David Taylor

Kyle Bevan was stabbed 25 times. Manchester gangland killer Mark Fellows, David Taylor and Lee Newell were all convicted of his murder

Three convicted murderers have been handed whole life terms after a child killer was stabbed to death in his cell.

Mark ‘The Iceman’ Fellows, 45, who previously shot dead ‘gangland kingpins’ Paul Massey and John Kinsella; David Taylor, 64; and Lee Newell, 57; were all convicted of murdering 33-year-old Kyle Bevan in HMP Wakefield following a trial at Leeds Crown Court.

The trio teamed up to murder Bevan, who had been serving a life sentence for killing Lola James, his two-year-old step daughter, at the home they shared in Wales.

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Leeds Crown Court heard that Bevan was stabbed 25 times in his cell with improvised weapons in the jail on November 4 last year. After the attack his body was placed in his bed, covered with a blanket and made to look as if he were asleep.

CCTV footage from inside the jail showed the three category A prisoners following Bevan into his cell, one by one. Once they left the cell just under five minutes later, Bevan was never seen alive again.

His body was not discovered until the following morning, when he had already been dead for hours and after officers had carried out checks at the door of his cell.

Prosecutors said the trio disliked vulnerable prisoners including sex offenders and those who had committed crimes against children, and claimed they may have wanted to be transferred out of HMP Wakefield.

At the time vulnerable prisoners including sex offenders and those who committed offences against children were free to mix with ‘main’ prisoners in the jail, which has been nicknamed ‘Monster Mansion’ due to its notorious former inmates, including Harold Shipman.

Fellows and Newell were in the West Yorkshire prison serving whole life orders, the most severe sentence which judges can pass in the English criminal justice system, meaning they must serve the rest of their days behind bars.

Fellows was behind bars for murdering Massey and Kinsella following the eruption of gang warfare in Salford. Hitman Fellows was allied with the city’s Anti A-Team faction, said to be led by Michael Carroll, with ‘Mr Big’ Massey considered as being a mentor figure to the alleged leader of the A-Team, Stephen Britton.

Fellows blasted Massey outside his own home with an Uzi sub machine gun in July 2015. Then in May 2018, Fellows shot dead John Kinsella as he walked his dog in Merseyside. Kinsella had carried Massey’s coffin at his funeral.

Newell was handed a whole life order in 2013 for murdering child killer Subhan Anwar in HMP Long Lartin in 2013. Anwar, from Huddersfield, was serving a life sentence for the murder of his partner’s two-year-old daughter. At the time of the killing in the Worcestershire jail, Newell had already been serving a life sentence for strangling his neighbour, 56-year-old Mary Neal, to death in Norwich in 1988.

Taylor has also admitted murdering Alisha Apostoloff-Boyarin, who was reported missing by her family in February 2022.

Her body has never been found. Taylor then tried to murder a Greater Manchester Police officer who had attended HMP Frankland in Durham, where Taylor was then being held, to interview him about Alisha’s disappearance. Taylor had claimed to have information about her whereabouts.

But during an interview in July 2024, Taylor produced an improvised weapon and stabbed Detective Constable Darren Bratby to the chest, an attack captured on shocking CCTV footage.

At a sentencing hearing on Friday, all three defendants were handed a 'new' whole life order, meaning they will never be released from prison.

Sentencing them, Mrs Justice McGowan said they each took weapons to the scene. She said the three cornered him in a cell, at least two held his arms as he was stabbed 25 times to the neck and torso.

“He was left to bleed to death - his last moments must have been terrifying," she said.

Addressing some members of the jury who had attended to watch the hearing, the judge said: “It is certainly outside of my experience to sentence someone for their third murder. For two out of three cases in this trial, that is what has happened.”