A man described as one of Britain’s worst pedophiles has been found dead in jail.
Richard Huckle, 33, who claimed to have abused almost 200 Malaysian children, died at Full Sutton prison in Yorkshire, England, on Sunday, the UK’s Ministry of Justice confirmed in a statement. UK media reported that Huckle had been stabbed to death.
Huckle received 22 life sentences at the Old Bailey in 2016 for offenses against children aged between 6 months and 12 years.
The Ministry of Justice confirmed Huckle had died on Oct. 13 but added that it would be “inappropriate to comment further while a police investigation is ongoing.”
A spokeswoman for the Humberside Police said a probe has been launched.
“We were called shortly after 12:30 p.m. reporting that a man had died at the prison,” she 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.”
During his trial, the London court heard Huckle, who worked as a freelance photographer, was arrested in 2014 at Gatwick Airport as he returned home from Malaysia, where he committed most of his crimes. He had confessed to abusing children on a blog he published on the dark web, an area of the Internet not easily accessible to the general user.
According to Court News UK at the time of sentencing, Huckle posed as a Christian English teacher to groom and abuse children, including one as young as 6 months, in a poor Malaysian community over nine years. He also committed child abuse in Cambodia, the National Crime Agency (NCA) said.
One of Britain’s most prolific paedophiles has been stabbed to death at Full Sutton jail. Richard Huckle abused up to 200 children & was given 22 life sentences after admitting 71 charges of child sex abuse. He was attacked in his cell with a makeshift knife.
— Danny Shaw (@DannyShawBBC) October 14, 2019
Buckle used his volunteering visits to Christian orphanages in Asia to prey on vulnerable and poor children.
The serial sex offender attacked girls, boys, toddlers and even a six-month old baby in a nappy over nine years.
— Jordan Milne (@JEMilneSky) October 14, 2019
At the sentencing, Judge Peter Rook said: “Your offending behavior became entrenched in your everyday life. Your life revolved around your sexual activities with young children. Your distorted beliefs in respect of children are deep-seated. Your self-delusion knows no bounds.”
The photographer took pictures and videos of himself raping children that he groomed from schools and orphanages, and shared the images with other pedophiles on the dark web, Court News UK reported during the trial.
Huckle was caught when Australian police tipped off authorities in an investigation into a pedophile website that officials said had 9,000 members before it was shut down.
The NCA said officials had recovered more than 20,000 indecent images of children from Huckle’s computers and cameras, including more than 1,000 of which showed him raping and abusing children in his care.
Epoch Times reporter Zachary Stieber contributed to this report.
