A crazed cannibal who slaughtered a man and ate his brain said he wanted to eat a Broadmoor patient he also killed, an inquest has heard.

Peter Bryan originally lived in Forest Gate.

He had been sent to the maximum security hospital after he butchered Brian Cherry, 43, in Walthamstow while he was a patient at a mental health unit based at Newham General Hospital, Plaistow.

Weeks after arriving at Broadmoor he throttled Richard Loudwell with his trouser cord before slamming his head onto the floor. Bryan told staff that if he had more time he would have liked to have eaten 60-year-old Loudwell.

He later told a ward team leader that he killed him, Berkshire Coroner heard.

Bryan was admitted to Broadmoor on April 15, 2004 from Belmarsh prison, where he was described as “extremely dangerous,”. He attacked sex offender Loudwell on April 25.

The inquest heard that fellow patients may have deliberately masked the sound of the attack from staff by singing.

Bryan is known to have killed two people previously. In 1993 he attacked a 21-year-old woman with a claw hammer, hitting her six times.

He admitted manslaughter on grounds of diminished responsibility. and spent eight years at Rampton Hospital.

Three years after his release, he attacked Brian Cherry.

The inquest heard that police officers found a frying pan on the stove with tissue from the dead man’s brains. They also found a claw hammer and a knife.

Various inquiries were carried out by Newham Health chiefs and new procedures designed to prevent patients leaving the health units were brought in.

The inquest is expected to last for several weeks.