All language subtitles for Broadmoor.2024.S01E02.1080p.MY5.WEB-DL.AAC2.0.H.264-RAWR_track3_[eng]

ALARM BLARES

JASON FLEMYNG:
Deep in the Berkshire countryside

sits one of Britain's
most feared institutions...

My first impression was,
"This is a prison."

..Broadmoor Hospital.

It's notorious
because of who's there.

A place where dangerous men
are sent...

..when there's nowhere else
for them to go.

You are dealing with people
who carry substantial risk of harm

to the public.

There's always that risk
that violence might erupt.

This is the inside story...

..told by those
who've worked behind its walls...

One patient suddenly turned on me
and said,

"The trouble with you
is that you won't let me be mad."

..those once detained here...

DISTORTED VOICE:

..and by the most notorious
of all...

He called me Bob,
and I called him Peter.

PHONE RINGS,
BEEPS

..secretly recorded
and speaking from beyond the grave.

This is the story of how to contain
Britain's most dangerously unwell.

I think everybody
that works in Broadmoor

is aware of the possibility
of attack.

Broadmoor is home
to some of the most difficult

and dangerous patients in Britain,

and looking after them
is a difficult and dangerous job.

You were constantly alert and aware

that you could be attacked
at any time.

The first time you meet a patient,
there's always a wariness.

And, yes, it can be very scary.

There's a risk.
There's no two ways about it.

For the 800 psychiatrists,

psychologists, nurses,
and other staff at Broadmoor,

the threat of violence
is part of the job.

I was attacked on the ward where
a patient had got hold of a stone.

Punch in the eye,
smack in the mouth,

you know, thick lip.

They flung us round
like a windmill,

and I had a broken ankle.

When I was attacked, you know, there
were six or seven staff in the room,

and it can just happen at a flash.

Broadmoor staff are trained
to spot the warning signs

when it's about to kick off.

And that's the trigger points
that you always watch out for.

Somebody walking down the corridor,
and they're clicking their fingers.

That's their trigger.

Something's gonna go off,
so you try and get in there quick.

And if it does go off,

every staff member knows that,
in most cases,

they've got it covered.

We all have panic buttons,

and there's alarm bells on the walls
just about everywhere.

And we have a whistle on the keys.

The old-fashioned whistle, yeah.

You have a big control room which
coordinates every patient movement

so they know
exactly what's going on,

and the control room
will come through to all the wards.

So, all of a sudden,
you'll see everybody running across

the hospital grounds
to give them a hand.

Most of the time, staff can quickly
get things back to normal,

but sometimes,
it's impossible to predict

when things are about to go
really wrong.

In mental health, we sometimes
speak of "never events",

which are, as the name suggests,

something that should never happen.

One such never event
would rock Broadmoor in 2004,

when staff received
one of their most complicated

and disturbed patients, Peter Bryan.

Bryan was born and brought up
in East London.

He was the youngest
of seven children -

pretty much out of control
from the very beginning.

In 1993,

he beat to death a young woman
for no apparent reason.

After the murder
of shop assistant Nisha Sheth,

Bryan was diagnosed with
paranoid psychosis and schizophrenia

and sent to Rampton
high-security psychiatric hospital.

He was described as a model patient,

and after eight years,
was discharged into community care.

But far from being rehabilitated,

in 2004, Bryan went on to commit
an even more unthinkable crime.

A friend called Brian Cherry,
whom he not only killed brutally,

but also dismembered
and fried his brains.

The quote that Peter Bryan gave was,
"I ate his brains with butter.

"It was really nice."

It's a truly chilling remark.

Charged with murder,
he ended up in HMP Belmarsh,

but after assaulting staff
and setting fire to his cell,

he was sent to Broadmoor.

He was first placed
on the Luton admissions ward,

where staff dealt with unknown
and unpredictable new arrivals.

Former Broadmoor nursing assistant
Neil Wheatcroft

was working on the ward at the time.

It was buzzing all day.

It was like you just don't know
what's going to happen,

and the next minute,
you're on the floor,

scrambling around
with a young patient

who's ten times fitter than you.

One of the difficulties that staff
at Broadmoor have to confront

is the fact that they don't really
know what's driving the patient

in front of them.

So they have to be very alert,
very watchful.

