Three inmates accused of murdering child killer Kyle Bevan and leaving him 'tucked up in bed' have never provided an explanation of what happened in the cell 'because they can't,' a jury has been told.
Prosecution Closing Speech
Prosecutor Jason Pitter KC told Leeds Crown Court that the killing of Bevan was a 'carefully coordinated venture carried out with real efficiency by people who knew what they were doing.' The defendants then left him 'tidily tucked up in bed as he bled out on his mattress, looking like he was asleep.'
Prisoners Mark Fellows, 45, Lee Newell, 57, and David Taylor, 64, are accused of murdering the 33-year-old at high-security HMP Wakefield in West Yorkshire. Bevan, who brutally murdered a two-year-old girl in her west Wales home in 2020, was found dead in his cell on November 5.
Attack Details
Prosecutors say the three defendants were seen on CCTV going into Bevan's cell and emerging less than five minutes later. Bevan was put in his bed after the attack and was not discovered until the following morning, when it was found he had bled to death after suffering 25 stab wounds.
Giving his closing speech to jurors, Mr Pitter said: 'None of them has taken the opportunity to explain to you, to the court, to the police at any stage, what happened. We say, that's because they can't.' He told jurors the attack took place in 'four minutes and 39 seconds when all three of them were in that tiny cell together.'
Defendants' Backgrounds
The trial has heard that vulnerable prisoners were not separated from other inmates at HMP Wakefield. Mr Pitter said the regime meant the three defendants 'had to mix with, in a distorted moral hierarchy, other criminals that were beneath them.' He said the defendants had a hostility to people who had committed offences against children.
Mr Pitter told jurors that Fellows had previously committed two murders 'to take out people he was opposed to or did not like,' while Taylor had in the past 'committed serious offences in which he expressed a dislike of paedophiles.' He said Newell, who is serving a whole life order, had previously strangled a man who murdered a child and left him in his bed, telling jurors there was 'a chilling similarity to that and the circumstances of Kyle Bevan's death.'
Defense Argument
Joe Stone KC, defending Newell, told jurors that there was no CCTV in the cell, saying: 'The reality is, you don't know 100% what went on in that cell, during those five minutes. It's a tricky task for a jury to assess the evidence for these three men when that evidential black hole is staring you in the face.' He said there was 'not a scintilla of evidence' of Newell being armed, or any 'blood evidence' linking him to the attack.
Mr Pitter also noted that as Taylor was transferred out of Wakefield, he was heard to shout by a nurse: 'Nice working with you and the Iceman' – a nickname for Fellows. He told the court those words showed Taylor 'could not have been more proud of the work they had done together.'
All three defendants deny murder and the trial continues.
