Three convicted killers have been found guilty of murdering a child sex offender who was stabbed 25 times in his cell and then left “tidily tucked up in bed”, a court has heard.
Kyle Bevan, 33, was serving a life sentence for murdering his partner’s two-year-old daughter, Lola James, in Haverfordwest, Pembrokeshire, in 2020. He was killed at high-security HMP Wakefield in West Yorkshire on 4 November last year.
“Three inmates found guilty of murdering child killer Kyle Bevan, who was stabbed 25 times and left tucked in bed.”
Mark Fellows, 45, Lee Newell, 57, and David Taylor, 64, were seen on CCTV following Bevan into his cell after 5.30pm and emerging less than five minutes later in “a satisfied, job-done mood”, prosecutors told Leeds Crown Court. Bevan had bled to death from 25 stab wounds inflicted with at least two different weapons. He was not discovered until the following morning after an inmate tipped off prison staff that “something was wrong”.
The jury took less than three hours to find all three defendants guilty of murder.
The court heard there was “a lot of tension in the prison at the time”. In the weeks before Bevan’s death, Ian Watkins, the paedophile Lostprophets singer, was stabbed to death, and David Minto, who murdered 16-year-old Sasha Marsden, was seriously injured. Unlike other jails, vulnerable prisoners were not separated from other inmates at Wakefield.
Prosecutor Jason Pitter KC said the regime meant “main prisoners” such as the three defendants “had to mix with, in a distorted moral hierarchy, other criminals that were beneath them” – namely child killers. Fellows and Newell had expressed a desire to be moved away from Wakefield.
Newell, who is serving a whole life order, had previously strangled a prisoner who murdered a child and left him in his bed. Pitter told jurors there was “a chilling similarity” to Bevan’s death.
Fellows, known as “the Wakefield Dexter”, had already committed two murders “to take out people he was opposed to or did not like”. He had formally applied to move from Wakefield shortly before the killing because of his dissatisfaction with the regime.
Taylor, described by the court as one of the country’s most dangerous prisoners, had already killed one inmate in another high-security jail and attempted to murder a police officer while in custody. He boasted about his ability to make makeshift weapons “out of all sorts”; after Bevan’s death, some were found in a bottle of chilli sauce.
The three defendants – Fellows, Newell and Taylor – bonded over their hatred for child killers and sex offenders, the court heard. Their alliance had murderous consequences, leaving serious questions about the prison’s policy of mixing vulnerable and main prisoners.