This is a new person
who you don't know very well,

and it's a person who already has
a lot of difficulties,

who is moving into
a strange environment,

which they might find
very distressing and provocative.

So concerned were staff
about Bryan's violent behaviour

in Belmarsh,

they put him straight into
Luton Ward's seclusion room,

reserved for the most disruptive
new patients.

Bryan would've killed anybody,
and it could've been one of us,

where we might've been alone
with him long enough to be attacked.

And I think he would've done.

Peter Bryan was quite unstable when
he first was admitted to Broadmoor.

He was still experiencing delusions
and hallucinations.

Already on Luton Ward
when Bryan arrived

was Richard Loudwell,

a sex offender who had raped
and killed an 82-year-old woman.

He'd been bragging about his crimes
to other patients -

a taboo at Broadmoor.

Certainly,
when people first come in,

they don't talk about
their offences, except to staff,

and some may never talk to people
other than staff.

DISTORTED VOICE:

Loudwell, according to some,

was one of the most
unpleasant people in Broadmoor,

who was always making everybody
miserable.

Horrible little man.

Bryan remained in the seclusion room
for four days

before he was released
onto the main Luton Ward.

He performs well
under mental health treatment.

Easy to deal with,
isn't foaming at the mouth.

Just kind of quiet, holding it in.

The psychosis is so deep within him,

which makes him
that much more dangerous,

that much more extreme,

and potentially
that much more violent.

Bryan's unpredictable mental state
was about to prove deadly.

JASON FLEMYNG: In 2004,
double murderer Peter Bryan

was on the Luton admissions ward
at Broadmoor

alongside violent sex offender
Richard Loudwell.

Ten days after his arrival
at Broadmoor,

Bryan followed Loudwell
into an empty dining room,

where he violently attacked him.

He garrotted him
so that he wouldn't make a noise,

and then he banged his head
on the floor.

It would be several minutes
before the ward staff were alerted

to the sound of Bryan's assault.
ALARM BLARES

They went rushing in to help
Loudwell, but it was too late.

There were some on the corridor.

As soon as the doors opened
for lunch, they were there.

Two in the office, doing notes.

Everybody was doing something else
at the time.

The ward was found
not to have engaged with

or observed patients sufficiently.

ALARM BLARES

Bryan had strangled Loudwell
with a trouser cord

and repeatedly banged his head
against the floor.

Seems to say,
rather chillingly, later,

"I would've eaten him
if only I hadn't been interrupted,"

and got the nickname
of Peckish Pete.

ALARM CONTINUES

Loudwell died in hospital
from his injuries.

Five years later,
a report was published

into how a patient at Broadmoor
could be brutally murdered

by another patient.

We were under the spotlight,
for sure.

You know, it does send a shockwave
throughout the system.

It did disturb
a lot of people working there,

that such a thing
could have been possible.

The inquiry was that
we needed to tighten our act up,

like that door
should've been closed.

So that's what happened.
We tightened our act up.

The report found that the incident
was a culmination of many failings

at management and staff levels
over a long period of time.

In his ten days at Broadmoor,

no mental state examination
or risk assessment

had been carried out on Bryan.

Broadmoor staff must observe
new patients when they arrive.

Assessing changes in mood,
changes in behaviour,

changes in physical presentations
and to be aware of those changes.

Former Broadmoor lead clinician
Professor Tony Maden

relied on frontline staff
for this intelligence.

If you go on a ward as a doctor,

the first people you speak to
are the nurses.

If they're particularly worried
about somebody you're seeing,

they're going to tell you
to be a bit cautious.

DISTORTED VOICE:

Staff can also rely on
other patients

to be their eyes and ears
on the wards.

Quite often, if they were worried
about another patient,

they would come and tell the staff.

These are the boys
that would never grass on anyone,

but if they really felt afraid,
they would come and talk about it.

One of the patients who'd given me
some really important information,

I said, "Thank you.

"I'm very impressed
that you came to tell me this."

If you lived on a ward
with 23 other young men

who've been violent,
you'd have an interest in safety.

Many of Broadmoor's patients
are not locked inside their rooms,

and they're free
to move around the wards.

But there is a group of patients
deemed so dangerous

that they need to be locked up
around the clock.

They're kept in Broadmoor's
most secure, intensive care ward.

For decades,
it was known as Norfolk House.

Norfolk House
had two functions, really.

