middle-class tutor from Kent used private tuition as a means to get access to vulnerable children in Malaysia and Cambodia.

Once a poster boy for the British Council in Malaysia, he featured in a promotional video about an English course he taught there. He offered to take photographs for children’s parties and even used his cover as an amateur photographer to capture the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge on camera during their visit to a park in Kuala Lumpur in 2012.

The predator bragged of his attacks in online blogs and penned a 60-page perverts’ handbook, advising on how to groom victims by plying them with alcohol.

But he was caught when Australian police uncovered a network of paedophiles and alerted Britain’s National Crime Agency, which swooped as he flew back from Malaysia to Britain to visit family for Christmas in 2014.

Huckle initially denied his crimes. But when he was on bail he told his parents that he had raped children as young as three. Horrified, they begged police to take him away and threw him out.

Huckle eventually admitted 71 charges at the Old Bailey in 2016 including rape, sexual assault and sexual activity with a child. The charges related to 23 victims aged between six months and 12 years old in what investigators said was the worst case of its kind.

Police found a ledger where he awarded himself 1,305 points based on his attacks, indicating that he abused hundreds of children.

Huckle’s father, a council engineer, had hoped his son might have a career in computing. Instead, the pervert used his skills to catalogue his sickening crimes and set up a website to fund them.

Investigators said he used his links to churches in the UK ‘as a stepping stone’ to further his abuse abroad. As a shy Christian teenager growing up in Ashford, the loner appeared to be devoted to children, lavishing gifts on youngsters he met at local churches.

He spent years masquerading as a devout Christian to prey on poor communities targeting care homes and orphanages in South East Asia where he filmed himself raping children and babies between March 2006 and December 2014.

Last night the circumstances of his death were unclear. But a fellow inmate at Full Sutton was placed in isolation as Humberside Police launched a murder probe.

A spokesman for the force said: ‘An investigation has been launched following an incident at HMP Full Sutton on Sunday, October 13. We were called shortly after 12.30pm reporting that a man had died at the prison.

‘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.’

Daily Mail

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