Prisoner found guilty of killing “Britain’s worst pedophile” for “poetic justice”

One prisoner was found guilty of the brutal murder of “Britain’s worst pedophile” Richard Huckle.

Paul Fitzgerald, 30, said he wanted Huckle to feel what his victims felt in the ferocious attack he said was “poetic justice”.

It emerged that Fitzgerald strangled Huckle with an electrical cable sheath, inserted a pen into the brain, and inserted a blunt object into another body orifice.

It took Hull Crown Court jurors about an hour to convict Fitzgerald of murder after a four-day trial.

Opening the case last week, Alistair MacDonald QC said the attack in October 2019 was designed to “humiliate and degrade” Huckle, whom Fitzgerald described as “Britain’s worst pedophile.”

The prosecutor said Huckle was a “predatory pedophile” who was “known in the press” and had been extradited and tried in the UK for a large number of child sexual assaults.

Mr. MacDonald said Fitzgerald told doctors he sexually assaulted Huckle, even though he didn’t find him sexually attractive.

The attorney said: “He felt it was poetic justice and he wanted Richard Huckle to feel what all those children had felt.

“He said that Richard Huckle was a man who raped and abused children for fun and that he suspected that Richard Huckle had done more than just rape his victims.

“Inserting an object into his anus, and possibly his brain as well, was, shall we say the prosecution, a form of punishment associated with the offense that had brought Mr. Huckle to prison.”

The court heard that Fitzgerald brought a number of items into Huckle’s cell at HMP Full Sutton, including weapons fashioned by the defendant, such as a cast toothbrush with a screw inserted and items used such as ligatures and ligatures for the hands and victim’s feet.

Mr. MacDonald said, “This was a carefully planned and executed attack, in the course of which Mr. Huckle had been subjected to a protracted attack also designed to humiliate and degrade him.”

He said Fitzgerald told staff after the East Yorkshire prison attack that he “liked it” and that he would continue to kill more inmates, but he was “having too much fun”.

He also said he “killed Mr. Huckle in cold blood” and would like to have cooked pieces of his body.

Fitzgerald denied the murder and said his medical conditions – including mixed personality disorder, psychopathy, and gender identity disorder – had impaired his ability to exercise self-control.

The court heard Monday that the defendant said he had “constant ruminations” in his mind about torture, rape and murder, and said, “My problem is that I don’t have the ability to control myself.

“I don’t have the ability to look at people and see them as human beings. I don’t appreciate them, I don’t care about them.

“I don’t feel bad about hurting people, I don’t have the ability to feel remorse.”

He will be sentenced to Hull Crown Court on Tuesday.