One was to contain the most violent
patients within Broadmoor.

Second objective
was to act as a deterrent.

If you assault a member of staff,
you will end up in Norfolk House.

Total seclusion, maximum security.

And they would go there
for doing things like fighting,

smashing things up,
not taking their medication.

It was a place so notorious
that even hardened gangsters

like Ronnie Kray
feared ending up in there.

He said he would never,
ever, ever want to go there again.

It absolutely terrified him.

Even the Yorkshire Ripper
assaulted Ronnie,

but he wouldn't retaliate
because he was frightened

of going to this punishment block.

Norfolk House was an extremely
challenging place to work.

There were only about seven
side rooms.

There were two doors,

so there was an outside cell door
and there was an inside door.

The rooms
would be very spartan indeed -

about eight foot wide
by six foot long.

So there was no natural light,
other than a tiny grill at the top.

There would be a mattress
on the floor with no bedding,

chamber pot, and that would be it.

All of the patients in those rooms

were only ever taken out
one at a time.

So, you would have six staff
to one patient at any one time,

and they would be allowed
maybe 20 minutes exercise.

Some of the men here
would endure this regime for so long

that they would stick in the minds
of staff for years to come.

There was a patient
whose name was John Silver,

but he was nicknamed Long John
because he was six foot nine,

and he was something of a legend
within the hospital.

He looked, actually, like Rasputin.

The main reason he had a long beard

is he couldn't be trusted
with razors,

and staff couldn't get
close enough to him

to give him a shave anyway
without being assaulted.

We would take him, sort of
frogmarch him to the exercise yard.

The problems started when,
sometimes,

he would refuse to come in.

The whole of Norfolk House
was on lockdown.

All the patients
on the other two wards above

would be all locked in,

and then the staff of those
two wards would come downstairs

and join us all in the exercise yard

to bring John Silver
back to his cell.

15 staff.

It was farcical,

but none of us ever doubted
that he could do us serious harm.

Today, patients are still sent
to Broadmoor's intensive care wards

and secluded for safety,

with maximum security measures
in place.

You'd give warning
you were going in.

You then go through,
like, an airlock,

but you wouldn't be allowed through

unless the main office
could see you.

But the fact is,
they are secluded in a locked room.

For their own and others' safety.

This can make treatment
extremely difficult.

The conversation is conducted
through a small hatch in the door,

which is usually about that height
from the floor.

There was some concern as well
that this wasn't fair.

You know, you're meant to be
reviewing whether they're still

in a state that requires
their continued seclusion.

You ought to really
not be interviewing them

just through the door.

Broadmoor creative consultant
David Neita sometimes worked

on the intensive care wards.

I would be escorted
to a place of seclusion

where I could stand
outside the hatch.

I just believe that we're there
to reach the people

who are the hardest to reach.

Just have this communication
with the person behind the wall,

behind the door.

This chat, this conversation
so that they could be included.

Often, staff would invite me
to recite some of my own poetry.

Sometimes, patients would maybe
come closer to the door

and strike up a conversation.

The goal of rehabilitation there
is to get people

off the intensive care ward,
onto a slightly less intense ward.

Getting people able to tolerate
being in the same room

as someone else.

It's all aimed at progress.

That therapeutic process
of allowing people to feel

that there could be an opportunity.

We can't ever keep the door open,

but metaphorically,
we need to keep the door open.

We're talking about people who
have committed horrendous crimes,

have experienced horrendous things.

They are damaged,

and yet they need to be given
opportunity to become whole again.

On Broadmoor's most relaxed wards,
known as assertive rehabilitation,

staff look after patients
deemed the least disruptive,

yet some still need more protection
than others.

Peter Sutcliffe was one of
the most hated men in Britain.

He was convicted
of murdering 13 women

and attempting to murder seven more.

After first being attacked
at Parkhurst Prison,

he was transferred to Broadmoor
in 1984.

In a call secretly recorded
by his brother Carl,

Sutcliffe voices his frustration

at the tight restrictions
he faced there.

The binding would be
a suicide weapon,

or a weapon... anything weapon.

I mean, patients over the years
have made weapons.

I think one that really stood out
for me was a tin of Spam.

Little bits of string tied together.

Towels. Even coins are a weapon.

There are lots of hazards
in any building,

and even in the safest building,
people are ingenious.

