Original subtitles

ALARM BLARES

NARRATOR: 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:

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

He called me Bob, and I called him Peter.

PHONE RINGS

..secretly recorded and speaking from beyond the grave.

This is the story of some of Broadmoor's secrets and scandals.

He had charmed his way into a position

of most extraordinary authority.

Hidden behind its walls

and high up on a hill in the village of Crowthorne...

..Broadmoor Hospital is one of Britain's most famous

and most secretive institutions.

The secrecy surrounding Broadmoor

is one of the abiding fascinations of the public.

One of the great problems that Broadmoor faces is its notoriety.

There's something about the word "Broadmoor"

that just gets everyone's interest.

The unknown, the unknown.

What goes on behind the walls?

Staff at Broadmoor have always been forbidden

from revealing what goes on inside.

All staff were asked to sign the 1911 Official Secrets Act.

Secrecy was needed to stop staff from selling stories.

Any naturally secretive institution is going to be fascinating

to any reporter worth his salt.

And you're taught from day one, "No comment.

"No comment."

Information about Britain's most notorious

and most dangerous men inside Broadmoor

is worth its weight in gold.

Strict rules ensure nothing gets out,

and staff are reminded on a daily basis.

You go in, and you put everything in a locker.

You can't take phones on the unit and all those kind of things,

and you go through the scanner.

So, you're scanned,

and you have the rub down, and in you go.

That would be something you had to go through every single day,

and every time you went in, and every time you went out,

there would be security checks for all staff.

For those who work inside such a secretive world,

fending off the media is part of the job.

Coming off a shift and walking home,

and a reporter would come out from nowhere.

"Oh, you've been nursing so and so and so and so, and, erm...

"we'll give you X amount for this story."

And they knew who you were cos you had your uniform on.

You see them in the pubs,

and they're getting as much information as they can from locals

and say, "Oh, you work at Broadmoor?"

"Yeah. Who are you?" Sort of thing.

With staff feeling constantly harassed,

some play the press at their own game.

We would volunteer somebody to say, "Let's start a story up."

And if you knew one of the local press

were gonna be in a pub, we'd say, "Let's go down and have a laugh,"

and then feed some... some duff information.

And then off they'd go, thinking they've got a scoop.

And that was it.

They maybe didn't come back.

And the journalists and paparazzi covering the hospital's patch

pulled every trick in the book to get to its secrets.

I'm out in what we call the airing courts,

where patients got fresh air, chatting to them,

and I could not believe what was coming up to the wall.

And it was a pole that went up 18 foot

with a camera on the end,

taking photographs of the patients inside.

There was one Broadmoor patient

the paparazzi were desperate to snap.

Britain's most notorious serial killer,

who brutally murdered 13 women.

Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper,

spent a very long time indeed at Broadmoor.

For Sutcliffe, Broadmoor became home.

It was... his environment.

This morbid fascination with him sells papers.

I never understood why, but there we are.

In 1997, after being attacked inside Broadmoor,

Sutcliffe was moved to Dorchester Ward,

where the hospital housed vulnerable patients for their own safety.

Somebody tried to blind him,

and he was in Dunstable,

which was the hospital ward,

for ages, and then...

and then deemed to be safe enough to come to us.

For his safety against other patients.

Though Sutcliffe may have been protected on the ward,

its location on the hospital grounds

provided the press with an excellent opportunity.

And they had to build a special fence around the ward

so that the cameras from the bypass

couldn't do long-range photography and capture him in the ward setting.

Ten years later, the tabloids would find another way

to get to Sutcliffe.

We had rumours for about five years of a mole

who was giving the press information to... to sell, basically.

In 2007, a member of staff was paid by The Sun

for confidential information about Sutcliffe.

Nicknamed Tipster Bob by his paymasters,

the nursing assistant showed a Sun reporter a medical assessment

which revealed that he'd insisted he was well enough to be released.

For me, patient confidentiality just comes as a given in our hospital.

Some of these tabloid breaches of confidentiality

can wreck a service, really.

Once one person has done that,

you can lose the trust in the whole... the whole unit.

Over a period of just over two years,

Tipster Bob was paid more than £7,000 for stories he leaked.

But not all of them were about Peter Sutcliffe.

I think that Tipster Bob had another motive beyond money,

and that he felt that somehow,

the institution wasn't being run in the correct way any more.

I think he thought it had gone too soft.

The claims Tipster Bob made were a headline writer's dream.

