Mark Fellows, a 38-year-old Salford hitman known as 'the Iceman', has become one of only 70 prisoners in England and Wales serving a whole life sentence after being found guilty of murdering gangland rivals Paul Massey and John Kinsella. The execution-style killings, carried out with an Uzi submachine gun, shocked the criminal underworld of north-west England and culminated a four-year feud marked by at least seven shootings and tit-for-tat violence.
Fellows fired 18 bullets at Massey in July 2015, then killed his associate Kinsella three years later. Both murders remained unsolved for years, with detectives facing a wall of silence from the public fearing reprisals. Even after a seven-year-old boy and his mother were shot on their doorstep, no witnesses came forward. Detective Chief Inspector Carl Jones described the Massey investigation as 'probably the most taxing and at times frustrating' case his team had ever faced.
The breakthrough in the Kinsella murder came when police found a Garmin watch used by Fellows for running, which recorded a reconnaissance run near the scene of Massey's killing. The data corroborated CCTV and phone evidence. At trial, Fellows's associate Steven Boyle broke the gangland code of silence, testifying it was 'more than likely' Fellows had committed the murders. Fellows was later seen making a cut-throat gesture to Boyle.
Sentencing at Liverpool Crown Court, Mr Justice Davis said: 'Whatever the background of Mr Kinsella and Mr Massey, the impact on their families has been devastating. This was execution, pure and simple.' Boyle was jailed for a minimum of 33 years for Kinsella's murder but cleared of Massey's murder. Fellows now ranks alongside notorious killers such as Levi Bellfield and Peter Sutcliffe.
