An inmate has denied murdering paedophile Lostprophets frontman Ian Watkins inside Wakefield Prison, a court has heard.
Samuel Dodsworth, 43, pleaded not guilty to the charge of murder and denied possessing a makeshift knife inside the prison.
Dodsworth appeared via video link for the hearing at Leeds Crown Court today. His co-accused, Rashid Gedel, 25, referred to in court as Rico Gedel, had refused to leave his cell at HMP Long Lartin in Worcestershire.
Gedel’s lawyer, Imran Khan, said his client had chosen not to appear by video link because he wanted to attend court in person. No plea was entered on his behalf.
Judge Guy Kearl KC, the Recorder of Leeds, set a trial date for May 5, 2026, expected to last up to four weeks.
Emergency services rushed to the prison in West Yorkshire on October 11 but Watkins, 48, who was serving a 29-year sentence for child sex offences, was pronounced dead at the scene.
The disgraced rocker was jailed in 2013 after admitting multiple offences, including the attempted rape of a fan’s baby, following a drugs warrant at his Pontypridd home in September 2012.
Samuel Dodsworth, 43, pleaded not guilty to the charge of murder. He is pictured in an artist’s sketch from a court appearance last month
Lostprophets singer Ian Watkins was murdered in jail where he was serving 29 years for child sex offences
He had previously survived an attack in prison in 2023 and was given a further 10 months in 2019 for possessing a mobile phone behind bars.
Police have said that Gedel self-defines as any other black background and Dodsworth self-defines as white British.
Both defendants were remanded in custody and will next appear for a case management hearing on February 2.
In 2013, Watkins was given 14 and 15-year consecutive prison terms for engaging in sexual activity with a child and the attempted rape of an 11-month-old baby.
He was also convicted of 11 other offences at Cardiff Crown Court – with those sentences running alongside his 29-year term.
Two of his co-defendants known as Mother A and Mother B – the parents of children he assaulted – were also incarcerated for 14 and 17 years respectively.
The depraved singer attempted to rape a fan’s baby girl, while he also encouraged another to abuse her own child in a webcam chat.
During the trial, it was heard how a woman had proposed to him the offer of a ‘summer of child porn’, to which he replied: ‘Hell yes, baby.’
Rashid Gedel, 25, refused to leave his cell at HMP Long Lartin in Worcestershire. No plea was entered on his behalf
Dodsworth also denied possessing a makeshift knife inside the prison
Representing Woman B, Christine Laing QC also told the court that Watkins told her client: ‘You and your daughter now belong to me.’
It is also understood the jailed sex offender was so ‘tech savvy’ his collection of child abuse footage and photos amounted to 27 terabytes of data.
The scale of the collection dwarfed South Wales Police’s own data storage – and was five times bigger than the force’s which had 2,862 officers and 1,631 support staff at the time.
One terabyte could hold as much as 472 hours of broadcast-quality footage or around 150 hours of HD video.
Eventually, experts from the UK government’s intelligence headquarters, the GCHQ were brought in to crack the password on the encrypted files on his computer.
The paedophile vehemently denied the claims lodged against him before switching his plea to guilty at the last second.
In mitigation, his defence argued his use of crack cocaine and crystal meth meant he could not remember his ‘prolific abuse’.
