Ian Watkins homicide weapon proven on CCTV after suspect advised guards ‘let me do Sudoku’
Rico Gedel has denied murdering Lostprophets frontman Ian Watkins at HMP Wakefield in a horror knife attack. Now body-worn camera footage has shown the murder weapon
This is the moment prison officers recover the makeshift blade allegedly used to murder paedophile Lostprophets frontman Ian Watkins(Image: CPS)
Body-worn camera footage has revealed Ian Watkins murder-accused Rico Gedel telling prison officers that “people die every day” following the attack, and expressing his desire to do Sudoku.
The disgraced Lostprophets frontman was assaulted in his cell at high security HMP Wakefield on October 11 last year. Leeds Crown Court heard that serving prisoner Gedel, 25, entered Watkins’s cell and stabbed him three times with a makeshift knife, which he then passed to fellow inmate Samuel Dodsworth, 44, who disposed of it in a bin.
In body-worn camera footage from prison officers shown to the jury, Gedel is seen grinning as he is detained in his cell after the incident. He tells the officers they will “never find” what they are searching for.
In another clip released by the Crown Prosecution Service, Gedel is conversing through a cell door with another prison officer who is guarding him, stating: “I want to get to the block so I can do my Sudoku… At least give me a pen. I don’t even have shoes or socks.”
He continues to discuss the officers’ search for the weapon, remarking: “It’s easy to act tough when you’re in like seven numbers. They come in all high horse and that. ‘Where’s the f****** weapon? All swearing and that then one of them tried to play good cop, bad cop.”
Gedel goes on to say: “Have some common decency. Give me shoes and socks. I might just tell you where it is. Like, you don’t have to be so tight-arse. You know what I’m saying? You can just be normal.”
He further states that “people die every day”. Another clip reveals the moment the improvised knife, which jurors heard was a blade attached to a piece of plastic cutlery with copious amounts of tape, was retrieved from a bin in the rubbish area.
Dodsworth has claimed Gedel passed him the knife after exiting Watkins’s cell, and that he attempted to return it but then “panicked” and discarded it.
Gedel informed jurors he desired to be relocated from sharing a wing with sex offenders in prison so decided to assault another inmate, selecting Watkins due to “proximity”, as he was in the neighbouring cell.
He expressed that part of him wished to kill Watkins, but another part did not, adding: “Sometimes what we are thinking is not what we intend to do. Sometimes what your heart wants is not what your brain wants.”
Gedel, initially referred to by police as Rashid Gedel, and Dodsworth both deny murder and possession of an improvised knife in prison.
Watkins was sentenced to 29 years in December 2013, with an additional six years on licence, after confessing to a series of sex offences – including the attempted rape of a fan’s baby.
The trial continues.
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