Killers and rapists dressed up as vampires and ghouls for Halloween.

Brutal murderer Robert Napper wants to kill... himself.

I struggle with people who don't carry out...

..you know, the guidelines.

You are... a nurse, you have a PIN number.

You're accountable, responsible.

Even when you're off your shift,

you've got to stay in line.

Tipster Bob was eventually caught and arrested,

identified as 58-year-old healthcare nursing assistant Robert Neave

from Liverpool.

He was eventually convicted

and handed an eight-month jail sentence

for his breaches of patient confidentiality.

There will always be patient confidentiality,

but the counter-argument

is Broadmoor must be held to account somewhere,

and the danger is they're not held to account

if it's not done publicly.

The following year, after Neave pleaded guilty,

Broadmoor would be held accountable as never before

when a damning report exposed

how the hospital had given unrestricted access

to Britain's most infamous sex offender, Jimmy Savile.

Jimmy Savile represents probably the darkest shadow

on Broadmoor's history in the past half a century.

NARRATOR: There is arguably no scandal bigger

in recent British history

than the crimes of serial sex offender Jimmy Savile.

And other than the BBC,

there is no organisation in which he had greater power

than Broadmoor Hospital.

He had charmed his way into a position

of most extraordinary authority.

He was made head of this task force

that was responsible for running the hospital.

It is a dark, dark cloud over Broadmoor's history.

Jimmy Savile's association with Broadmoor

began in the late '60s as a visitor.

At that time, he was a DJ who was on Top Of The Pops

and lots of radio programmes.

But secondly, also a fundraiser.

Having spent time volunteering and raising money

at Leeds General Infirmary and Stoke Mandeville,

his connection with Broadmoor began when patients sent him fan mail.

He responded to them

but also got in touch with the hospital

and said could he come and visit?

And he did, and apparently, he had a very successful visit there.

And that was the start of a pretty long association.

Broadmoor's management hoped that Savile's involvement

could help improve the hospital's poor public image,

so they gave him unrestricted access.

He had keys, so he could go anywhere.

Some liked him, some didn't.

Some thought he was just brash. I mean...

You get a man come to a function in a... in a shell suit

when everybody else is really nicely dressed,

and he's got more jewellery on two hands

than any of us could ever see.

There was no mistaking the... the chill in his eyes,

the absolute sociopathic coldness.

In the 1980s, journalist and author Marjorie Wallace

was a regular Broadmoor visitor,

befriending and supporting famous patients

June and Jennifer Gibbons, known as The Silent Twins.

It was whilst visiting the twins

that Marjorie had a very disturbing encounter with Savile.

And he looks at these two girls, and he says,

"I'll have you first... you next."

And I give him a really, really heavy look.

And so he jumps down and jumps onto another table.

And then the girls, June and Jennifer,

they look at me, and they look at each other,

and they say, "We thought WE were mad."

Summed it up.

Savile remained unchallenged, and by 1988,

his position inside Broadmoor would become untouchable.

Savile was going to people in the Department of Health

and saying, you know,

"I've been in Broadmoor, inside the hospital,

"I know how it works, I can see that there's massive problems,

"and I'm the man to fix them.

"I can put them right for you."

In 1987, the Minister of Health, Edwina Currie,

allowed him to join a task force

to examine how Broadmoor should be run.

For a brief period, he was the ultimate authority in Broadmoor.

It really is the lunatic taking over the asylum.

Currie has since explained that Savile was not in charge.

A civil servant was in charge,

but when he was interviewed in his offices at Broadmoor,

it was clear he believed he was in charge.

JIMMY SAVILE: There is no reason why everybody can't be happy.

If anybody was so basically unhappy here

that they didn't like it,

then they should hand their notice in and leave.

Yeah, all the senior nurses were at his beck and call.

He had a driver.

He had a house next to the vicar's house

looking over the... over at the hospital.

I went to his house where he lived,

and where there was, like, a running machine in there,

and on the wall...

and it's a big... a massive collage of pictures

ranging from presidents to popes to all our royal family.

You name it, they were all there. They were all taken in by him.

With access to a house on site and influence over the staff,

Savile had the perfect cover to carry out his reign of terror.

He was abusing patients.

Certainly, he would spy on female patients

in the shower or wherever else.

He would stand and look at them.

There was a culture of fear

around reporting anything that happened to a patient,

to say to anybody, you know,

"Don't you dare tell anybody about this

"because you know what happens to people who do."

