Jury out in trial of men accused of murdering Lostprophets singer Ian Watkins

Dave Higgens and Katie Dickinson, Press Association

A jury has gone out to consider its verdicts in the trial of two men accused of murdering paedophile Lostprophets frontman Ian Watkins in a high-security jail.

The former rock star was stabbed to death in his cell at HMP Wakefield, where he was serving a 29-year sentence for child sexual offences, Leeds Crown Court has heard.

Prosecutors have told a jury that Rico Gedel stabbed Watkins three times with a makeshift knife on October 11 last year, which he then passed to Samuel Dodsworth, who threw it in a bin.

Serving prisoners Gedel, 25, who was initially referred to by police as Rashid Gedel, and Dodsworth, 44, both deny murder and possessing a knife in prison.

The jury was sent out to begin deliberations at Tuesday lunchtime after the judge, Mr Justice Hilliard, completed his summing-up of the evidence.

Jurors have been told that Gedel went into Watkins’ cell less than 20 minutes after it was unlocked for the morning and stabbed him in the head and neck.

Prosecutors said the attack lasted 20 seconds and that Gedel was “perky” when he was detained by prison officers afterwards, allegedly saying “have a good night’s sleep Watkins lad”, when he was taken past the cell where the former singer was receiving medical treatment.

The jury was told how Gedel said to prison staff: “If I’ve killed him, you could be talking to someone famous.”

According to prosecutors, CCTV footage played to the jury shows Gedel going into Watkins’ cell just before 9.20am and leaving 20 seconds later, before walking towards Dodsworth and passing him something.

Dodsworth glanced at the item and put it in the pocket of his jogging bottoms, jurors heard.

Watkins, from Merthyr Tydfil in Wales, collapsed and paramedics were unable to resuscitate him, the jury has heard.

Gedel told the trial he hated being housed with sex offenders at Wakefield and had threatened to hurt “any number of paedophiles” if he was not transferred.

‘Proximity’

He said he chose Watkins largely due to “proximity”, as he had been put in the cell next to him the night before, after being moved from another wing for assaulting three prisoners there.

In his closing speech to jurors earlier this week, prosecutor Tom Storey KC said Watkins had “done nothing whatsoever to provoke this attack in the time leading up to it”.

“However heinous his crimes were, that did not justify his killing in any way,” he said.

Peter Moulson KC, defending Gedel, said on Monday that Watkins was still on his feet when he had left the cell, adding: “If you were dead set on wanting to kill, wouldn’t you make sure you had done?”

Michael Collins, defending Dodsworth, who is serving a sentence for raping a woman, asked why he would “volunteer to kill a fellow sex offender”.

Mr Collins said Dodsworth was a “seasoned prisoner” and knew he had “no real choice but to quietly receive the item” Gedel handed him, as the “prisoners’ code” meant that if he told anyone, he would be labelled a “grass”.

Giving his legal directions to jurors earlier this week, the judge said Watkins “had committed very serious offences, yet clearly should not have lost his life in prison while serving his sentence”.

Watkins was jailed for 29 years in December 2013, with a further six years on licence, after admitting a string of sex offences, including the attempted rape of a fan’s baby.