Kyle Bevan, 33, was found dead in his cell at HMP Wakefield, his body “tidily tucked up in bed” after being stabbed 25 times. On Thursday, three fellow inmates — Mark Fellows, 45, Lee Newell, 57, and David Taylor, 64 — were found guilty of his murder by a jury at Leeds Crown Court that deliberated for less than three hours.
Bevan was serving a life sentence with a minimum of 28 years for murdering his partner’s two-year-old daughter, Lola James, in Haverfordwest, Pembrokeshire, in 2020. The attack happened just after 5.30pm on 4 November, when CCTV showed the three defendants following Bevan into his cell and emerging less than five minutes later in what prosecutors described as “a satisfied, job-done mood”. He was not discovered until the following morning after an inmate tipped off prison staff that “something was wrong with Bevan”. A post-mortem revealed 25 stab wounds inflicted by at least two different weapons.
“Three inmates convicted of murdering child killer Kyle Bevan, found stabbed 25 times and 'tucked up in bed' in his cell.”
The court heard there was “a lot of tension in the prison at the time”, with two other serious attacks in the preceding weeks: paedophile Lostprophets singer Ian Watkins was stabbed to death, and David Minto — who murdered 16-year-old Sasha Marsden — was seriously injured. Unlike other jails, vulnerable prisoners at Wakefield were not separated from the general population, meaning “main prisoners” such as the defendants “had to mix with … other criminals that were beneath them”, including child killers, prosecutors said.
Fellows, Newell and Taylor all had a hostility to offenders against children. Newell, who is serving a whole life order, had previously strangled a child murderer and left him in his bed — prosecutor Jason Pitter KC noted “a chilling similarity” to Bevan’s death. Fellows, known as “the Wakefield Dexter”, had committed two previous murders “to take out people he was opposed to” and had formally applied to move from Wakefield before the killing. Taylor, recently transferred to Wakefield for murder and attempted murder of a police officer, boasted about his ability to make makeshift weapons.
The three men now face sentencing for the murder of Bevan, whose own crimes made him a target behind bars.