A notorious child killer was stabbed 25 times in a four-minute prison cell attack by three fellow inmates who then placed him in his bed “as if asleep” and left him to bleed to death — with his body not discovered until the following morning’s roll call, Leeds Crown Court has heard.
Kyle Bevan, 33, died at maximum-security HMP Wakefield on 5 November last year. He had been serving a life sentence with a minimum term of 28 years for the sadistic murder of two-year-old Lola James, his partner’s stepdaughter, in Pembrokeshire, Wales — a killing in 2023 that left the toddler with 101 injuries described by doctors as comparable to those sustained in a high-speed car crash. There was not a single part of the toddler’s body that was not bruised. Rather than calling an ambulance after attacking her, Bevan had filmed a disturbing 22-second video of the stricken child as he attempted to prop her up.
Jurors at Leeds Crown Court heard that on the night of his death, Bevan was followed into his fourth-floor cell on A Wing at Wakefield by three fellow prisoners — Lee Newell, 57, Mark Fellows, 45, and David Taylor, 63 — one after the other. What followed took four minutes and 39 seconds.
Opening the case for the prosecution, Jason Pitter KC told the jury: “That is the length of time between Kyle Bevan entering his cell at Wakefield prison, immediately followed by the defendants, his fellow prisoners, one after the other. The prosecution say they followed him in there with real purpose. This case is about what that purpose was.”
Bevan was stabbed 25 times with a sharp weapon, with wounds cutting through his heart, major blood vessels and — in one instance — bone. His attackers then arranged the scene. “They left him for dead, one after the other,” Mr Pitter said. “Not before, though, putting him to bed — not our phrase, but a phrase we anticipate you will hear later in the evidence. Leaving him as if asleep. And there it was that he, on his bed, bled out. Bled to death, and his body then not discovered until the roll call in the prison the following morning.”
The court also heard about the tensions that had been building at Wakefield — one of Britain’s highest-security prisons, which houses a significant number of sex offenders and prisoners convicted of crimes against children — between vulnerable prisoners and the general prison population, who mixed freely on the same wings. Mr Pitter said: “There was tension in an obvious direction between those groups of prisoners. Main prisoners indicated that they did not want to be housed in the same wing as vulnerable prisoners, in particular those who were sex offenders or those who had committed offences against children. Perhaps that’s understandable on some level, but it’s not a decision they have the luxury of making.”
Newell, Fellows and Taylor each deny murder. The trial continues.