Staff feared reprisals from Savile.

Yet there was one patient adamant about his innocence.

In a secretly-recorded phone call by his brother Carl,

Peter Sutcliffe would make his feelings clear.

It wasn't until his death in 2011

that the horrific truth about Savile's abuses

would finally be revealed.

Dr Bill Kirkup was asked to head an inquiry

into Savile's time at Broadmoor,

which took testimony from both staff and patients.

Savile's activities, as we heard,

did cover the full range of things, up to and including assaults,

and those involved women and men and boys.

We certainly heard some,

and they were absolutely and utterly compelling

and convincing accounts.

REPORTER: Steven George, who's since had a sex change operation,

was a 17-year-old girl when he says Savile sexually assaulted him.

He put his hand straight up my night dress,

and we weren't allowed to wear pants.

So I was, you know... Unfortunately, I could do nothing.

I couldn't stop him.

There were 11 cases of sexual abuse

reported after Savile's death

near Christmas in 2011.

It is an absolute disgrace.

The inquiry found that five of the 11 alleged cases were proven.

As well as exposing Savile's depraved crimes at Broadmoor,

Dr Kirkup's report gave an insight into the man himself.

I mean, a literal quote from one person

was he was the biggest psychopath in the hospital.

We're all hoodwinked. Everybody.

Everybody in power were hoodwinked by his charm,

his lies, his cover-ups.

Yeah. So, guilty. Guilty as charged on that one.

It was during Savile's time at Broadmoor

that the hospital welcomed one of its most famous patients -

gangster Ronnie Kray.

Kray was a very famous inmate of Broadmoor and knew it.

There's no question about it.

Ronnie Kray was not entirely sane,

and... he was an incredibly volatile character.

Having courted publicity through the '60s,

Ronnie and Reggie Kray

became Britain's most famous gangland figures.

Convicted of murder and diagnosed with schizophrenia,

Ronnie was sent to Broadmoor

after struggling with his mental health in prison.

In many ways, Broadmoor was probably the ideal place for him,

because it represented an entirely secure environment.

Kray felt... comfortable.

Former glamour model and friend to the Krays,

Maureen Flanagan visited Ronnie regularly at the hospital.

Well, he was treated so differently at Broadmoor.

He had authority in there, but then he treated them

as he wanted them to treat him back.

He just had a way with his eyes. Erm, you...

It's not like a shark, where you don't make contact,

but you... When he said he wanted this and he wanted that, "Can you?"

It was not like, "Can you?" "Will you?"

They... They afforded him... a little bit extra.

Nicknamed The Duke by the press,

Ronnie's life inside Broadmoor was a far cry from the other patients'.

One word - kingpin.

That's it. Finished.

Well, I don't think I've ever seen him not in a suit.

Not always with a tie, but always with a suit.

I'd have to take the tailor in every October

to measure him up again for the suit.

I used to say, "You don't need another suit."

And there was another reason why Broadmoor suited Ronnie.

Ronnie definitely liked young, good-looking boys.

He had two. Charlie Smith was one.

Quite a handsome guy with quite longish blond hair.

And he gave wonderful presents to Charlie Smith.

He had a lovely watch. He had a chain from Hatton Garden.

Double murderer Smith had come to Broadmoor in June 1979

after killing his cell mate,

but he was more than Ronnie's boyfriend.

Charlie Smith dealt with everything he wanted to eat and drink.

I thought, "God, you've not changed."

This little guy scurries off,

brings the pot of coffee, the pot of tea,

the milk, the sugar, the cups and the saucers and the spoons.

You are allowed spoons in Broadmoor, unlike prison.

Whilst it was known for years that Ronnie preferred young men,

in 1985, he was about to hatch a plan

that would help improve his public image

and help his parole appeal.

And he just looked at her and said,

"Well, Elaine, are you gonna marry me or what?"

That's just how he said it.

NARRATOR: Having remained in the media spotlight

since his arrival in Broadmoor...

..in 1985,

Ronnie was about to sell a story

that he hoped would improve his public image -

his planned marriage to Elaine Mildener,

who had visited him in Broadmoor.

I think Reggie had said to him that it might help with parole,

because the thing is, if you get married,

they interview the wife, they go to visit her home.

They want to put you in a homely environment with a woman.

And I think that was suggested to him.

And there was another incentive.

The tabloids would pay good money for a Kray wedding scoop.

