Jamie Varley’s misery inside ‘Monster Mansion’: Dangerous killers circle his cell as he cowers in fear…but he has struck up an unlikely friendship
Shaking with fear and with tears welling up in his eyes, Jamie Varley walked past the heavy mechanised security doors towards his cell inside Wakefield Prison to begin his life sentence behind bars.
From that moment, the twisted killer who had exerted so much power over Preston Davey, the helpless 13-month-old child he had adopted then murdered, found himself stripped of all dominion.
It was on Tuesday last week that the former schoolteacher was confronted for the first time with his new reality, which will see him constantly looking over his shoulder in the stark institutionalised surroundings of the grim Victorian jail known as Monster Mansion.
Varley, 37, was led down the prison’s corridors into D Wing to serve his time alongside a chilling rogues’ gallery of some of Britain’s most depraved child killers, rapists and sex offenders.
Officials set up the unit to accommodate the high-security prison’s most vulnerable prisoners and those at the greatest risk of self-harm.
Among prisoners it is known as ‘the super nonces wing’ and thought of as holding ‘the lowest of the low’.
Since his arrival, Varley has spent most of his time confined to the four walls of his 24ft by 10ft single cell under a restrictive regime, venturing out just for meals and a short period of daily exercise.
As the Daily Mail revealed, the cowardly killer has assumed a secret new identity and is now going under the name Harry Robb.
Following reports a bounty had been placed on his head, Varley changed his name in a desperate attempt to save his skin.
Sources now say his arrival was low key – but chillingly a number of inmates have already approached the cell where he spends hour after hour cowering in fear.
Jamie Varley, 37, was found guilty of murdering Preston Davey, the 13-month-old he adopted
Detective Chief Inspector Andy Fellows, who led the murder investigation, described Varley as ‘a manipulator’
Preston Davey was sexually and physically abused before his tragic death in July 2023
The source said: ‘A few cons have been up to his door – they’ll be wanting to suss him out first.’
Despite this he has, surprisingly, been made to feel at home by at least one fellow prisoner.
The source added: ‘He’s been knocking about with some no-mark con he knows from Liverpool. It’s been a low-key introduction but it’s early days.’
It’s all a far cry from the Instagram-perfect lifestyle Varley had created along with his partner, financial sales manager and former public schoolboy John McGowan-Fazakerley, 32.
Even after their arrest over Preston’s death, the couple cheerfully integrated themselves with their affluent neighbours after they bought a five-bedroomed £450,000 detached home as part of an attempt to reinvent themselves.
When he was sentenced on June 18, Varley was told he would spend the rest of his life in jail for subjecting Preston to a sickening campaign of physical, sexual and emotional abuse during the final four months of his life.
The court heard that from the day Preston was put into his care, Varley had tormented and abused the infant for his own ‘amusement and gratification’.
For his part in the crime, McGowan-Fazakerley was sentenced to 25 years behind bars for sexual assault, child cruelty and allowing the death of a child.
After being held at a separate facility following his sentence, at the end of June, Varley was transferred to Wakefield which was originally established as a house of correction in 1594 and later became a site of executions and hangings.
Today, its towering razor wire-topped walls hold around 630 prisoners deemed to pose the most severe threat to the public, police or national security – with many serving indeterminate or life sentences.
Two-thirds of those inside have been convicted of sex offences.
On his arrival, Varley spent ten days in the prison’s healthcare unit, partly for his own protection and to give him a ‘soft launch’ into the institution.
Sources said it was not usual for prisoners to spend that amount of time in the unit, which has only a small number of inmates who would not have been a threat to him.
The facility has four cells with camera observation so prisoners who are deemed to be at risk can be monitored round the clock for their own safety and to prevent them from harming themselves.
Varley was sent to the D Wing in HMP Wakefield to serve his time alongside a chilling rogues’ gallery of some Britain’s most depraved child killers, rapists and sex offenders
It was there that he told officials he wanted to be known by his new name, and it was arranged through probation and prison bosses.
He also added the middle name Jae, which had been the longstanding nickname that many of his close friends knew him by.
Varley is said to have made the request fearing he had been placed at the top of a ‘hit list’ by vigilantes sickened by his appalling crimes.
One prison source told the Daily Mail: ‘He has changed his name to Harry Jae Robb in the hope of giving himself anonymity.
‘He’s absolutely petrified. There have already been threats against him and he thinks that by changing his name, people are less likely to recognise him and know who he is.
‘He knows he has a huge target on his back and he thinks his new name will make him safer and will help him escape vigilante attacks.’
It is understood that Varley has previously been attacked while on remand. At a pre-trial hearing last October he was seen on a video link from prison with bruises to his face.
