Paedo rock star Ian Watkins promised his secret fiancée "they won't keep up us apart forever" in a love letter the day before he was killed in prison. The Lostprophets singer, 48, died after his throat was slashed by a fellow inmate at HMP Wakefield last Saturday.
He was serving a 29 year jail sentence at the notorious prison for a string of sick child sex crimes, including the attempted rape of a baby. Medics rushed to the high security prison, dubbed Monster Mansion, but he died at the scene.
A week on, it has emerged he forged a controlling relationship with an obsessed fan called Ellie, 30, from behind bars. And he even proposed to her in front of fellow lags after telling her to buy an engagement ring.
In a card which arrived at Ellie's home on the day he was murdered, Watkins wrote: "Duchess. Didn't think I'd forget your birthday did you. They won't keep us apart forever. Your Duke. IW."
"I want you to know how much I have enjoyed annoying you all this time and how excited I am to continue this in the future. Happy Birthday."
Ellie told the Sun: "That was the very last contact I had with him and probably the last message he ever sent. I was so excited to get it, but a day later he was dead. I had no idea. I just fell on the floor. I couldn't breathe. I couldn't speak. I was inconsolable."
Ellie, from Halifax, West Yorks., was obsessed with his band Lostprophets and had been a huge fan since she was 10. She met depraved Watkins backstage at a gig when she was just 15 in January 2010 and the pair spoke by phone most days.
He penned her dozens of letters from behind bars over ten years, including a sick boast about he was "still really hot" after a previous attempt on his life, when he was held hostage by three inmates who stabbed him in the neck in 2023.
He wrote: "The whole incident with me was crazy. Stabbed in the neck eight times. Almost died, was touch and go. I had bleeds on the brain and have permanent spinal nerve damage. The weapon went in so far it hit my spine in my neck and scrambled all the nerves.
"Thankfully I'm still really hot. Someone on the wing said I look like Grindelwald the other day from Fantastic Beasts. So whenever I get compared to Johnny Depp it's always a good day, haha."
In another, he eerily foreshadowed his death, writing: "I hate the weekends in here cause we are unlocked all day so you never know what's going to happen. That s*** happens to me on a weekend, out of nowhere, so I always have that in the back of my head."
Another letter read: "Feel a bit more better now just cause we locked up for the eve and it's the only time I can relax".
And one occasion, he told Ellie: "As you're not working at the moment and I don't want you getting bored, you can spend all of your time taking pics of your hotness for my eyes to marvel over."
Ellie said she could not bear to listen to the band after Watkins was arrested in 2012 for a string of sexual offences. But she stayed in touch with other fans on social media and one of them passed on his prison number and encouraged her to contact him.
She sent him a letter in the hope his fall from grace now made him more accessible and got a reply instantly from Prisoner Ian Watkins A2227CV. It began: "I've been waiting to hear from you."
She knew of at least four or five women who were also visiting him behind bars and hundreds more who were sending him letters.
Ellie, not her real name, admitted: "I won't lie, when he replied it made me feel special. He'd chosen to reply to me. He had a hold over me. I tried multiple times to move on, but it never worked. I couldn't ever drop the thought of him.
"We were writing to each other every day. Back then he wasn't even nice in letters. He was just very controlling, demanding. If I didn't reply, say if I took a day, two days, because I was busy, he'd be like, why haven't you written to me? Don't you care about me?
"And I'd be so scared not to write to him. I didn't want him to hate me. I told him I was going to get a tattoo on my hand and I remember him saying, 'If it's not good enough, you can't hold my hand'.
"He also said he only dated skinny people. I ended up going from 12 stone to eight stone in six months."
Inmates Rashid Gedel, 25, and Samuel Dodsworth, 43, have been charged with murdering Watkins. Neither has entered a plea and will appear before court again on November 12.