I went to The Sun,

and I sat down with the editor, and we made a deal.

Twenty grand.

Providing it's exclusive,

and providing Broadmoor would let few guests in

and a photographer.

Whilst the authorities would normally have baulked

at allowing a press photographer in,

Ronnie's power of persuasion did the trick.

I mean, he had the most wonderful cake.

Lovely buffet.

Even Champagne and wine...

..which he was allowed half a glass.

Having sold his story,

Ronnie had to wait for Maureen to bring the money,

which she did... under the noses of the hospital staff.

I had to have that money put into my account.

We go to Broadmoor,

and you've never seen something counted out.

It was like... like a king counting out a fortune.

So, five grand went to Reggie.

"There's three grand."

"Oh, right, OK. And who's that for, Ronnie?"

"That's for Elaine."

I said, "She's the...

"She's the wife. She was the bride!

"If it wasn't for her, you wouldn't have the money."

The marriage to Elaine didn't last.

Five years later, Ronnie would marry again,

this time to Kate Howard,

who had also been paying him visits.

She was very saucy and also very funny.

So when he said, "Are we gonna get married?"

You know, she'd say, "Yeah, about time."

"About time you asked me."

Just like the first wedding,

the story was sold to the tabloid press.

The deal was less, funnily enough,

because it was his second marriage.

I think she settled for £10,000.

The Sun had sent the photographer,

and how they'd done the room this time

was far better than the first time.

Despite his marriages, Ronnie was never paroled

and spent the rest of his life inside Broadmoor.

One of the biggest scandals to hit Broadmoor

would damage the hospital's reputation.

A young student nurse spent over a year working inside

before making some very serious allegations.

I wanted to help people. I was very young.

But I was also open to learning.

And I did realise that I had a lot to learn.

In 1977, 19-year-old Colm Byrne joined Broadmoor

as a trainee psychiatric nurse.

I'd expected to learn techniques in how to care for people,

some of whom were quite seriously mentally disturbed.

And the things that Broadmoor provided by way of learning

were not the things that I'd expected.

So, this was standard issue to all nursing staff.

We wore the uniform during the course of the shift.

I didn't realise until I went there

that I'd have to wear a prison officer's uniform.

A number of the staff were ex-military,

and there were a small group of staff

who I would say were sadistic

and tended to have very fixed views about the patients,

often saw them as animals.

After spending the first few months of his traineeship

on a lower secure ward,

Colm was moved to a high-dependency ward called Dorset House.

Dorset House had a lot of patients who were a lot more challenging.

A patient was dragged in and sat on a chair

with a number of staff around him

mocking him, laughing at him, calling him hunchback.

And one of them decided that he needed a haircut,

so they got a pair of scissors out...

..and started to cut his hair.

And they were being very, very rough.

I was horrified, and I was stood by watching.

I just felt that I would be physically threatened

if I did intervene.

Intimidated, Colm watched on in horror

as staff terrorised the patient.

After they'd cut his hair off,

they poured a bucket of cold water over his head.

And of course, he screamed and shouted,

"It's too cold, it's too cold!"

So then they went and got a bucket of very, very hot water,

and then they poured that over him.

And probably even today,

thinking about that still quite upsets me.

Colm would soon realise that brutality was commonplace

on Dorset House in the late '70s.

He witnessed staff members assault a defenceless patient on the floor.

A series of punches and kicks just rained down on him.

It was just like... It was frenzied.

Absolutely frenzied.

Colm also witnessed a psychiatric consultant

give a patient electroconvulsive therapy to calm him,

but without anaesthetic.

There was no anaesthetist present, and I said to the consultant,

"Why are we doing this? Where's the anaesthetist?"

And he just looked at me with some contempt.

And that frightened me.

So I was under no illusion

that there would be reprisals if I was to speak out and stay there

and that those reprisals would be almost certainly physical assault.

Fearing talking to the press would put him directly in the firing line,

Colm took what he thought was a low-key approach.

So, I was invited to speak at a meeting

of the English Speaking Union at Liverpool University.

At that meeting, it was decided that I would speak anonymously,

so I was referred to on the programme as Nurse X.

Colm hoped that giving a lecture as Nurse X

well away from Broadmoor would protect his anonymity.

But the news that Broadmoor had a whistleblower soon reached staff,

and it wasn't long before they put two and two together.

I knew it would be potentially dangerous to speak out

because I was aware that a previous nurse had made a complaint

and had subsequently tripped at the top of a flight of stairs

and had fallen a full length of stairs.

