They stabbed him more than 25 times, positioned his body to make him look asleep, and left him to bleed out. Now Mark Fellows, 45, Lee Newell, 57, and David Taylor, 64, will never leave prison after being handed whole-life orders for the murder of child killer Kyle Bevan at HMP Wakefield.
Bevan, 33, was serving a life sentence with a minimum tariff of 28 years for murdering his partner’s two-year-old daughter, Lola James, in Haverfordwest, Pembrokeshire, in 2020. On the day of his death, he was seen on CCTV walking to his cell, followed by the three defendants just seconds behind. Taylor could be seen taking something from his waistband as he went in.
“Three inmates given whole-life orders for murder of child killer Kyle Bevan at HMP Wakefield.”
Over four minutes and 39 seconds, the trio attacked Bevan with makeshift weapons including a piece of metal taken from the back of a television and fashioned into a blade. He was stabbed more than 25 times to the neck and body. Evidence showed his heart and blood vessels were damaged and that he died from blood loss. After killing him, the men tucked his body into bed to make it look like he was asleep.
In sentencing, Taylor received his first whole-life order, while Fellows and Newell were given new and separate ones on top of the orders they were already serving. The court heard that unlike other jails, vulnerable prisoners were not separated from other inmates at Wakefield. The regime at the time meant ‘main prisoners’ such as Fellows, Newell and Taylor ‘had to mix with, in a distorted moral hierarchy, other criminals that were beneath them’ such as child killers, prosecutors said.
The three defendants had a hostility to people who had committed offences against children, and Fellows and Newell had expressed a desire to be transferred away from Wakefield. Bevan ‘kept himself to himself’ and would mainly stay in his cell, often asking to be locked inside, jurors were told.
Taylor boasted about his ability to make makeshift weapons ‘out of all sorts’, and after Bevan’s death some were found in a bottle of chilli sauce in his cell, although they could not be matched to the fatal attack. Bevan was not discovered until the following morning when prison staff were tipped off by an inmate.
Senior investigating officer, Chief Inspector James Entwistle said: ‘This was a premeditated brutal attack carried out inside a prison by three long-term inmates. Fellows, Taylor and Newell’s actions showed a complete disregard for life and for the rules designed to keep people safe in custody. By their very nature, prisons are designed to deny offenders of their liberty, but they also need to be environments that are kept safe from unlawful violence.’