Riot police appeared on the screen wearing helmets, stab vests and arm protection. The four officers were surrounding a man wearing a grey, prison issue jumper and jogging bottoms. Both hands were cuffed behind his back. Slowly and methodically they removed the cuffs off one hand, and then the other. He was appearing at Leeds Crown Court for his trial on video link from HMP Full Sutton near York, one of the country's high secure jails.
On first glance the man, bald, middle aged and bespectacled, did not appear to justify the level of security he was being afforded. It was an extraordinary scene, which played out in court in the absence of a jury, before they were sworn in to determine his case.
A Dangerous Prisoner
But it was an indication of who the court was dealing with. David Taylor, although perhaps not currently a well-known name within the wider public, is surely one of the country's most dangerous prisoners. Because by this time, he had already killed one prisoner in another high security jail, and attempted to murder a police officer in another category A prison, after the Greater Manchester Police cop had come to question him about another murder he had committed before he was remanded in prison to await his day in court. He had also boasted about being able to 'make a shiv [an improvised weapon] out of all sorts'.
The Unholy Alliance
In Leeds, he was standing trial alongside two of the country's most high profile prisoners - Mark 'The Iceman' Fellows and Lee Newell. Both were already serving whole life orders. With Taylor's help, they murdered child killer Kyle Bevan in HMP Wakefield, which has earned the nickname 'Monster Mansion' due to its notorious inhabitants over the years including Harold Shipman. The trio bonded over their hatred for child killers and sex offenders. We may never know whether the alliance was created to enforce their own warped moral code, or whether it was purely out of self-interest and a desire to be moved away from the jail and a prison regime which they hated.
Whatever the reason, it had murderous consequences. And it left serious questions about how a prisoner could be murdered and lay dead and discovered for more than 12 hours, and the whole 'very strange' policy of mixing vulnerable and main prisoners.
Mark 'The Iceman' Fellows
Mark Fellows and Lee Newell both had little to lose by the time they joined forces with David Taylor in HMP Wakefield. CCTV in the days leading up to the murder, on November 4 last year, showed them associating with each other at various times. Fellows was a high profile, category A prisoner serving a whole life order for the murders of gangland figures Paul Massey and John Kinsella. Massey was hit by a hail of bullets as he emerged from his BMW on the drive of his home in Clifton, Salford, on July 26, 2015. It would be the highest profile casualty of a gang war which rocked the city. His assassin was dressed head to toe in combat gear, having waited for the perfect moment to strike. Fellows was generally thought to be a gangland 'nobody' before he slaughtered Mr Big.
But, nicknamed 'The Iceman' by his friends, Fellows was capable of cold-blooded murder. Fitted with a colostomy bag in his youth, he was fastidious about cleanliness, his health - and his murderous work. A non-smoking, long distance runner, Fellows plotted murders with clinical efficiency - using GPS technology and a night-vision hunting scope to track down his targets. He remained a free man for three years after killing Massey, allowing him to commit his second gangland murder.
John Kinsella and his pregnant partner Wendy Owen were walking their six large American Bulldogs through woodland in Merseyside on the morning of May 5, 2018. Suddenly, Fellows, masked, in a hi-vis jacket and on a mountain bike, appeared and began opening fire with a revolver. Kinsella was an ally of Massey, and carried the 'Mr Big's' coffin at his funeral. Fellows spent the afternoon after the murder with his mother at the Trafford Centre, eating at Zizzi restaurant, and buying a trendy pair of 165 pound Mallet trainers from Tessuti. Later, he socialised with pals in the pub and enjoyed a meal at KFC. He flew out to Amsterdam on holiday a few days later.
With a second killing on their hands, police moved quickly. There were similarities in the M.O. Officers already suspected Paul Massey's killer had fled on a bike, and Mark Fellows was already in the frame. GMP went to colleagues in Merseyside and told them what they knew. Just a few minutes after Fellows' return flight touched down at Manchester Airport on May 30, officers boarded the easyJet aircraft and arrested him on suspicion of both murders. A raid of Fellows' flat turned up a Garmin Forerunner GPS watch. Data on the watch would reveal Fellows had conducted a reconnaissance mission in the days before Massey's murder in vivid detail. Police were not only able to trace his route, but could even tell when he had been running, cycling or pushing his bike.
