A convicted pedophile who sexually abused as many as 200 children was stabbed to death in his prison cell on Sunday afternoon, according to reports.
The BBC reported that Richard Huckle, 33, was attacked with a makeshift knife at Full Sutton Prison. Huckle, a freelance photographer, was given 22 life sentences in 2016 after he pleaded guilty to 71 sex abuse charges for crimes that occurred between 2006 and 2014.
Huckle groomed his victims—who ranged in age between six months and 12 years—while working as an English teacher in Malaysia. The network reported that Huckle tried to make a living off the illicit images of his victims by crowdfunding for their release. He was reportedly in the midst of compiling a “pedo Wiki guide” at the time of his arrest in 2014.
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. https://t.co/GWBiQGBK3w
— CNN (@CNN) October 14, 2019
Independent.ie reported that Huckle awarded himself “pedopoints” for each act of abuse he committed on 191 children. He also sold images depicting the abuse on the dark web.
“Impoverished kids are definitely much easier to seduce than middle-class Western kids,” Huckle wrote in one of his online posts.
“I’d hit the jackpot, a 3yo girl as loyal to me as my dog and nobody seemed to care.”
In addition to a “pedopoints ledger,” authorities found 20,000 lewd images on Huckle’s laptop. He apologized to the victims and their families but declined to hand over encrypted passwords to hidden files on his computer, according to The Guardian.
Citing the National Crime Agency (NCA), CNN reported authorities recovered 1,000 images which showed Huckle raping and abusing children in his care. His arrest came after Australian authorities informed the agency of their investigation of a pedophile website that had 9,000 users before it was shut down.
The Guardian noted that Full Sutton is known as one of Britain’s highest security prisons. Humberside police confirmed they have launched an investigation into Huckle’s death.
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