They can use bits of equipment.

Even a pencil
can be used as a weapon.

So, we had to, in the end,

give the patients a little pen,
a few inches.

CDs were banned.

If you could tape
broken pieces of CD together,

it's a very sharp weapon.

Sutcliffe should've been
especially grateful

for the staff's efforts
to keep weapons from patients.

He had a target on his back
from the first moment he arrived.

PROTESTORS CHANT

Sutcliffe was so notorious,

more famous than Broadmoor,
certainly,

so Broadmoor had a duty
to protect him, knowing that.

It's difficult to see
what more they could've done.

You couldn't
make him anonymous, really.

It's sort of like a badge of honour.

And their real motive for it,
they haven't got one,

other than to big themselves up.

So I think he was a bit
of a victim of that,

but if you're going to murder women,

that's the price you pay.

In 1997, Sutcliffe was alone
in his room when Ian Kay,

a convicted murderer,

mercilessly attacked him,

pinning him to the floor
and stabbing him in both eyes.

Kay had been scheming.

He'd asked a patient to turn on
loud music just before the assault,

but he wasn't scheming alone.

Kay had been in prison with
Reggie Kray, the brother of Ronnie,

who Sutcliffe had already been
in a fight with at Broadmoor.

But the guy
was definitely linked to Reggie,

and he got moved to Broadmoor,

but they all swore that
that was Reggie who'd got him

to do Sutcliffe
for doing his brother.

The Krays were claiming
that was them, you know.

Kay's 15-minute attack on Sutcliffe
left him blind in one eye.

REPORTER: 'It was late last night
that he was put aboard an ambulance

'and driven under police escort
from Frimley Park Hospital,

'where he'd been treated
for eye injuries.'

This wasn't the first attack
on Sutcliffe at Broadmoor.

He'd been attacked once before,
and then again

when moved to Dorchester Ward
for men needing protection,

and where Neil Wheatcroft
was working as a nursing assistant.

It was for the more vulnerable -

those that were picked on daily
by...

Bullied, if you like.

So they were protected by this ward.

Really pink and fluffy.

At night, you had to queue up
at the main gate

until everybody was accounted for.

We'd walk down to the rest,
and they'd go,

"Oh, here we go.
There's the marigolds."

We all put up the question saying,
"Why are we getting Sutcliffe?"

Because there was nowhere else
in the hospital

where he was deemed to be safe.

End of.

But despite being in
a protected ward,

staff couldn't stop Sutcliffe
being attacked for a third time.

It doesn't matter where or when.

If somebody's going to do something,
they will do it.

And sometimes,
staff are in the firing line, too.

When the member of staff's
asked him to turn the music down

on his television set,

he attacked him.

JASON FLEMYNG: Working at Broadmoor,

home to some of Britain's
most dangerous and mentally ill men,

staff are trained
to expect the worst.

I think everybody
that works in Broadmoor

is aware of the possibility
of attack.

One of the therapy sessions,

had one huge, huge lad
stood in front of me and said,

"If I had my way, Vicar,
I'd burn you.

"And then I'll piss all over you
and put the fire out.

"And then I'd burn you again,

"and then I'd piss on you
and put the fire out."

One patient suddenly turned on me
and said,

"The trouble with you is
that you won't let me be mad."

But another man said,
"I think I'm going to kill you now,"

and I could see that he meant it
at that particular moment.

One patient
posed a real threat to staff

when he arrived at Broadmoor
in 2014.

Michael Adebowale,

diagnosed with
paranoid schizophrenia.

One year earlier, he had committed
a crime that shocked the nation.

REPORTER: This footage shows
the pair pacing around the body

they've pulled
into the middle of the road.

An eyewitness said
they were posing and smirking.

They ran him down with their car
and then proceeded to butcher him

with a machete,
threatening passers by with a gun.

Fusilier Lee Rigby was
brutally murdered by Adebowale

and accomplice Michael Adebolajo.

At their trial, the judge concluded
both men had become radicalised

after converting to Islam.

They wanted the police to arrive

and they wanted them to shoot them,
making them martyrs.

They were both shot,
but neither of them killed.

Adebolajo was given
a whole life sentence,

but Adebowale's lesser term
of 45 years,

was due to his fragile mental state.

Adebowale, on the video link
to the court, was glassy eyed,

found it very difficult
to concentrate on anything.