So I decided that I would phone in sick.

So I rang the officer, and he said to me just one word.

He said "chicken".

And that confirmed for me that it would be unsafe for me to go in.

Fearing for his safety,

Colm decided to leave his job at Broadmoor for good.

Then, a few weeks later,

Colm's revelations were leaked to the press.

I woke one morning to a headline in the Daily Mirror,

"Bully Boys of Broadmoor",

and it referred to Nurse X making a speech.

So, as you'd expect,

the tabloids went with, you know, the alliteration.

"Bully boys of Broadmoor", "Patients zapped with electricity".

I still have no regrets.

I still believe that what I did was the right thing to do.

But you don't know whether all you've done

is just draw more negative attention to the place.

Colm's concerns about this lingered for years,

until a chance meeting.

A few years after I left Broadmoor, I was out shopping in Liverpool,

and there was a patient from a nearby secure hospital.

Once he realised who I was,

said to me, "You're Colm Byrne."

And he said, "I've got so much to thank you for.

"What you said about Broadmoor, it changed things overnight.

"The screws were so much more careful about what they did after...

"after what you'd said."

And he shook my hand profusely.

And that was the first time, really,

that I understood that what I'd said had made a difference.

Over 25 years after Colm left Broadmoor,

a new approach to treating criminals with severe personality disorders

would have Broadmoor back in the headlines.

It was like, "Who's running this ward?

You know, it was quite unnerving.

Incidents of inappropriate sexual relationships

between staff and patients.

NARRATOR: In 2005,

a brand-new treatment service was set up inside Broadmoor

for a group of criminals

who posed a particularly serious risk to the public.

Lead clinician Professor Tony Maiden was put in charge.

It had been labelled

as the response to dangerous men, basically.

They were going to treat those with dangerous

and severe personality disorder.

Built at a cost of 25 million,

Broadmoor's DSPD unit would treat murderers

and sex offenders

who had reached the end of their prison sentences

but were deemed too dangerous and unwell to be released.

It was a new type of service based on psychological treatment.

The aim was to take the most high-risk offenders

with psychopathy, really.

I mean, hopefully, for a period of two to three years

and to substantially reduce the risk

that they presented of re-offending in the future.

The entry requirement for the service was strict.

Staff would assess the men against the Hare Psychopathy Checklist

to evaluate just how severe their personality disorder was.

The checklist will measure things like callousness

and lack of empathy.

If in court documents

they've expressed contempt for the victims

and a total lack of sympathy for the victim of a very serious crime,

then you're going to score that person in the Psychopathy Checklist.

Once admitted, the aim, using therapy,

was to teach these men how to control their destructive impulses

in an environment different to what they were used to.

What we were doing was delivering a different type of psychotherapy.

We tried to set up a culture which challenged this very male,

testosterone-fuelled world

that they had lived in in the high-secure prison system.

We have a lot of female staff.

Most of our psychology staff, most, if not all,

of our occupational therapy staff, were women.

During therapy sessions,

staff talk to the men about their offences

and how they could make different choices in the future.

But there were challenges.

These are not the sort of people who are hearing voices

or behaving in a strange manner on a day-to-day basis.

These guys have got nothing wrong with their ability

to draw you into a very complicated conversation

to manipulate you and to take advantage if they can or whatever.

Some of whom are very good at relating

on a superficial level can be very charming.

At the time, Neil Wheatcroft was a nursing assistant at Broadmoor.

He was concerned about the behaviour of some of the patients

and their influence over the staff.

When I went over there, it was like, "Who's running this ward?"

You know, it's quite unnerving to be...

..to have them with that much power over the nurses.

The problem...

I would say the biggest problem that I experienced

was incidents of inappropriate sexual relationships

between staff and patients.

How they managed to do that

really strained my imagination at times.

They watch, they learn, and they listen,

and they say, "Hang on a minute,

"I might I might have a chance with this one."

That's it. Do a little bit of flirting, a little bit of this.

"Can you come to my room to see this so and so and so and so?"

Erm... it's...

If... If there's some sort of attraction, then that's it.

It doesn't take a lot.

News of one inappropriate sexual relationship

would hit the headlines.

They do it through seducing your staff.

This is part of the difficulty

of looking after that group of patients.

This manipulation that draws a member of staff

into becoming very concerned for them

and essentially falling in love with them.

