Prison has its own kind of order. Some inmates carry their crimes quietly, others can’t because some charges don’t stay on paper. They spread from cell to cell, yard to yard until everyone knows exactly who you are. And when that happens, your sentence isn’t just time, it’s you. Inside these walls there are men who wait for that moment, watching, listening, waiting for the truth to surface.
And when it does, they act for what they believe is justice because the first man in our video didn’t snap without warning. He told staff exactly what he was about to do, and they left him there anyway. Jonathan Watson. He was already a convicted killer long before January 2020. At 41 years old, he was serving a life sentence with the possibility of parole for a 2008 murder in Humboldt County.
In that case, he had shot and killed Garrett Benson, a 27-year-old UPS driver and former National Guard member, during what investigators described as a marijuana-related robbery. By 2009, Watson was inside the California prison system carrying a sentence that ensured he would spend decades behind bars. But prison doesn’t stay the same.
By early 2020, Watson’s custody level had been reduced. He was moved from a more controlled level three setting into a level two dorm-style unit inside the California Substance Abuse Treatment Facility in Corcoran. No cells, no solid barriers, just open space, shared living, and constant exposure to the men around you.
Watson would later describe that transfer as a mistake, careless, because in that kind of environment separation disappears, and once it does, everything becomes visible. Only days after his arrival, two new inmates were placed into the same dorm. David Bob, 48 years old. Graham De Luise Conti, 62. Both were serving life sentences for aggravated sexual assaults against children under 14.
De Luise Conti had been inside since 2001, Bob since 2005, long enough to understand exactly how their charges would be seen. And in a place like that, it doesn’t take long for the truth to surface. Watson later claimed the tension started almost immediately. He said one of the men openly watched children’s television, programs like PBS Kids, inside the shared dorm.
In any other setting, it might have gone unnoticed. Here, it didn’t. It stood out. It spread. And it settled into something heavier. Anger. About 2 hours before anything happened, Watson went to a prison counselor. Not after the fact. Not as an excuse. Before. He said he felt like he was going to become violent, that he needed to be moved, that something was about to happen if he stayed where he was.
According to his own statement, nothing was done. No transfer. No intervention. No separation. Just a warning. Left where it was. At 2:34 p.m. on January 16th, 2020, that warning turned into action. Watson picked up a wooden walking cane that belonged to another inmate. He approached David Bob, and without hesitation, began striking him in the head. Again, and again.
The blows were enough to drop him immediately. Correctional officers rushed in. Medical staff followed. Emergency care was attempted as they prepared to move him out of the facility. He didn’t make it. Bob died the same day while being transported to a hospital. After the first attack, Watson walked away. Not in a panic. Not trying to escape.
He later said he was heading towards staff, ready to turn himself in. But before he got there, he saw the second man, Graham De Luis Conti. And in that moment, something shifted. Watson stopped, turned, and made another decision. Using the same cane, he attacked again, striking De Luis Conti repeatedly in the head with the same force, the same intent.
This time, the victim didn’t die immediately. He was transported to a hospital, kept alive for days, but the damage was already done. He died from his injuries shortly after. Two men, two attacks, separated by minutes, connected by choice. Later, in a written letter, Watson explained what happened between those moments.
He admitted that after the first killing, he had considered stopping, considered turning himself in, then changed his mind, saying he felt he might as well do everybody a favor. It wasn’t denial. It wasn’t confusion. It was intent, stated clearly after the fact. Following the killings, Watson was immediately removed from the general population and placed in administrative segregation.
The deaths of both Bob and De Luis Conti were officially ruled homicides, triggering an internal investigation and review by the King’s County Coroner’s Office. Inside prison, the reaction wasn’t complicated. The charges of the victims explained everything. And for some, justified it.
But justification doesn’t change what happened inside that dorm. A man warned staff. Nothing changed. And hours later, two more inmates were dead. But not every attack in prison starts with pressure. Some start with patience, because the next man didn’t lose control. He took it. Rocky Ali Beeman, born in 1977, Beeman had been sentenced to life without parole for a 2005 murder that was as controlled as it was violent.