He didn't really know
what on earth was going on.

Adebowale's attack on Lee Rigby

seemed to be motivated
by religious extremism.

But inside Broadmoor, violence
is often sparked by mundane things.

You do get those times where,
no triggers, bang.

In July 2018, Michael Adebowale
was in the day room

listening to music through the TV.

When a member of staff asked him
to turn the music down

on his television set,
he attacked him.

Adebowale had complied
and turned the volume down,

but a short while later,
he found the nurse in his office

and he punched him in the jaw,

leaving him with injuries
that took six weeks to recover from.

He'd been hearing voices

which told him
to attack this particular nurse.

Adebowale pleaded guilty
to actual bodily harm

and was given an extra eight months
on his sentence.

But given the fact that he's
unlikely to be released before 2048,

I don't think it's going to make
an awful lot of difference.

If you're already in Broadmoor

for what is effectively
the rest of your life,

what is there to prevent you
attacking a member of staff?

"What have I got to lose?"

Broadmoor staff must continue
to treat their patients

despite a constant threat
of being attacked.

One of our patients,
who was, like, six foot five,

was going to have a jab,
and he didn't like jabs.

And he flung us around
like a windmill,

and I had a broken ankle.

Another one had a knee smashed.

I was attacked on the ward where
a patient had got hold of a stone.

He started running up and down
the corridors,

and he caught me on my forehead.

So these things do come out
from nowhere.

As well as happening
when staff least expect it,

violence can happen
where staff least expect it.

Sunday morning worship should be
somewhere where people can relax.

One of the patients who came in
had been collecting flowers,

and he gave them to me.

He said, "I'd like to read
the gospel message today.

"I've got a message
from the mothership."

And I said, "I think it's
probably best if you don't today."

And he's a bit agitated by it.

And I said,
"We're going to sing Kumbaya, OK?"

The lads all started to laugh.

The person who had chosen it
tried to hide around the corner,

backed up against
the security alarm,

and the security alarm went off
really, really loud in the room,

which frightened the life
out of the guy

who was trying to give me
the message from the mothership.

He launched himself at me.

He hit me in the face,

with a big black eye,
and nose all over here and whatever.

When patients become violent,
some of Broadmoor's front line staff

are trained to follow
a strict protocol of restraint.

Well, it's called

therapeutic management
of aggression and violence.

And it used to be called
control and restraint.

Different holds,
if that wasn't done properly,

will break bones.

And they introduced it because
lots of people died in restraint.

And when faced with armed patients,
more specific training is needed.

Shield work.

So, if somebody had a weapon

where you had somebody
leading the shields,

and the idea is to prevent
that person from being injured.

So you go in with a shield

and the person would be
up against the wall,

and then other staff can come in
on each side

and take away the weapon.

Every Broadmoor staff member

is taught what's known as
breakaway training.

Stuff like what to do
if someone grabs hold of your hair,

wrist, and things.

How to break away if somebody
comes for your throat.

First thing to do
when you walk into a room

is know where the alarm is
and always sit nearest to the door.

It's about using those skills
to de-escalate the whole situation.

Your posture when you're
talking to somebody, keep calm.

Let them do the talking or shouting

and come in when you feel
the time is right.

The best advice is just to get out
as fast as you can.

The doors in the rooms
open outwards just by pushing.

The therapy rooms
have also been designed

to ensure staff are safe
in their one-to-ones.

In the particular unit
where I worked in Broadmoor,

all the doors were glass.

The staff could see us at all times
if there was any problem.

Now, that creates
a different kind of problem

because these were young men
beginning to deal with

their difficulties, and sometimes
they'd break down and cry.

And that's not something
that one young man

wants another young man to see.

Sometimes, in group sessions,

we'd actually paste paper
across the top part of the glass

so that faces couldn't be seen,

but the staff could see
all the bodies sitting in the room.

And if suddenly the pair of legs
was missing or something,

they could come in
and check that everything was OK.

Former patient Joshua

remembers how staff used humour
to deal with him.

One of the most serious incidents
that can occur

is a hostage situation.

The alarm bells went.

In the dining room, two patients
were having a good dust up,

and I was in the second team.

We took a patient
to a seclusion room.

Number three's always
the head person

who gives the directions,

and I said to number one,
"Leave the room."

