Charles Bronson’s real name heard at parole hearing and the reason why he changed it
Charles Bronson revealed that he changed his name for ‘tax purposes’ when he went into boxing after coming out of prison.
The convicted criminal today began his bid for freedom after spending the best part of the last 50 years behind bars.
Speaking at his parole board review members of the public heard how Bronson’s real name was Michael Peterson and the reasons behind why he changed it.
Bronson said his name was an alias dreamed up when he went into boxing once he was released from prison.
Bronson told the parole panel that notorious east London gangsters Ronnie and Reggie Kray – who he says he served time behind bars with – recommended he get into unlicensed boxing, and when he got a manager, he was told to come up with an alias for ‘tax’ purposes.
He said he fought six fights while out on release, five against men and one against a Rottweiler.
He was later charged under the name of Charles Bronson in 1987, the hearing was told.
He said: ‘I love boxing, my father was a great champion boxer, it is a fraternity, it is a family … we used to box in prison but they are run by namby-pamby people now.’
Bronson later told the hearing: ‘I lost the plot in prison’, adding: ‘The only thing I knew was violence.’
Dubbed one of Britain’s most violent offenders, Bronson – who changed his surname to Salvador in 2014 after the artist Salvador Dali, has been in prison for much of the last 50 years, often in solitary confinement or specialist units.
Bronson was first sent to jail in 1968 and has held 11 hostages in nine different sieges – with victims including governors, doctors, staff and, on one occasion, his own solicitor.
He was sentenced in 2000 to a discretionary life term with a minimum of four years for taking a prison teacher at HMP Hull hostage for 44 hours.
Since then, the Parole Board has repeatedly refused to direct his release.
In a Channel 4 documentary which aired last week, he said he can ‘smell and taste freedom’ ahead of the parole hearing.
Members of the press and public watched proceedings – taking place in HMP Woodhill in Milton Keynes – on a live stream from the Royal Courts of Justice in central London.
Bronson was given 15 minutes to talk to the hearing and give evidence, where he spoke about betting from behind bars, holding his prison art teacher hostage, and said he’d eaten more porridge than Goldilocks.
He started and said: ‘I could fill 15 hours’ to which the panel chair replied: ‘That, privately, is my concern.’
Salvador said: ‘First of all, it’s no secret I have had more porridge than Goldilocks and the Three Bears, and I’m sick of it. I’ve had enough of it, I want to go home.’
He told the panel that half of the 738-page dossier about him is ‘crap, absolute rubbish’.
At one point he muttered ‘f****** hell’ under his breath as the review heard how submissions on behalf of Justice Secretary Dominic Raab had been delayed and could not be provided in advance of the proceedings to the parole board as a result.
A representative for Mr Raab who was present at the hearing apologised for the delays.
On the sometimes-grainy live stream footage Bronson, who had been sipping what appeared to be a small carton of juice through a straw, was seen briefly standing up during the hearing and began asking for a tissue.
‘I haven’t pissed myself,’ he told the hearing as he placed the tissue under the juice carton and sat back down.
Amid long pauses while the panel asked his prisoner offender manager questions, Bronson said: ‘We will be here all f****** day, won’t we?’
The former boxer told his parole hearing he has been ‘betting for 50 years’ while behind bars and won £1,500 last year.
Asked whether he was allowed to bet while behind bars, he replied: ‘Well, are you or ain’t you?
‘No-one has ever said anything to me in 50 years.’
He said he was ‘not an addict’, later adding: ‘I’ve been betting for 50 years.’
When questioned about several incidents behind bars a few years ago and why they happened, Bronson said: ‘I love a rumble. What man doesn’t?’
Describing one incident, in which the parole review was told he stripped naked and ‘greased up’, he said: ‘I took half a tub of Lurpak with me, stripped off and had the rumble of my life. It was f****** brilliant.’
Addressing his time at Woodhill, he said: ‘I’ve had four years here now, I think I’ve outstayed my welcome.’
Referring to the prison art teacher who he took hostage for three days in 2014, he said he told him: ‘You’ve been my best hostage, you’re the only one who hasn’t shat himself.’
He told the hearing that the teacher had taken objection to one of a series of health and safety posters created by Bronson, one of which, about the risk of Aids, the staff member misunderstood as ‘having a pop at the gays’.
Bronson said at the time the prison wing where he was held was ‘cold, empty and f****** brutal’, whereas now things are too easy.
‘I’ve got a telly in my cell, I can’t even believe it,’ he told the panel.
