Inside 'Monster Mansion' HMP Wakefield where Ian Watkins 'was stabbed'
Inside ‘Monster Mansion’ HMP Wakefield where paedophile ex-Lostprophets singer Ian Watkins ‘was stabbed after being held hostage for six hours by prisoners’ and where former inmates have included Harold Shipman and Charles Bronson
- Lostprophets frontman Ian Watkins held hostage and stabbed him in the neck
- HMP Wakefield – or ‘Monster Mansion’ – houses some of Britain’s worst convicts
Paedophile rocker Ian Watkins was not the first criminal to be attacked in West Yorkshire’s Monster Mansion when he was stabbed in the neck after being held hostage by other inmates.
The Lostprophets frontman joins the ranks of Mark Bridger and Roy Whiting – child killers who were faced with frenzied attacks from fellow convicts.
His injuries are now understood not to be life-threatening.
HMP Wakefield – a high security prison that has held the likes of Harold Shipman and Charles Bronson – has 743 inmates, nearly half of whom have life sentences.
Nearly two thirds are inside as a result of the most serious sex offences, and it even has a Close Supervision Centre for the most disruptive.
HMP Wakefield – a high security prison that has held the likes of Harold Shipman and Charles Bronson – has 743 inmates, nearly half of whom have life sentences
Nearly two thirds are inside as a result of the most serious sex offences, and it even has a Close Supervision Centre for the most disruptive
Former Lostprophets frontman Ian Watkins was reportedly stabbed in the neck by three prisoners
Watkins claimed at his trial that he did not remember any of the offences as he was taking a large amount of crystal meth at the time
Most inmates are locked up in one-person cells, with half spending the entire day behind bars.
They are looked after by ‘competent and confident’ staff – if ‘relatively inexperienced’, a recent report admitted.
READ MORE: Men who ‘tortured’ paedophile rocker Ian Watkins ‘during six-hour hostage ordeal over guitar lessons’ were ‘killers who recently arrived at the prison’: Ex who blew the whistle on Lostprophets star ‘cannot believe it took so long’ for him to be attacked
A Category A and B prison, Wakefield earned the name Monster Mansion for the mix of high-profile criminals locked inside.
Its reputation is so prolific that its slag has seeped into modern culture – slang word ‘nonce’ allegedly coming from the acronym for ‘not on normal courtyard exercise’, which was written outside the cells of sex offenders because they had exercise away from other prisoners because they were at risk of being attacked.
But more than half of the sexual offenders protest their innocence despite being locked up.
Category A prisons refer to the most strict high security institutions – where male prisons would pose the most threat to the public, police or national security should they escape.
Inmates include Britain’s most prolific modern rapist Reynhard Sinaga, who attacked more than 200 men, and Robert Maudsley – dubbed ‘Hannibal the Cannibal’ – who has spent a record-breaking 16,500 days in isolation in an underground glass box.
Originally built as a house of correction in 1594, HMP Wakefield became the UK’s first Dispersal prison in 1967.
They built the UK’s first-ever ultra-high secure unit in 2001 of the country’s most dangerous criminals.
In its most recent report, HM Chief Inspector of Prisons warned that the infrastructure was in ‘very poor condition’.
Most inmates are locked up in one-person cells, with half spending the entire day behind bars
A Category A and B prison, Wakefield earned the name Monster Mansion for the mix of high-profile criminals locked inside. Pictured: High security wing at HMP Wakefield
Inspectors also warned that patients did not receive their medicines on time, while many prisoners did not get enough time outside their cells. Pictured: Their overgrown sports field
Inspectors complained of broken lifts, leaking roofs, old showers, and inadequate electricity supply, the inpatient unit being in a poor state and outdated physical security systems at the prison (pictured)
They complained of broken lifts, leaking roofs, old showers, and inadequate electricity supply, the inpatient unit being in a poor state and outdated physical security systems.
They warned that these needed to be updated – such as their CCTV.
Inspectors also warned that patients did not receive their medicines on time, while many prisoners did not get enough time outside their cells.
There have been five self-inflicted deaths since 2018 – and they reported: ‘Oversight of actions in response to Prisons and Probation Ombudsman recommendations was insufficient.’
While lower than comparable prisons, levels of self-harm were also seen to be on the rise and oversight of prevention work against this was seen to be ‘underdeveloped’, with ‘no strategy and minimal interrogation of data to understand drivers and trends’.