And they shot back out of the room.

"Number two, leave the room."

And that person made an exit.

And the door closed.

And I'm still in there.

And I heard somebody shouting out,
"Paul's still in there!"

And the door was opened.

All the staff went back in and
had to restrain the patient again

because he was up on the bed then
ready to attack me.

I just sat for an hour
with my charge nurse.

Just... "What happened there?"

The person didn't realise I hadn't
come out, and the door shutting,

that automatically makes you
a hostage.

And I still have my moments
with that

at 3:00 in the morning.

I feel like I've had 50-odd years
of what I would call,

in the layperson's terms,
of drip feeding trauma.

And some people survive that
and some don't.

Because you come across things that
you wouldn't dream of observing.

It's a Pandora's box, isn't it?

What you don't deal with,
will come back. It'll come back.

Broadmoor staff
have to tread a careful line

between control and care.

But in the past,
control has turned into abuse.

Colm Byrne
remembers an example of this

when he was a student nurse
at Broadmoor in the late 1970s.

The black aspirin
referred to a practice

of deliberately beating
a patient up by kicking them

so they'd be knocked to the floor.

The staff wore black shoes or boots,
which were often highly polished,

so when the patient
was rendered unconscious

or in a state
of complete subjugation,

you could often see on their naked
bodies black marks all over them.

That's why it was called
the black aspirin.

Colm observed other mistreatments
of patients at Broadmoor.

The wet towel treatment was a way
of rendering the patient

completely submissive,

without leaving any marks at all
on them.

A bath towel,
completely soaked in water...

and then it would be wrapped
around the patient's neck.

So as you twist the towel,

you slowly restrict the oxygen flow
to the patient's brain

until the patient became
less and less conscious.

And then it could be released
at any point,

and therefore the blood flow
would return

and the patient would come back.

It was used as a way
of controlling them,

and the added advantage
of having the wet towel

was that it left no marks.

There was no bruising,
nothing to show.

At their most extreme,

staff's attempts to subdue
out of control patients

have proven fatal.

Over a period of seven years
in the '80s and '90s,

three patients at Broadmoor died

after staff injected them
with sedatives.

The first was Michael Martin,
in 1984, at the age of just 22.

REPORTER: The smiling young chap
of early family photographs

was diagnosed schizophrenic
when he was only 15.

By the time he was 18,

he was in Broadmoor high security
psychiatric hospital.

He died there last summer,
alone in a locked room,

after being forcibly restrained
by five staff

and injected with high doses of
a barbiturate and another sedative

following an argument
with another patient.

He'd choked on his own vomit.

Just four years later,
in similar circumstances,

Joseph Watts died, followed
by Orville Blackwood, in 1991.

REPORTER: Orville Blackwood died
in an isolation room

at Broadmoor top security hospital

soon after being injected with drugs
intended to sedate him.

Hospital staff injected him

with three times
the maximum dose of tranquilliser

and twice the recommended dose
of an anti-psychosis drug.

There was far less of an ethnic mix
amongst staff group at that time.

I think there are some tensions,
inevitably,

between staff and patients
arising, just from that simple fact.

I'd known Orville Blackwood

in one of his previous
treatment episodes

before he ever got into Broadmoor,

and he was big,
so he could do a lot of harm

if he really decided to.

But he was also a lovely person...

and so it was absolutely tragic.
Yeah.

Two years after Blackwood's death,
a report was released,

which included in its title
the question,

"Big, Black and Dangerous?"

It found that hospital staff
had regularly used this phrase

to describe Black patients,

and that organisational racism
contributed to all three deaths.

It also detailed how Black people

were more likely to be diagnosed
with schizophrenia

and more likely to be given
higher doses of medication.

Changes have been made.

A recent report found that in 2021,
the hospital promoted equality

and diversity
in its work with patients.

And I'm so pleased that judges
and researchers all over the nation

are beginning to sort of admit
that and come to terms with it,

and then to do something about it.

A lot of publicity.

Like anything else at Broadmoor,
it really hits the headlines.

Throughout mental health services,

it's still a major priority

to minimise the effects
of discrimination.

Staff face a huge amount
of challenges

caring for
the most dangerous and unwell...

especially when patients
turn the violence on themselves.

Gonzalez bites his arm
in an effort to sever the artery.

It's a very extreme act.

