Three inmates will never be released from prison after storming a cell and stabbing a child-killer to death in an attack that lasted four minutes and 39 seconds. Mark Fellows, 45, Lee Newell, 57, and David Taylor, 64, were handed whole life orders on Friday for the murder of Kyle Bevan at HMP Wakefield in West Yorkshire last November.
Bevan, 33, was serving a life sentence with a minimum term 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, CCTV showed Bevan walking to his cell, followed by the three defendants, who were just seconds behind. Taylor could be seen taking something from his waistband as he entered.
“Three inmates given whole life orders for stabbing child-killer Kyle Bevan to death in prison.”
Inside, the trio attacked Bevan with makeshift weapons, including a piece of metal taken from the back of a television and fashioned into a blade. Over the course of the assault, Bevan was stabbed more than 25 times to the neck and body. His heart and blood vessels were damaged, and he died from blood loss. After killing him, the men positioned his body to make it look like he was asleep.
Bevan was not discovered until the following morning, when prison staff were tipped off by another inmate. The court heard that Taylor had 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.
Jurors were told 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. The 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.
Taylor’s whole life order was his first, while Fellows and Newell were given new and separate orders on top of the ones they were already serving. 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.’