The use of force within the prison has also increased – with 238
Inmates at HMP Wakefield
Lostprophets frontman Ian Watkins
Paedophile and disgraced former Lostprophets frontman Ian Watkins was put in a critical condition last weekend after three ‘heavy-duty’ prisoners took him hostage for six hours and stabbed him in the neck in a targeted attack.
Watkins, 46, was reportedly taken hostage by three other inmates at HMP Wakefield before being ‘roughed up’ and stabbed.
The ex-rocker was jailed for 35 years in 2013 for 13 offences against children, including the attempted rape of an 11-month-old baby.
The attack, which began at around 9am on Saturday, went on for six hours until Watkins could be freed.
He remains in hospital and his injuries are understood not to be life-threatening.
Watkins was previously a celebrated musician who toured all over the world
At trial Watkins claimed he could not remember the ‘depraved’ abuse he committed because he was high on crystal meth
Mark Bridger
Mark Bridger abducted killed five-year-old April Jones – before himself being slashed by convicted murderer and rapist Juvinal Ferreira while a convict at HMP Wakefield.
April was abducted on the evening of October 1 2012 as she played on her pink bicycle close to her home on the Bryn-y-Gog estate in Machynlleth, Mid-Wales.
Former slaughterman Bridger, who kept child porn and pictures of dead youngsters on his laptop, lured April into his Land Rover and drove her to his remote rented home before brutally sexually assaulting her, killing her and disposing of her body.
He was jailed for life in May 2013 and will die behind bars.
Roy Whiting
Roy Whiting is serving a life sentence for the abduction and murder of eight-year-old Sarah Payne in West Sussex, in 2000.
He was punched and kicked in the head and stabbed multiple times in the torso with makeshift blades at Wakefield prison in Yorkshire in November 8, 2018.
He crawled under his bed during the onslaught and was saved by a nurse after prison guards stormed into the room with batons to haul the pair of attackers off him.
Whiting told the court in a statement that he had been sitting down when ‘two inmates came rushing into my cell with raised arms shouting ‘you f****ing nonce.”
An undated photograph of Roy Whiting, 61, who is serving a life sentence for the abduction and murder of eight-year-old Sarah Payne in 2000
Harold Shipman
Harold Shipman was one of the most prolific serial killers in history before he hanged himself in Wakefield in 2004.
As a respected GP, Harold Shipman presented himself as a pillar of the community – but in reality he used his position as a doctor to murder an estimated total of 250 patients over a 27-year period stretching back to 1971, using the drug Diamorphine.
Around 80 percent of his victims were elderly women with his youngest victim a 41-year-old man.
He began his killing spree in Pontefract General in the early seventies, and was eventually arrested in September 1998 aged 52, and was jailed for life in January 2000.
Harold Shipman presented himself as a pillar of the community but he used his position as a doctor to murder hundreds of people over a 20-year killing career
Reynhard Sinaga
Reynhard Sinaga is believed to have attacked at least 195 men and was convicted of drugging 48 of them and filming himself sexually violating them while they were unconscious in his Manchester flat.
The gay Christian student was jailed for 60 years and must serve a minimum of 30 years in custody before he can be considered for parole.
He was finally caught when one of his victims regained consciousness on the bathroom floor and fought him off before he went to the police and crucially handed in Sinaga’s phone.
Officers searching Sinaga’s flat found another mobile ‘propped to side’ to capture rapes ‘in profile’ and also found a hard drive containing a chilling online library of videos of the rapes plus still images of the victims as they lay naked and unconscious on his floor.
Jeremy Bamber
Jeremy Bamber was jailed for life in October 1986 after being found guilty of murdering his adoptive parents Nevill and June, both 61, his sister Sheila, 26, and her six-year-old twins Nicholas and Daniel at their family home.
He has always protested his innocence and claims his sister sister, Sheila Caffell, who suffered from schizophrenia, shot her family before turning the gun on herself.
He is the only whole-life prisoner in the British prison system to maintain his innocence.
The Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) is currently looking at fresh evidence that was submitted by Bamber’s lawyers last October.
Serial killer Jeremy Bamber was jailed for life in October 1986 after being found guilty of murdering his adoptive parents Nevill and June, both 61, his sister Sheila, 26, and her six-year-old twins Nicholas and Daniel at their family home
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