A nurse who cared for killers including the Yorkshire Ripper, Ronnie Kray and Robert Napper is living rough after the stress of 21 years on wards made him mentally ill.
Popular Alex Bryson was fired from Broadmoor Hospital after bosses decided he was no longer capable of carrying out his duties.
He tried to resign but his offer was refused.
The 52-year-old had been signed off sick for months with mental frailty and stress, reports Get Reading.
Then his marriage to a woman, who also works at the high security hospital in Upper Broadmoor Road, Crowthorne, collapsed and he was left homeless.
Tragically, the carer was found sleeping rough on New Year’s Eve in the doorway of a bank in Wokingham and has since been relying on the generosity of passers-by to eat.
On Tuesday, January 5 a spokesman for Broadmoor admitted that the NHS authority had dismissed Mr Bryson but said it had been supportive in its dealings with him.
"The member of staff was consistently absent from work over a long period of time.
"The Trust was supportive and sympathetic throughout this period of time, however he was eventually dismissed from our employment for capability reasons,” said the spokesman.
The former nurse and care assistant insisted it was the stress of working with the high profile patients and the mentally ill which had left him unable to work and effectively “down and out.”
Mr Bryson said he has been living rough for almost a year after he was left without a roof over his head when he separated from his second wife and Wokingham Borough Council told him there was no accommodation available.
The father-of-three was unable to find a private flat while still working because his low salary would not cover the high prices in the area.
He was initially forced to sleep in his in his four-door hatchback car outside a Salvation Army centre, but has lost the vehicle in recent months and spent New Year’s Eve sleeping in the doorway of a Santander bank.
In December, after months off work sick due to his living situation and depression and anxiety, he was called into a meeting with senior management at Broadmoor on December 15.
They refused to accept his resignation and instead told him he had failed to follow policies and would be sacked.
“My reaction to that was you can’t focus on a job and be homeless,” said Mr Bryson.
“The dismissal was on the grounds of misconduct. They have known I have been homeless for the last year.
“They admitted that they were partly at blame because I was always in the frontline. Where there was any sort of trouble, I always got sent.”
Working at the hospital, including the notorious Henley Ward for the most seriously mentally ill cases, meant dealing with extremely dangerous people, many of whom who had committed heinous crimes.
Mr Bryson, who suffers from depression and anxiety, admits his time at Broadmoor took a toll on his mental health.
He also has the battle scars to prove it, having recently lost one of his front teeth which had been wobbly for years after he was punched in the face by a patient.
While his current circumstances are damning, his eyes light up when he shares memories from his time working at Broadmoor, including seven years living in staff accommodation on site.
As a healthcare assistant he would be responsible for the personal care of up to 40 male patients, ensuring they were dressed, showered and cared for.
His work brought him into contact with the notorious Yorkshire Ripper, Peter Sutcliffe - now renamed Coonan - and serial rapist and murderer Robert Napper, a paranoid schizophrenic who Mr Bryson said “kept himself to himself.”
Ronnie Kray, one of the infamous Kray twins, was a patient when Mr Bryson first started working at the hospital in November 1994.
However not long after he met Kray, the gangster died of a heart attack, causing the entire facility to go into lockdown.
“I got held up from getting home because of the security,” Mr Bryson smiled.
“You want to get on the other side, of how people want to kill and maim others - you want to get into their heads.
“But it takes a toll after a while. They are very dangerous people and they are good at manipulating people, especially younger staff.
“You’ve obviously got to start thinking like them. Then you start thinking ‘do I have a personality disorder too’?”
The former nurse, who now spends his nights sleeping in alleyways and car parks, relies on handouts from the Salvation Army, a mental health crisis centre and a newly-launched charity called Wokingham In Need.
Pam Jenkinson, who runs the Wokingham and West Berkshire Mental Health Association, said circumstances were “dire” as Mr Bryson and herself had been told that the only social housing would only become available if someone was evicted or died.
She added: “What I was trying to do was get him early retirement. He started working at 16.
“I said to them that Broadmoor nursing is much harder than what we do here. It is very high stress work and I think it caused him depression, anxiety and stress.
"It hasn’t helped now the fact they have sacked him.”
Sue Jackson, founder of Wokingham in Need, added: “There’s many examples of how homelessness happens - many of us are only two wage packets away from being there.”
Wokingham Council have been approached for a comment on this story.
