Lostprophets Ian Watkins killed while serving prison sentence for child sex crimes

Former Lostprophets frontman Ian Watkins was attacked and killed in prison on Saturday.

He was 48.

Watkins was serving a 29-year sentence after being convicted of multiple sex offenses involving children and even babies.

Rolling Stone reported that West Yorkshire Police said that detectives are investigating the incident. They said that staff at the prison — he was being housed in England’s HMP Wakefield — were called to an assault on a prisoner Saturday morning and found Watkins dead.

Inmates were reportedly unlocked from their cells for the morning when the incident occurred.

Sky News said that Watkins was attacked with a knife, and the Sun reported that the singer’s throat was slashed.

Rolling Stone reported that Watkins that Watkins was also attacked in 2023 by three prisoners, and that incident resulted in him receiving neck injuries.

The outlet reported that Watkins was imprisoned in 2013 after he confessed to a series of horrific sex crimes. Among those, per Rolling Stone, Watkins admitted that he tried to rape a fan’s baby. He was initially arrested in 2012 after police raided his home looking for drugs and seized computers, mobile phones and storage devices.

Watkins had 10 more months tacked onto his sentence in 2019 after he was found to be in possession of a phone in prison. He claimed that he was being forced to hold the phone for another prisoner but declined to reveal who that prisoner was. Rolling Stone said he argued that he was locked up with “murderers, mass murderers, rapists, pedophiles, serial killers — the worst of the worst.”

Watkins founded Lostprophets in 2000, per Rolling Stone, and the group went on to sell 3.4 million albums. The group dropped its last album, “Weapons,” in 2012 just prior to Watkins arrest.