‘He was a dead man walking’: The grim details of Ian Watkins’ life in prison

Two men have appeared in court charged with the murder of disgraced Lostprophets singer Ian Watkins, the convicted paedophile who was brutally killed inside Wakefield Prison on Saturday morning.

Credit: South Wales Police

The 48-year-old former frontman was serving a 29-year sentence at HMP Wakefield, one of Britain’s most notorious prisons, for a series of horrific child sex offences. Once a millionaire rock star adored by people around the world, Watkins’ life ended inside what inmates call “Monster Mansion”, a place full of the country’s most dangerous and despised men.

Watkins’ downfall began in 2012 when police searched his home in Pontypridd, South Wales, looking for drugs. What they found instead was worse: Computers, phones and hard drives containing evidence of child abuse on a shocking scale. He was jailed in December 2013, with the judge calling his crimes “grotesque and depraved”.

Credit: Canva

Life behind bars for the ex-rock star was every bit as grim as his offences.

“Watkins was effectively a dead man walking from the moment he arrived in Wakefield,” a former prisoner told the Daily Mail. “Everyone knew what he’d done. You don’t survive long in a place like that when your crimes involve babies.”

Inmates at Wakefield reportedly viewed Watkins as “the lowest of the low”. He was attacked multiple times and endured verbal and physical violence.

“He was abused every day,” another ex-prisoner said. “He was a loner, self-centred and remorseless. He had no real friends and spent a lot of time in his room.”

Most Read

The deeper meaning of why Ed Gein saw everything green in The Ed Gein Story’s episode four

Bonnie Blue offends 800k people as she names and shames two ‘sh*thole’ UK cities

Ian Watkins’ Lostprophets bandmate responds after the paedophile singer was killed in prison

In a 2019 interview, Watkins admitted how dangerous the prison was: “It’s not like one-on-one, let’s have a fight. The chances are, without my knowledge, someone would sneak up behind me and cut my throat… stuff like that. You don’t see it coming.”

Credit: Unsplash/Matthew Ansley

Wakefield is home to hundreds of murderers, serial killers, and other sex offenders. That combination, one insider explained, makes it one of the most volatile prisons in Britain: “There are so many sex offenders in Wakefield, along with some of the most violent people in the country. It’s a very dangerous mix.”

Even so, Watkins somehow managed to keep a strange sort of fanbase. He continued to receive hundreds of letters, many of them from women, some expressing sexual fantasies or proposals of marriage. In his cell, officers found over 600 pages of letters from admirers.

Watkins also received visits from a trio of “goth” women in their mid-twenties, who were spotted holding hands with him and even kissing him during visits. Fellow inmates were reportedly disgusted by the attention.

Despite being closely monitored, Watkins was caught breaking prison rules multiple times. On one occasion, guards strip-searched him and discovered he had been hiding a tiny three-inch GT-Star mobile phone. The device was found to have been used to contact a girlfriend outside.

In 2023, Watkins’ life inside Wakefield nearly came to an end. He was attacked by three prisoners who barricaded themselves in a cell with him and stabbed him with a sharpened toilet brush handle. He was rushed to hospital with life-threatening injuries but somehow survived. According to reports, that attack stemmed from a drug debt: “He took an amount of spice off a prisoner with a prison value of £150. Because it was Watkins, he was told he owed £900. He was high and refused to pay, so he was stabbed in the side.”

When news broke this week that Watkins died, many inside Wakefield reportedly celebrated.

“There was cheering when word spread that Watkins had been killed,” said one partner of a current inmate. “He was hated because his crimes were so sick. Everyone knew it was only a matter of time.”

For more like this, like The Tab on Facebook.

Featured image credit: Canva, South Wales Police