Soon there was another controversy in the unit

which would make front-page news.

One rapist, Lee Porritt,

proceeded to brag that he'd blagged his way out of Broadmoor

simply by conning the authorities at every turn.

Porritt's boasts were secretly recorded

and published in The Sun newspaper.

"I'm a psycho rapist. Why did Broadmoor let me go?"

He ended up back in Broadmoor because of that.

To talk about how dangerous you are in the newspaper,

of course, next thing, you're back in Broadmoor!

I mean, you couldn't make it up.

But what it underlines is the fundamental problem

in a therapeutic unit

which is also housing dangerous criminals.

As well as press attention,

by this time, there were questions about whether at such a high cost,

the unit could deliver enough positive outcomes

treating this group of men.

There's some individual psychopaths who are much more organised,

much more detached,

more callous and calculated with their offences.

It was deemed that that potential line of intervention

wouldn't be appropriate for them.

In 2010, an article by a leading academic

praised DSPD units

for improving personality disorder services in England

but questioned their effectiveness.

I don't think that giving no treatment

to this group of people is appropriate,

but certainly the amount of energy and effort

that's gone into providing treatment for this group

seems to have been largely ineffective.

And Broadmoor's unit was proving to be very expensive to run.

It was deemed to be, from our point of view,

the ordinary hospital point of view, just a waste of money.

It was expensive, it wasn't working,

it didn't fulfil the dream.

And in the wake of the 2008 financial crash...

..its existence was increasingly hard to defend.

Though it was praised for keeping dangerous men off Britain's streets,

in 2012, the unit closed.

Despite this, Professor Madan is pleased with what they achieved.

I think what happened in the end, basically,

was that the money ran out.

Looking back on it, we definitely had some successes with individuals.

There were a lot of other people

who I think made progress through the system.

The downside is that that is bought at a tremendous cost.

Outside the confines of the DSPD unit,

on the old Victorian wings of Broadmoor,

staff had been confronting another problem

that was years in the making.

You come around the corner and open the toilet door,

and there's somebody hanging, you know, and you know that person.

You know, I remember getting in the car thinking

that chap that the team and myself nursed...

..the same age.

Same age.

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

and what he had,

that you've done your utmost best, but, erm...

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

Things came to a head in the years leading up to 2008...

..when the number of deaths by suicide rose at Broadmoor.

And in fact, it had eight suicides in that period -

more than there should have been.

It is genuinely a tragedy.

There were lots of blind spots,

ligature points where people can suspend any sort of rope, fabric,

or whatever, and hang themselves.

There were almost invitations to suicide.

The building itself contributed to its reputation.

In 2010, following the suicides,

an investigation by the Care Quality Commission raised concerns

about Broadmoor's outdated wards.

It was old-fashioned. It was outdated.

It was draughty, cold,

not fit for modern-day medicines, I wouldn't have thought.

The Care Quality Commission examined Broadmoor

and came to the conclusion that it truly wasn't fit for purpose.

Following the report, the Department of Health approved

the complete redevelopment of Broadmoor Hospital...

..at a cost to the taxpayer of £250 million.

And it raised questions.

Quite natural questions.

Why are we spending large amounts of taxpayers' money...

..on this place for very, very dangerous men?

I know... I know, the public...

..get outraged by the amount of money that's spent.

But I remember saying to some people,

"What if it was your son or daughter?"

Broadmoor creative consultant David Neita

played a key role in the development of the new building.

Some patients are going to be back out in society,

living with us as our neighbours.

Shouldn't we invest everything

so that they are restored in some way,

so that we can continue to live in harmony?

In 2019, the new Broadmoor Hospital finally opened.

It was all well planned out.

Cameras and mirrors so that you could see around corners and things.

Very modern.

Obviously, it's new. Less wards.

All those things are very crucial to somebody who's on a ward,

who's going through mental health problems.

Four years on,

Broadmoor Hospital is no longer considered unfit for purpose...

..and is now rated "good" by the Care Quality Commission.

Broadmoor post-2019 is quite different,

but it's still carrying the legacy of the old Broadmoor with it.

It'll be interesting to see whether or not

Broadmoor's reputation changes in the next 50 years.

You're there until it's deemed fit that you could be released.

Some patients leave the madness through the front door...

DISTORTED:

..whilst others choose to leave by taking a different approach.

He just took off like a roadrunner.

The local village went into lockdown.

Police roadblocks, helicopters, the lot.

The whole jamboree.