Alongside an accomplice, he kidnapped a woman named Debra Lacy, bound her, beat her, and drowned her before stealing her car. The crime wasn’t impulsive. It was deliberate, structured, and that pattern didn’t stop when he entered the Florida prison system. It evolved. By July 5th, 2012, Beeman was housed at Apalachee Correctional Institution.
Like many dorm-style units, it offered movement, shared space, and moments where supervision wasn’t constant. For most inmates, that meant opportunity. For Beeman, it meant preparation. In the days leading up to the attack, he watched another inmate closely. Bruce Hunsicker, 44 years old, serving six life sentences for the rape of a 10-year-old girl, along with prior child molestation convictions.
In prison, that kind of history doesn’t stay hidden. It defines you. And to Beeman, it marked him. He studied Hunsicker’s routine, where he walked, when he was alone, where staff visibility dropped just enough to create a gap. He chose the showers, a place where noise blends, movement overlaps, and attention fades.
When the moment came, there was no hesitation. Beeman approached from behind and locked Hunsicker into a chokehold, cutting off movement, cutting off control. Then he pulled out a homemade weapon, a sharpened shank, and began stabbing. Once, twice, then again, and again. By the time it was over, Hunsicker had been stabbed more than 80 times.
Not a burst of violence, a sustained attack. Something that continued long after death was already certain. When it ended, Beeman didn’t run. He didn’t panic. He cleaned himself in the same shower where the attack had happened, disposed of the weapon, changed his clothes, and then he walked to the dining hall and sat down to eat.
Around him, prison life continued. Behind him, a body was still being discovered. Hunsecker was transported for emergency treatment, but died from his injuries. The case was immediately classified as a homicide inside the institution. For most inmates, that would have been the end of it. For Beeman, it wasn’t.
Years later, on January 22nd, 2017, he was housed at Santa Rosa Correctional Institution, another high-security facility, another controlled environment, another target. This time, the victim was Nicholas Anderson, an inmate serving time for child molestation. The method changed, but the control didn’t.
Beeman restrained him first, limiting any chance of resistance. Then, he strangled him. Tight, deliberate, sustained, before using a weapon to cut his throat. It wasn’t chaotic, it was staged. Control followed by execution. Two killings years apart, both deliberate, both targeted, and both carried out by the same man who had already proven he knew exactly what he was doing.
Afterward, Beeman didn’t deny anything. He admitted responsibility, spoke openly, even wrote to a judge describing how the killings made him feel. “The best feeling,” he said, “not regret, not justification, satisfaction.” He made something else clear, too. If given the chance, he would do it again. He said he would continue killing inmates convicted of sexual crimes against children until he was either stopped or killed himself.
It wasn’t a one-time decision. It was a mindset. Investigators and prosecutors treated both killings as premeditated acts. The level of violence, the preparation beforehand, and the calm behavior afterward all pointed to the same conclusion. This wasn’t reaction. It was intent. Beeman was charged, tried, and sentenced to death for the murders.
A man who entered prison with a life sentence and turned it into something else entirely. Because inside those walls, he didn’t just serve time, he used it. But the next case isn’t just about one attack or even two. It’s about a man who kept killing until there were no cells left to put him in. Robert Maudsley, born in 1953 in Liverpool, his childhood was defined by violence, severe abuse, neglect, and repeated removals into care institutions that offered little relief.
By the time he reached adulthood, isolation had already taken hold. He drifted through life on the margins, eventually working as a sex worker in London, often targeting men. That’s where the first killing happened. In 1974, Maudsley met a man named John Farrell. According to his later account, Farrell showed him photographs of children he had abused.
Maudsley strangled him. There was no attempt to hide it. He was arrested shortly after. But instead of prison, he was declared mentally unfit and sent to Broadmoor Hospital, a high-security psychiatric facility designed to contain offenders considered both dangerous and mentally ill. On paper, it was control.