Bronson, who has taken hostages on nine different occasions while in prison, said: ‘I was a horrible person and I couldn’t stop taking hostages.
‘I went through a phase, I couldn’t help taking hostages.
‘I was battling against the system … it was my way of getting back.
‘There’s nothing better than wrapping a governor up like a Christmas turkey.’
From behind bars Bronson said he had a ‘beautiful childhood’ at the hearing, and that he enjoyed the ‘excitement’ he got from crime.
He said: ‘I just went wrong, I don’t know how, I don’t know why. I just enjoyed the excitement.’
Discussing how he got into stealing, burglary and guns, he said he was ‘very proud’ that he ‘never went down the road of drugs’.
‘I never shot anybody, never wanted to,’ he added.
When questioned, he conceded he did carry a loaded shotgun in the 1970s.
Suggesting if he were to use a gun that he would replace the pellets with rice, he was asked why he would need to shoot someone.
‘If a situation occurs,’ he replied.
He told the panel of his previous crimes: ‘Am I sorry? Maybe. Would I do it again? Definitely not.’
Listing all the conditions in which he has been held, including high-security mental health hospitals, he said: ‘I’ve had everything you can think of 10 times over.
‘How much longer have I got to go? I’m ready now, I’m a chilled-out man, I feel comfortable in myself. I handle situations 100 times better than I used to. I’m no longer angry.’
Bronson went on: ‘I am terrified of the consequences of my actions because I know if I do anything serious ever again I will die in prison.’
He recalled how one officer, Mick O’Hagan, inspired him to take up art, telling him: ‘You carry on the way you’re going, Charlie, you will never get out.’
Bronson said: ‘Today I’m an artist, a born-again artist, and that’s down to him. He didn’t have to do what he did, he done it because he believed in me.’
He then made a plea on behalf of his mother, now aged 95, who he referred to as ‘my old duchess’.
‘You people have got the power to let me out, that’s my mum’s last dream on this planet, to see her son outside, doing well, making an honest living with my art, as you know I’m anti-crime,’ he said.
‘If you’ve got any heart, any compassion, give it to my mum and make an old lady’s dream come true.’
Bronson told the parole judges he was a ‘retired prison activist’ but he deserved much of his time behind bars.
He said: ‘Out of the 50 years I’ve been in prison, I have probably deserved a good 35 years of it … but I have been naughty. Not ‘naughty, naughty’, but naughty.’
Describing how in the past he had ended up on prison roofs in protest, he said: ‘I enjoyed every f****** one of them.’
He told how he had slept in ‘cages’ and ‘boxes’, and spent ‘40 years of my life in solitary’.
He added: ‘Don’t think I’m wearing these glasses for sinister reasons. My eyes are blown away with the light’ as he discussed how being in solitary confinement made his eyes sensitive to light.
Bronson told the hearing he is ‘almost an angel now’ compared with his old self.
‘I have not walked on grass for over 30 years and I dream of walking on grass,’ he said.
The 70-year-old said he has changed his ways and there would be no more ‘rumbles’ behind bars.
He is in a unit of eight inmates, and has time out of his cell with three others, one of whom he does not like and avoids.
But he said on a larger wing he would be able to handle any conflict should it arise.
Asked about difficult situations he might face if released, Bronson said: ‘If some muppet wants to fight me or cause me problems I will handle it in a different way.’
He said he behaves like a ‘gentleman’ and plans to go and live in the country if released.
He told the panel: ‘Give a man a break. We could be sitting around this table until the cow jumps over the moon talking the same old crap.
‘I’m just a normal geezer wanting to get on with his life.’
Asked about causing one of his victims – a prison governor – post-traumatic stress disorder, Bronson said: ‘That was 30 years ago and I’ve moved on from that long ago.
‘Governor (Adrian) Wallace was an arsehole, is an arsehole and will die an arsehole.’
Referring to Phil Danielson, the prison art teacher he took hostage for three days, Bronson said he would like to meet him after his release.
He told the panel if he had his time again he would ‘probably have just chinned him’.
Bronson said the most humiliating thing he did to the teacher was tying a skipping rope around his neck and walking him around the prison landing.
Bronson was the first prisoner to formally ask for a public hearing after rules changed last year in a bid to remove the secrecy around the parole process.
The public and the press will be able to observe the proceedings – which continue on Wednesday – via a live stream.
But the third and final day of the hearing will take place behind closed doors on Friday.
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