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Letters and cards that Ian Watkins sent from HMP Wakefield, each with a full transcription, a short summary and background where it's known. Click any thumbnail to open the full-size image.
Conventions: Watkins writes in all-caps print and uses a “Z”-shaped capital I; this is normalised to ordinary sentence case. His spelling and slang (“prolly”, “innit”, “y’know”) are kept as written. [redacted] marks text blacked out or blurred in the source image. [crossed out] marks his own scribbles. [?] marks an uncertain reading, and … marks text cut off in the image.
Ellie (not her real name) is from Halifax. She met Watkins backstage in January 2010, aged 15, and began writing to him after he was jailed in late 2013. They wrote to each other for about ten years, with a break after 2018, and he proposed during a prison visit. Most of the later letters are handwritten on eMates reply sheets: an email-to-prisoner service in which the prisoner replies on a pre-printed form that is scanned and emailed back. The last card arrived just as he was killed at Wakefield on 11 October 2025. The reply sheets not published by The Sun were shared on Reddit by Ellie herself, under the username “Darlablessed”. Seven more were shown in The Sun’s video interview with her, which has since been deleted.
Documents and photographs provided by Ellie herself through Reddit DMs. They are HMP Wakefield’s July 2025 notice that Watkins had asked for her to be approved as a visitor, and some of his belongings from before prison: the storage contents he writes about in the “Hi Beauty” letter. A press photograph of Watkins wearing the same jewellery is included for comparison. Her name, address and passport photos are redacted.
“Minx” (one of Watkins’ pet names for her) is an anonymous mother in her 30s who wrote to him through the Email a Prisoner scheme in about 2017. In his letters he pressed her for her phone number and explicit photos, signing himself “The King of Dancers”, “Trouble” and “Boy Wonder”. After about six months the Ministry of Justice stopped the contact because of the risk to her young daughter. Four of these letters were published by The Sun Online in August 2019; the fifth she shared herself as her Reddit profile banner. Writing on Reddit in September 2026, she recalled that Watkins “hated online drama”: he would get frustrated with her for arguing online, tell her to keep away from it, and dismiss it all as just “air” or “fluff”.
A voice message Watkins sent in October 2016 from a mobile phone he had obtained while locked up. The recipient is not known.
Photos of Watkins’ pet canaries, posted in August 2017 with his captions on a Twitter account he ran from the mobile phone that was found hidden on him in March 2018. The first photo shows an orange canary that does not appear again. Before the next photo, he tweeted: “A cat just killed my bird. Where’s a cat even come from :(” Prisoners are not allowed to keep cats. Sky first appears later the same day, and Floyd from 9 August. Dates are when each photo was posted.