In reality, it wasn’t enough. In 1977, inside Broadmoor itself, Maudsley killed again. This time, he wasn’t alone. Alongside another patient, David Cheeseman, he targeted a fellow inmate, David Francis, a man convicted of crimes involving the abuse of children. They lured him into a room, isolated him, and held him there for hours.
What followed wasn’t quick. It was prolonged, controlled, intentional. Francis was tortured before he was killed. That moment changed everything. Because it proved something the system couldn’t ignore anymore. Mawdsley wasn’t just dangerous in the outside world. He was dangerous inside containment.
After that killing, Broadmoor was no longer an option. He was transferred into the regular prison system. Wakefield Prison. One of the most secure facilities in the United Kingdom. But even there, it didn’t stop. In 1978, Mawdsley killed again. Twice. In a single day. The victims were Bill Roberts and Selwyn Darwood.
Both inmates convicted of crimes against children. He attacked them separately, moving through the prison with a level of calm that didn’t match the violence. There was no panic. No attempt to escape. When it was over, Mawdsley approached prison officers himself and told them where to find the bodies. Four victims across two systems. Prison and psychiatric containment.
By that point, the pattern was impossible to ignore. These weren’t random acts. They were targeted, directed at inmates he had identified, chosen, and acted on. And according to reports, he hadn’t planned to stop at two that day. There were more names, more targets. He simply ran out of time. That was the moment the system changed its approach because there was nowhere left to move him.
No wing, no unit, no level of security that could safely contain him alongside other inmates. So they built something else. A cell beneath Wakefield Prison. Reinforced concrete, thick glass. Approximately 18 by 15 ft. A space designed not just to hold a prisoner, but to remove him from everyone else completely. Mawdsley spends around 23 hours a day inside it.
1 hour for exercise, alone, controlled, monitored. Food passed through a hatch, no physical contact, no shared space, no interaction beyond what is absolutely necessary. Decades have passed like this. Years turning into something else entirely. Isolation as a permanent condition, because for Robert Mawdsley, prison wasn’t enough. Control wasn’t enough.
Even separation wasn’t enough. The only solution the system had left was to remove him from it completely. But that was decades ago, different system, different time. The next case proves nothing has changed, because this didn’t happen in the past. It happened recently. Evan James Martin. He was already a known problem inside the Western Australian prison system long before March 2023.
By his early 40s, he had built a record of violence behind bars, including a 2020 attack at Acacia Prison, where he attempted to kill another inmate convicted of child sexual offenses using improvised weapons. It wasn’t a brief assault, it was sustained enough to establish a pattern. By the time he was transferred to Hakea Prison in Perth, that pattern followed him.
Hakea was a maximum security facility built for control, segregation units, monitored movement, and protection blocks designed to separate vulnerable inmates from others. But separation depends on distance, and distance doesn’t always hold. Ashley Bropho was 40 years old and being held on remand.
He had already pleaded guilty to luring a 9-year-old girl from a park, taking her to his home, and sexually abusing her. Because of those charges, he was placed in a protection unit. Inside prison, that label spreads. The first assault came on March 8th, 2023. Martin and another inmate attacked Bropho inside the unit, beating him in a space meant to keep him safe.
It didn’t end there. The next day, the situation changed from pressure to intent. Before the second attack, Martin made it clear what he was going to do. When another inmate mentioned that someone might be placed in a cell with Bropho, Martin responded without hesitation. He said he would kill him. Not in the moment.
Before it. Later that day, Martin entered the cell and confronted him again. The violence escalated immediately. He grabbed Bropho and smashed his head into shelving, using force to take control of the situation. That could have been the end. It wasn’t. After the assault, Bropho was left alone. Martin returned.
This time, there was no interruption. No second inmate. No break in what followed. He placed Bropho in a chokehold, forced him to the ground, and applied sustained pressure to his neck. Then, he escalated further, standing on his neck using his full weight. It continued until there was nothing left. Bropho was found unresponsive early the next morning. Staff attempted first aid.
