AP

Jonathan Watson made the confession in a letter to a newspaper, claiming he warned prison officials what would happen, but was "scoffed" at.

A California prisoner has confessed to beating two child molesters to death — because one of them was watching PBS Kids in jail.

Jonathan Watson, 41, made the confession in a letter to The Mercury News, where he claimed he'd warned prison officials about what was going to happen, but was ignored.

In the letter, he claimed he had been recently moved from a secure single-person cell to a communal one with other prisoners; hours before the attacks he told a prison counselor he urgently needed to be put back in isolation "before I really (expletive) one of these dudes up," but that the counselor "scoffed and dismissed me."

He claimed that six days after being moved to the dorm at the California Substance Abuse Treatment Facility and State Prison in Corcoran, "Molester #1" was moved in with him, who began watching children's TV programs in front of all the other inmates.

"I could not sleep having not done what every instinct told me I should've done right then and there, so I packed all of my things because I knew one way or another the situation would be resolved the following day," he wrote.

"I was mulling it all over when along came Molester #1 and he put his TV right on PBS Kids again," he continued. "But this time, someone else said something to the effect of 'Is this guy really going to watch this right in front of us?' and I recall saying, 'I got this.' And I picked up the cane and went to work on him."

Watson then went to find a prison guard to report what had happened , when he said he encountered another sex offender.

"As I got to the lower tier, I saw a known child trafficker, and I figured I'd just do everybody a favor," he wrote. "In for a penny, in for a pound."

He said he then beat the second inmate to death with the cane.

When he finally reached the prison officer, he told him "I've got some pretty bad news for you," to which the guard, according to Watson, jokingly replied: "You're not going to hit me with that cane are you?"

"So after jesting for a moment, knowing this might be the last decent moment that I have for a long time, I told him what I'd just done, which he also didn't believe until he looked around the corner and saw the mess I'd left in the dorm area."

The two killed inmates are never named in Watson's letter. But in a news release last month, the prison identified Watson as responsible for the killing of two prisoners: 48-year-old David Bobb, and 62-year-old Graham De Luis-Conti — both of whom were serving life sentences for convictions of aggravated sexual assault involving children under the age of 14.

No new charges have yet been filed against Watson, who himself is serving life for a 2009 murder conviction. In his letter he says he will plead guilty to both murders, and said he would do it again if housed with any more child molesters in the future.

"Being a lifer, I'm in a unique position where I sometimes have access to these people and I have so little to lose," he wrote.

"And trust me, we get it, these people are every parents' worst nightmare. These familys (sic) spend years carefully and articulately planning how to give their children every opportunity that they never had, and one monster comes along and changes that child's trajectory forever."

The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation declined to comment to the publication on the letter, citing an ongoing investigation.