Three convicted murderers have been handed whole life terms after a child killer was stabbed to death in his cell at HMP Wakefield. Mark 'The Iceman' Fellows, 45, David Taylor, 64, and Lee Newell, 57, were all convicted of murdering 33-year-old Kyle Bevan following a trial at Leeds Crown Court.
Bevan had been serving a life sentence for killing his two-year-old stepdaughter, Lola James, at their home in Wales. The trio targeted him in the prison on November 4 last year, stabbing him 25 times with improvised weapons. After the attack, they placed his body in bed, covered it with a blanket, and made it appear as if he were asleep.
CCTV footage showed the three category A prisoners following Bevan into his cell one by one. Within five minutes, they left, and Bevan was never seen alive again. His body was not discovered until the following morning, hours after his death, despite officers carrying out checks at his cell door.
Prosecutors stated that the trio disliked vulnerable prisoners, including sex offenders and those who committed crimes against children, and may have wanted to be transferred out of HMP Wakefield. At the time, vulnerable prisoners were allowed to mix with the general prison population in the jail, nicknamed 'Monster Mansion' due to notorious inmates like Harold Shipman.
Fellows was already serving a whole life order for the murders of gangland figures Paul Massey and John Kinsella. He shot Massey outside his home with an Uzi submachine gun in July 2015 and killed Kinsella while he walked his dog in Merseyside in May 2018. Newell was also serving a whole life order for murdering child killer Subhan Anwar in HMP Long Lartin in 2013, having previously been jailed for strangling his neighbor Mary Neal in 1988.
Taylor had admitted murdering Alisha Apostoloff-Boyarin, whose body has never been found, and attempting to murder a police officer who interviewed him about her disappearance. During an interview in July 2024, Taylor stabbed Detective Constable Darren Bratby with an improvised weapon.
At the sentencing hearing on Friday, all three defendants received a new whole life order, ensuring they will never be released. Sentencing them, Mrs Justice McGowan said they cornered Bevan in a cell, held his arms, and stabbed him 25 times to the neck and torso. 'He was left to bleed to death – his last moments must have been terrifying,' she said. Addressing the jury, she noted it was outside her experience to sentence someone for their third murder, as happened with two of the defendants.