At the time of the Kinsella murder, Fellows was working as a sous chef preparing sauces at ready meal firm Greencore in Warrington. He worked nights, starting his shift at 5.30pm. But charged with the murders of Massey and Kinsella, after being convicted with the help of the GPS watch in the first ever prosecution which had used such data, Fellows will call high security prisons home for the rest of his life.
Lee Newell
Lee Newell also had a shocking criminal past. He was handed a whole life order in 2013 for murdering child killer Subhan Anwar in HMP Long Lartin. Anwar, from Huddersfield, was serving a life sentence for the murder of his partner's two-year-old daughter. At the time of the killing in the Worcestershire jail, Newell had already been serving a life sentence for strangling his neighbour, 56-year-old Mary Neal, to death in Norwich in 1988. Newell had lost the sight in his right eye after being attacked by double killer Gary Vinter at HMP Woodhill in Milton Keynes in November 2014.
David Taylor's Past
A more recent inmate at Wakefield, David Taylor's wrap sheet was no less shocking. Even before being found guilty of murdering Bevan, Taylor had admitted murdering a missing woman and been found guilty of attempting to murder a police officer in prison. Taylor pleaded guilty to murdering Alisha Apostoloff-Boyarin from Ashton, who was reported missing by her family in February 2022. Her body has never been found. Taylor then tried to murder a GMP police officer who had attended HMP Frankland in Durham, where Taylor was being held, to interview him about Alisha's disappearance. Taylor had claimed to have information about her whereabouts. But during an interview, Taylor produced an improvised weapon and stabbed Detective Constable Darren Bratby to the chest, an attack captured on shocking CCTV footage from the jail.
A few days later he admitted in a chat with a prison governor: 'So it was a planned attack. I'm going to tell you straight. I went to f****** kill him, there's no two ways about it. I went to f****** kill him.' Taylor appeared to be furious about being accused of murdering Alisha. He was also said to be angered about being subject to an IPP sentence, imprisonment for public protection, after being convicted of aggravated burglary and possessing an offensive weapon in 2007. Taylor had accused a man in his 30s of being a 'sexual predator' and behaving inappropriately with his teenage daughter. Taylor forced his way into a property armed with a baton, hitting his victim to the back.
'I didn't know what an IPP was,' he told his attempted murder trial. He was ordered to serve a minimum of 899 days, about two-and-a-half years. It meant 99 years. With an IPP you have to lower your risk, so it's low enough for the judge to release you.' While in prison he studied humanist psychology and counselling, and gained a foundation degree from the Open University. Taylor told the court: 'I did everything I needed to do, which is what you have to do to progress. I went through the system completely, from A, to B, to C, to D.' He said he was released on licence in 2013. Taylor described himself as an 'old fashioned villain', with convictions dating back to 1977 when he was a teenager. Describing a conviction for wounding, Taylor, originally from Glossop, said: 'It was an after school brawl. I've always been a bit of a scrapper.'
He told how in his later life he came to live in Ashton-under-Lyne, Skegness, and then Durham in 2019. Taylor still had friends in Manchester, including one man named Norman who has since died. He said he knew Alisha through Norman. 'She was Norman's son's girlfriend,' Taylor told the court. 'She phoned me up asking me for help. I went down, back to Ashton-under-Lyne. She stayed with me with her boyfriend in County Durham.' Asked when was the last time he'd seen her, Taylor said 'Probably 2021 or 22?' 'She just got on with her life as far as I was concerned, that was it.' He told how he was spoken to by police as a person of interest, and then a suspect. 'I told them everything I could to help them with the case,' he said.
Addressing the attack on DC Bratby, Taylor said the weapon came from the 'side of the chair' in the interview room. He told how he 'retrieved it' during a visit with his solicitor. Taylor said: 'I knew exactly where they are stashed. They are everywhere.' Asked why he attacked the police officer, Taylor said: 'Because I'm angry, I'm enraged with what's going on in my life.' When he was asked what had been going through his head at the time, Taylor responded: 'I just don't know. I just snapped. I lost it, I lost my mind, I lost my nerve. I completely lost it. All I think is I'm being accused of something I haven't done. It all came pouring out on that particular visit.'