Paramedics were called. It didn’t change anything. He was pronounced dead shortly after. The cause was injuries to the neck, officially ruled a homicide. Martin didn’t deny what he had done. He admitted it in statements to police and in letters written afterward, describing the killing directly and expressing pride.
“I finished him.” Not regret. Pride. Investigators found this wasn’t isolated. He had already told other inmates he would kill offenders convicted of crimes against children, framing it as something he believed was justified. The 2020 attack, the statements, and this killing all pointed to the same thing. Consistency.
At sentencing in 2024, the court described the murder as deliberate and calculated. The preparation, the return to the cell, and the method all showed control. Not loss of it. Martin was sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum non-parole period of 21 years. A second life sentence built inside the first. Because for some inmates, prison doesn’t stop the pattern, it gives it space.
But the next case goes further than a pattern. Because this time, the killer had already done it before and chose to do it again. Frederick Patterson. By 2018, he was only 21 years old, and he had already killed once inside prison. Before that, he had been serving time in Florida for burglary and dealing in stolen property.
But in 2015, inside Appalachia Correctional Institution, his sentence changed. He ambushed his cellmate Scott Collinsworth, a 45-year-old inmate, and beat him to death. The attack was sudden, controlled, and enough to earn him a life sentence without parole. For most inmates, that would have been the end of it.
For Patterson, it didn’t happen. While awaiting further proceedings for that first prison murder, he was transferred to Jackson County Correctional Facility and placed in a shared cell with another inmate, Arthur Williams, 82 years old. Williams had been arrested after a 9-year-old boy reported that he tried to lure him into a car and followed him repeatedly.
At the time, he had been ruled mentally incompetent to stand trial and was waiting to be moved to a mental health facility. Inside the cell, none of that stayed quiet. Patterson later told investigators that within days he had already made a decision. He was going to kill him, not in reaction, not in the moment before it happened.
He claimed Williams spoke about inappropriate behavior with children while they were housed together, reinforcing what he had already decided. And according to police reports, Patterson was direct about his motive. Williams likes kids. That was enough. The two men shared that cell for about 2 weeks. 2 weeks of waiting, planning, deciding when.
The attack came in the early hours of January 15th, 2018, just after a routine security check at around 1:00 a.m. Patterson had already prepared the space. He used a blanket to cover parts of the cell, blocking visibility from passing officers. A small adjustment, but enough. He waited until Williams was asleep, then he moved.
He dragged him from the bunk and began the assault immediately, stomping on his head, slamming him into the concrete floor, and continuing the attack with sustained force. The violence didn’t stop when resistance ended. It kept going until there was nothing left. Williams was found face down in a pool of blood inside the cell. The injuries described as catastrophic blunt force trauma.
When officers arrived, Patterson didn’t deny it. He told them exactly what he had done. There’s one less child molester on the streets. No hesitation. No attempt to shift blame. Just a statement. Officers later noted that he appeared calm during questioning, even smiling. But the most revealing part came from what was found afterward.
Inside Williams’ clothing, investigators discovered documents Patterson had placed there himself. Papers labeled with a single word, chomo, prison slang for child molester. One document referred to Williams as chomo number two. Another referenced his previous victim from 2015 as Chomo number one. It wasn’t random. It wasn’t isolated.
It was a system. A way of tracking, identifying, repeating. Following the killing, Patterson was charged with first-degree murder for Williams’ death, adding to the life sentence he was already serving. He was placed in solitary confinement as the case moved forward. Two killings inside prison, both deliberate, both planned, and both carried out by the same man who had already proven he would do it again.
Because for Patterson, this wasn’t just violence, it was something he continued and labeled. But the next case showed something else. Because this time, it wasn’t about building a pattern. The target was already known. Steven Wilson. By the time of the attack, he was already considered a high-risk inmate inside the UK prison system.
He was serving a long sentence for violent offenses and was housed in HMP Wakefield, one of the most secure prisons in the country. A place built for control. A place designed to hold men the system couldn’t trust anywhere else. Among them was Mark Bridger. Bridger wasn’t just another inmate. In 2013, he had been convicted of the abduction and murder of 5-year-old April Jones, a case that had drawn national attention and public outrage across the United Kingdom.
