Three prisoners given whole life orders for murder of child-killer inmate

Three prisoners will never be released from jail after the murder of a fellow inmate.

Convicted killers Mark Fellows, 45, Lee Newell, 57, and David Taylor, 64, stabbed Kyle Bevan to death at high-security HMP Wakefield in West Yorkshire last year before "tucking him up in bed" and leaving him to bleed out.

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.

Fellows and Newell were already serving whole life orders when they killed Bevan.

Judge Maura McGowan imposed "new and separate" whole life orders on both of them for Bevan's murder.

Taylor was given a whole life order for Bevan's death, on top of the offences he was on remand for at the time.

A jury found the trio guilty on Thursday of murdering Bevan.

CCTV showed the three defendants following Bevan into his cell on 4 November and emerging less than five minutes later in "a satisfied, job-done mood", prosecutors said.

Taylor was on remand for the murder of Alisha Apostoloff-Boyarin - a 24-year-old woman he was in a relationship with but had grown tired of - and attempting to murder a police officer in an interview room at another high-security jail.

Justice McGowan jailed Taylor for life with a minimum term of 20 years for Ms Apostoloff-Boyarin's murder.

She also handed him a 30-year sentence for the attempted murder of the police officer and imposed a whole life order for the death of Bevan, as it was a second offence of murder.

Taylor, who had recently been transferred to Wakefield, had boasted about his ability to make makeshift weapons "out of all sorts". Some had been found in a bottle of chilli sauce in his cell after Bevan's death.

Newell was given a whole life order in 2013 after he strangled a prisoner who murdered a child and left him in his bed - an incident with a "chilling similarity" to Bevan's death.

He was first jailed for murder in 1989 for strangling his neighbour when she refused to give him money.

Fellows, a hitman known as "the Wakefield Dexter", had committed two gangland murders and was given a whole life term in 2019.

He had applied to be transferred out of Wakefield before Bevan's killing because of his dissatisfaction with the prison.

Fellows was the only one of the trio to attend court in person on Friday, with Newell and Taylor joining by video link from prison.

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'Not known who did what'

On the day of his death, Bevan was seen on CCTV walking into his cell followed by the three defendants.

The trio left the cell less than five minutes later "as if nothing had happened".

They could be seen shaking hands and appearing to congratulate each other.

The court heard it is not known "who did what" inside the cells, but that Bevan was likely held by his arms while being stabbed 25 times with at least two weapons.

Newell had an injury to his hand, while Fellows could be seen rolling up his tracksuit bottoms after realising they had blood on them.

Jurors heard one weapon, made from a folded piece of metal from the back of a television, was found on the ground outside Bevan's cell with his blood on it.

However, the weapon that caused the fatal injury was never found.

The trial heard that, as Taylor was being transferred out of Wakefield, he shouted in the vicinity of Newell: "Nice working with you and the Iceman" - a nickname for Fellows.

(c) Sky News 2026: Three prisoners given whole life orders for murder of child-killer inmate