JASON FLEMYNG: Sometimes,
the biggest threat to a patient

at Broadmoor is from himself.

The more you put a person
who self-harms

in a restricted environment,

the more likely they are
to escalate the self-harm.

It's a very, very difficult problem
to manage in a secure setting.

In 2004, Broadmoor would face

one of their most
challenging patients to date.

In September of that year,
over the course of three days,

24-year-old Daniel Gonzalez
went on a violent rampage,

breaking into homes
and stabbing people at random.

He attacks a man
called Kevin Molloy.

It was extraordinary.

Unprovoked. Didn't know him.

Stabbed him ruthlessly
in the face, neck, torso.

He killed our neighbours
just down the road.

He just simply entered their home
and slaughtered them to death.

He does it with an extraordinary
brutality, ferocity.

At the end of the killing spree,

four people were dead
and another two seriously injured.

Tragically, Gonzalez and his family

had been all too aware
of his disturbed mental state.

He was never given help
and treatment that he begged for

in a letter to a GP, and his mother
continually asked for.

They had been fighting for help
for him for about eight years.

In 2009, an investigation
into his care and treatment

found there were many
missed opportunities

leading up to the attacks.

He was very much out of touch
with reality

prior to his spree killings,

and the psychosis was very acute
at that point.

While in prison awaiting his trial,

Gonzalez behaved violently
towards staff.

He nearly died
from a serious suicide attempt,

before being sent to Broadmoor.

He's delivered to Broadmoor
by prison officers in full riot gear

because he is so utterly volatile,
so incredibly unpredictable.

But one of the psychiatrists
who dealt with him

said he'd never seen
anything like it.

He was, by that time, so violent.

When he went to Broadmoor, he had to
be under strict, strict supervision.

Gonzalez was placed on one of
its three high dependency wards.

REPORTER: He was described
by one psychiatrist

as the most disturbed patient
he'd ever seen.

He was supervised by two nurses,

who had to stay within arm's length
of him at all times.

Despite being medicated
for his mental illness,

Gonzalez attempted suicide
once again.

Gonzalez bites his arm
in an effort to sever the artery.

One of the people who treated him
said, subsequently,

"I've never seen anyone
bite themselves so fiercely."

It's a very... extreme act.

It is possible that,
as he started to stabilise,

and as he started to go
through the treatment process,

that he became more aware
of the enormity of what he'd done.

There is a perception
that people with mental illness

are specifically violent
to other people,

but actually, also,
at the same time,

there is a risk of aggression
and violence

towards themselves as well.

Gonzalez was aware that
he'd made people's lives a misery,

and I think he was consumed,
not perhaps by remorse,

but by anger at himself.

He knows what he's done.

And then the reality cuts in,
and it's devastating.

And that's when, sometimes,
we do go on treating.

But we have sometimes sat down
and said,

"Would it be kinder
to let this man stay psychotic?

"Because it's just too painful
to be without the psychosis now."

Gonzalez was eventually
deemed safe enough

to move to one of Broadmoor's
lower security wards, Windsor Ward.

Here, he was observed
every 30 minutes.

But one morning, staff
found Gonzalez dead in his room.

A makeshift blade
made from a CD case was by his side.

At the coroner's inquest,
a jury returned an open verdict.

When there is a suicide
at Broadmoor,

it affects staff
and patients immensely.

I got very lucky that we didn't
actually have a suicide

while I was there,

but there had been one
shortly before I got there.

It affected the staff profoundly,
and in particular,

an amazingly good nurse who decided
not to continue working on the unit

because it was just too traumatic.

I think it's one of
the most saddest things.

I remember getting in the car
thinking,

"That chap that the team
and myself nursed - same age."

So it makes you, kind of,
like reflect on what you've got

and what he had.

It's part of the job.
It's part of the job.

A statement
from West London NHS trust said:

Broadmoor staff reveal
some of its darkest secrets.

There were a group of staff
who tended to have very fixed views

about the patients,
often saw them as animals.

The hospital is rocked

by the scandal of Britain's
most infamous sex offender.

Any form of abuse that was possible,
Savile took the opportunity.

And a brand-new multi-million pound
service for treating psychopaths

opens at Broadmoor
and causes controversy.

The biggest problem
that I experienced

was incidents
of sexual relationships

between staff and patients.