A man accused of murdering Ian Watkins, the former frontman of the Welsh rock band Lostprophets who was convicted of multiple sex offences, declined to appear at a court hearing via video link on Thursday. The case continues at Cardiff Crown Court.
Watkins is currently serving a 35-year prison sentence – 29 years for a string of sex offences and a further six years on license - imposed in December 2013. He was found guilty after a police investigation triggered by a drugs warrant executed at his Pontypridd home in September 2012 uncovered evidence of his crimes on seized computers, phones, and storage devices. The defendant in the current case is accused of Watkins’s murder, which occurred in HM Prison Parc in Bridgend, South Wales, in September 2023.
Watkins was previously hospitalised after being attacked in prison in 2023, sustaining injuries that were not life-threatening.In 2019, he received an additional 10-month sentence for possessing a mobile phone in prison, claiming he was coerced by fellow inmates to hold the device for them. An appeal against the length of his original 29-year sentence was dismissed in 2014.