Inside prison, that kind of notoriety doesn’t fade. It follows you. Because in a place like Wakefield, names matter, and everyone knew his. By February 2016, Bridger was being held under strict conditions, monitored closely because of the risk he faced from other inmates. Separation, supervision, controlled movement.
Layers of security designed to prevent exactly what was about to happen. But like every system inside prison, it has gaps. At some point, Wilson had managed to obtain or manufacture a weapon, a shank, improvised from materials inside the prison, sharpened and concealed well enough to pass through the structure built to stop it. When the moment came, he didn’t hesitate.
Wilson approached Bridger inside a controlled area of the prison where inmates were allowed limited movement under supervision. Then he struck, stabbing him multiple times in a direct targeted assault, not random, not accidental, focused. Prison officers responded quickly. The attack was stopped before it could go further, and Bridger was given emergency medical treatment before being transferred out for further care.
He survived. But that wasn’t the point because the attack showed something else. Even inside one of the most secure prisons in the country with constant monitoring, restricted movement, and known risks, it still happened. Wilson was immediately identified and removed from the general prison population. Like in other cases, he was placed under stricter conditions, isolated after the assault while an internal investigation began.
The questions were familiar. How was the weapon made? How did it get through? How did it happen in a place designed to prevent it? But inside prison, those questions don’t change one thing, the reason. Because this wasn’t about opportunity alone, it was about the target, a name that carried through the system, a crime that didn’t stay hidden, and an inmate who decided to act on it.
Cases like this aren’t rare in places like Wakefield. They’re expected because no matter how controlled the environment becomes, reputation still moves faster than security. And once it does, the system isn’t always enough to stop what comes next. But the next case goes further than all of them because this time he didn’t plan to stop.
Ricky Wassenaar, long before the prison killings, he was already one of the most dangerous inmates in the United States. In 2004, inside the Lewis Prison Complex in Arizona, he and another inmate seized control of a guard tower and held two correctional officers hostage for 15 days. It wasn’t just a standoff.
It was control, threats, violence, repeated abuse. A situation that lasted long enough to show exactly how far he was willing to go once he had it. When it ended, so did any chance of release. Multiple life sentences stacked, permanent. For most inmates, that kind of sentence closes everything down. For Wassenaar, it didn’t.
Years later, he was still inside the Arizona State Prison Complex in Tucson. High security housing, controlled movement. A system built to manage inmates exactly like him. But like every system, it still relies on separation. And in April 2025, that separation failed. Early in the morning, staff responded to an emergency inside the Cimarron unit.
What they found wasn’t one victim. It was three. Saul Alvarez, Thorn Harnage, Donald Lashley. All attacked inside the same unit. All dead. The scene wasn’t chaotic, it was deliberate. Investigators quickly identified Wassenaar as the one responsible. The killings weren’t random. He had selected his targets based on their criminal histories.
Two of them, Harnage and Lashley, were serving time for sexual offenses involving minors. That was enough. After being taken into custody, Wassenaar didn’t deny it. He admitted what he had done and explained why, referring to the victims as child molesters. The choice was intentional. But what stood out most of came after.
Because according to his own statements, three victims weren’t the goal. They were the start. He said he had planned to kill more. That if he had been able to continue, he would have. As many as possible. Not a single act, not even a pattern. It was expansion. The method followed what prison environments allow.
Improvised weapons built and used inside a system where nothing standard exists. But the setting didn’t change the outcome. Three inmates dead. Inside a controlled unit. After the attack, Wassenar was taken into custody without resistance and moved into stricter confinement. The deaths were officially ruled homicides and an investigation was launched into how a high-risk inmate had been able to carry out multiple killings inside a secured environment.
But inside prison, the explanation doesn’t start with the system. It starts with the individual. Because Wassenar had already shown what he was capable of years earlier. This time, he had more room and more intent behind it. Because in the end, this wasn’t about one decision or even two. It was about what happens when someone like that is still inside a system with nothing left to lose.