Varley has told friends about his fears that he will end up like Lostprophets singer Ian Watkins, who was fatally stabbed in the neck at the jail last October.
Watkins, 48, was serving 29 years for child sex abuse offences when he was attacked with a makeshift blade.
A month later, three convicted killers ambushed Kyle Bevan, who was being held at Wakefield after murdering his partner’s two-year-old daughter.
Prison CCTV footage released after the trio were convicted of Bevan’s murder showed them laughing and joking before they stormed his cell.
They stabbed 33-year-old Bevan 25 times before tucking him up in his bed, leaving him to bleed to death.
It can only be a matter of time before Varley’s true identity becomes widely known among the 185 fellow inmates of the high-security block.
They include Sarah Payne’s killer Roy Whiting, and Mick Philpott, who killed six of his 17 children in a house blaze in 2012.
Both prisoners have been attacked by fellow inmates with Whiting, 67, targeted a number of times.
In 2011, Whiting was stabbed in the eye with a sharpened toilet brush handle by fellow inmate, twice-convicted murderer Gary Vinter.
The latest attack where Whiting was stabbed happened two years ago.
Living in constant fear, Whiting had even been left terrified after he was placed in cell D336 which he believed was haunted by the spectre of ’Dr Death’ Harold Shipman.
Whiting was said to have been unnerved by ‘eerie sounds and peculiar occurrences’ in the cell where Shipman was found hanging in January 2004.
He lodged complaints about the ’haunting’. Another inmate was found hanged there in 1987 and many believe the cell is cursed.
Shipman himself – who murdered around 250 of his patients and was handed 15 life sentences – worked on a biography of Napoleon while on D Wing.
He preferred to stay inside his cell reading books and newspapers and writing his prison diary.
Other detainees on the wing include serial rapist and former Metropolitan Police officer David Carrick, who committed a series of sexual offences against 14 women including a 12-year-old girl.
Ian Watkins, 48, was serving 29 years for child sex abuse offences when he was fatally stabbed with a makeshift blade
Rico Gedel (left) walking away from Ian Watkins’s cell after he was attacked at HMP Wakefield
It can only be a matter of time before Varley’s true identity becomes widely known among the 185 fellow inmates of the high-security block in HMP Wakefield
A second Metropolitan Police officer rapist, Dion Arnold, is also serving time there.
Arnold, a former police constable who worked on domestic abuse cases, was jailed for 25 years last month for raping and sexually assaulting four women.
Two other D Wing prisoners, who have also changed their names, are Baby P’s killer Steven Barker, who has changed his surname to James, and Black Cab Rapist John Worboys, who changed his name by deed poll in prison to John Derek Radford.
Also serving time there are mass murderer Jeremy Bamber and child killers Dirk Howell and Davey Everson, who was jailed for life in 2021 for the murder of his girlfriend’s three-month-old daughter Millie-Rose Burdett.
Soham killer Ian Huntley – who murdered ten-year-old school friends Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman in 2002 – served the first years of his sentence in Wakefield.
Huntley was murdered earlier this year after he was attacked by a fellow prisoner in the workshop at HMP Frankland. He had also been targeted in a ‘jugging’ attack at Wakefield where a fellow prisoner hurled boiling water over him, leaving him seriously scalded.
Until last year serial killer Robert Maudsley, Britain’s longest-serving prisoner, was held in Wakefield where he murdered two inmates.
Maudsley – who targeted child molesters and sex offenders – was such a security risk he was held in an underground glass and Perspex cell, which some believe was the inspiration for Hannibal Lecter’s dungeon cage in the 1991 film The Silence Of The Lambs.
D Wing is set over four levels and security measures include protective netting which has been placed on landings to prevent inmates from plunging from great heights.
Prisoners spend almost all their time locked up in their cells unless they have prison jobs or are undertaking education courses.
Exercise is carried out for one hour every day, with times split between wings to stop at-risk prisoners from coming into contact with those determined to do them harm.
Last year, the growing tensions at the jail were highlighted by an official inspection that warned violence had ‘increased markedly‘, with serious assaults up by almost 75 per cent.
Such was the concern that a follow-up inspection was carried out in April. It noted that certain changes had been made to the prisoner population, with younger inmates moved out and more sex offenders brought in.
Previously, those convicted of sex crimes had been held alongside those convicted of other serious offences. That policy has now been reversed, with those at most risk being held in D and C wings.
Exercise periods are now being delivered to groups from the same wing, rather than from mixed cohorts, and cell doors are locked during communal activities, enabling staff to supervise prisoners more effectively.
