A CONVICTED nail bomber from Merseyside, who once said he wanted to destroy the whole of humanity, now has a painting hanging in the Home Office.
Matthew Williams is serving five life sentences for crimes that include placing a bomb in Liverpool city centre, administering poisons and arson.
He was also the brains behind a daring prison break that almost ended the career of Michael Howard.
But now Williams, from Birken-head, has been paid £375 by the Home Office so they can place one of his paintings in their £311m Westminster headquarters.
The painting shows an eccentric Londoner looking at piles of rubbish and won the Koestler Prize - an annual award for prisoner's art. The artwork is certainly less controversial than others created by Williams, a former Leeds University student, which were exhibited in a Birkenhead art gallery in
These included paintings of rape, mutilation and murder along with a disturbing collage of James Bulger press cuttings.
That exhibition was supported by his mother, Clare, despite the fact he admitted to trying to poison his family by injecting tomatoes with toxins after an argument.
Just a year before his paintings were shown in Birkenhead, Williams had used his interest in art to escape, along with two killers from Parkhurst prison on the Isle of Wight.