The Murder of Kyle Bevan
It was November last year when the unholy alliance began to form. CCTV showed the trio associating with each other. What they were discussing remains unclear. But footage showed them follow Kyle Bevan into his cell at about 5.30pm on November 4. Bevan was in the jail serving a life sentence for the murder of his partner's daughter, two-year-old Lola James, at her home in Haverfordwest, Pembrokeshire, Wales. Bevan had launched a frenzied and brutal attack on the defenceless tot, who suffered injuries usually found in car crash victims. He had only been in a relationship with her mum, Sinead James, a few months after adding her on Facebook before moving in with her in early 2020 as the country went into lockdown. Drug user Bevan claimed he was innocent but refused to give evidence during his trial at Swansea Crown Court. James was sentenced to six years after being found guilty of causing or allowing her daughter's death. Serving a minimum term of 28 years, Bevan was said to have kept himself to himself in Wakefield and was 'very reserved', often remaining in his cell.
Wakefield prison was something of an outlier within the UK's jails, in that lags termed as 'vulnerable prisoners', including sex offenders and those who have committed crimes against children, were able to mix with the other 'main' prisoners. A prison officer from Strangeways called to give evidence at the Leeds Crown Court trial described the arrangement as 'very strange'. Only weeks before Bevan was killed, former rock star and Lostprophets frontman Ian Watkins was allegedly murdered in the prison on October 11. Two weeks later, on October 25, prisoner David Minto, was 'severely attacked' in the prison by another inmate. The jail was on 'high alert'.
It is unclear exactly how Bevan came to his death. Cells within the prison do not have CCTV cameras. But he was stabbed 25 times, and his body was left to look as though he was asleep. Prison officers checked on him through the window of his cell during the evening, but they did not spot any cause for concern. It was only the following morning when a screw tried to wake Bevan up, that his death was discovered. No murder weapon was ever discovered but prosecutors claimed he must have been stabbed to death using improvised weapons. In the aftermath of the killing there was 'something of a satisfied, job done mood' amongst the perpetrators, prosecutors said. When Fellows' cell was searched, he was all packed up and appeared ready to leave. The jail was placed into lockdown and in the days and weeks that followed, the trio were moved out to other prisons. On his transfer out of the prison, Taylor was heard to shout by a nurse in the vicinity of Newell 'nice working with you and the Iceman'.
The Trial
Then came the trial at Leeds Crown Court, which began earlier this month. The judge told how it was an 'enormous enterprise' to bring all three defendants to court, given the 'serious security concerns in this case'. Prosecutors in their opening speech claimed that Taylor also referred to Fellows as the 'Wakefield Dexter'. The TV show featured the character Dexter Morgan, who lived a 'double life' as a blood spatter analyst who worked for the police, but was also a 'vigilante serial killer who targets criminals'.
Following inspection reports by the Prison Inspectorate there has been a 'reconfiguration' of the prison population at Wakefield. A report published earlier this month by the Inspectorate said: 'There had been several serious incidents at HMP Wakefield since our inspection, including the alleged murder of two prisoners. Leaders had responded to these incidents by introducing a coordinated set of measures aimed at improving safety. Leaders had reconfigured the population following a review of common themes from these incidents, including a self-inflicted death. The population had previously been integrated, with prisoners convicted of sexual offences accommodated alongside those convicted of other serious offences. As a result of the reconfiguration, a considerable number of prisoners had moved out of the prison to be replaced by others considered more suitable. Nearly all prisoners at Wakefield were now deemed vulnerable due to their offence or circumstances.'
Taylor could soon join Fellows and Newell among the ranks of criminals to be given a rare whole life order. The case also poses questions to law makers of what can be done to prevent criminals serving whole life orders, with seemingly little to lose, simply doing as they please, with little threat of further consequences. Fellows, Taylor and Newell will be sentenced at Leeds Crown Court on Friday (June 19).
