Ian Watkins isn’t the primary high-profile prisoner to have died on the infamous HMP Wakefield
Former singer of the Lostprophets and convicted paedophile Ian Watkins was killed within the jail the place he was sentenced to 29 years imprisonment for youngster intercourse offences. The 48-year-old was discovered with severe accidents earlier than being pronounced lifeless on the scene.
West Yorkshire Police stated detectives from the murder and main enquiry staff are persevering with to analyze. A 25-year-old man and a 43-year-old man are at the moment in police custody.
Watkins was serving his sentence at HMP Wakefield in West Yorkshire, a Class A most safety jail that’s dwelling to a number of the UK’s most infamous criminals, together with murderers and rapists.
Inmates on the jail embrace a few of Britain’s most harmful males, who’ve dedicated intercourse offences, homicide and people serving life sentences. Don’t miss a court docket report by signing up to our crime e-newsletter right here
The jail, nicknamed “Monster Mansion”, has seen a number of the most excessive profile and well-known prisoners die inside its partitions, reviews Yorkshire Stay.
Beneath are a number of the prisoners who noticed out their closing days in HMP Wakefield.
Harold Shipman
In 2004, killer physician Harold Shipman was discovered hanged in his cell at Wakefield.
Dubbed Dr Dying, Britain’s most notorious serial killer had taken his personal life.
Shipman was serving a life sentence for the murders of 15 sufferers, however police and well being officers suspect he may have killed at the least 215 folks over time. He was discovered lifeless in his cell on 13 January 2004, the day earlier than his 58th birthday.
An inquest jury concluded that Shipman dedicated suicide as a result of he could not bear the considered spending the remainder of his life in jail.
A ten-day inquest at Leeds Crown Courtroom heard that Shipman had threatened to take his personal life a number of instances and stored a secret diary, which revealed a person in “deep despair”.
Colin Eire
Colin Eire, one in every of Britain’s most infamous serial killers, masqueraded as a gay man to achieve entry to the houses of 5 males in the course of the summer season of 1993.
He preyed on homosexual males, probably resulting from his personal suppressed homosexuality, and posed as a homosexual man frequenting The Coleherne homosexual pub in Fulham. After being invited again to their houses, he would interact in S&M intercourse video games earlier than brutally murdering them.
Following his killing spree, Eire spent 29 years in HMP Wakefield.
Eire’s story concluded when he handed away on the age of 57 from pure causes within the healthcare centre of Wakefield Jail in 2012.
Victor Farrant
Farrant, a convicted rapist serving a whole-life sentence for the homicide of his ex-girlfriend, died in Wakefield in Could this yr on the age of 74.
Farrant was discovered responsible of the homicide of Glenda Hoskins, 44, his former girlfriend, in Portsmouth, and the tried homicide of Ann Fidler, 45, in Eastleigh in 1996.
After fleeing, he was finally apprehended in France.
Gene Benjamin
Gene Benjamin, a harmful intercourse offender, focused girls over a number of years and in 2011, on the age of 53, was convicted of seven rapes and 9 assaults dedicated between 2005 and 2010.
He preyed on girls in Bournemouth, Dorset, and was labelled by police as one of many county’s most harmful intercourse offenders. A court docket heard that Benjamin had strangled and raped his victims, attacked them with hammers and knives, and even lower off their hair.
He died in Wakefield jail in 2022 on the age of 64, succumbing to coronary heart failure.
Wayne Spencer Franks
In 2003, Wayne Spencer Franks brutally stabbed aged widow Mabel Whitelam 22 instances after she opened her door to him. Franks referred to himself as “the Satan’s chosen one”.
After murdering Mabel, heroin-dependent Franks ransacked her dwelling and nicked £80. Regardless of denying Mabel’s homicide, Franks was discovered responsible following a trial.
The police suspect he focused Mabel on her pension day.
Franks, 47, beforehand from Grimsby, was found lifeless on his mattress in his cell on the high-security Wakefield jail on December 5, 2022, having ingested a big amount of dihydrocodeine.
It’s believed he obtained this from one other inmate because it had not been prescribed to him.
Stephen Beadman
Stephen Beadman was imprisoned for the rape and homicide of 15-year-old schoolgirl Kayleigh Haywood in November 2015. After being groomed on-line, Kayleigh tried to flee from a flat however was pursued by Beadman, raped after which overwhelmed to loss of life, in line with reviews.
He was serving a minimal of 35 years in Wakefield jail. On April 7, 2021, Beadman, 34, was discovered hanged in his cell at Wakefield Jail.
He died the next day at Pinderfields Hospital, Wakefield. A Prisons Ombudsman report revealed that Beadman was bullied by different inmates as a result of nature of his crimes.
Beadman had complained that nationwide media protection of his case put him in danger from different prisoners.
Raymond Whittaker
Raymond Whittaker, who dedicated a chilling double homicide in a Bridlington dwelling simply days earlier than Christmas 1999, was later sentenced to 23 years in jail. He was 36 on the time of his sentencing and died in Wakefield jail in 2023.
Robin Crago
Robin Crago, 65, was jailed in 2006 for raping a teenage lady amongst different sexual offences. Labelled a “harmful sexual predator” by a decide, he handed away in hospital whereas serving a life sentence at Wakefield Jail.
Thomas Wolens
Thomas Wolens, convicted of homicide and theft in 1988, had been moved round varied prisons earlier than ending up at HMP Wakefield. He succumbed to Covid-19 in 2021 on the age of 67.
Colin Cheetham
Gun fanatic Colin Cheetham murdered taxi driver Stuart Ludlam at Cromford station in Derbyshire in 2009. The 71-year-old, who seemingly had no motive apart from eager to shoot a “full stranger”, in line with his trial, died in Wakefield jail in 2020.
David Charles Zold
Zold was imprisoned for a collection of abuses dedicated in opposition to 4 kids in the course of the 70s and 80s. The court docket heard how Zold received over the belief of the kids’s mother and father, luring them to his dwelling the place he uncovered them to express materials and compelled them into sexual acts.
He handed away in Wakefield jail on the age of 72 in March 2023.
Keith Fairbrother
Keith Fairbrother, who was serving a 17-year sentence for intercourse offences, together with rape, arrived on the Yorkshire jail with a number of long-term well being circumstances, together with hypertension. He succumbed to a coronary heart clot on June 4, 2022, aged 59, simply 10 days after his switch to Wakefield from HMP Lewes in East Sussex.
Frank Stagg
Stagg was a Provisional Irish Republican Military starvation striker hailing from County Mayo, Eire, who died in Wakefield jail in 1976 following a 62-day starvation strike.
Arrested in 1973 and convicted for his involvement in IRA actions in Coventry, he initiated a starvation strike in Wakefield, demanding an finish to solitary confinement and repatriation to a jail in Eire. His calls for had been rejected by the British authorities.
