Three of Britain’s most dangerous prisoners have been handed whole life terms after storming the cell of a notorious child killer at a maximum-security prison and stabbing him to death in a frenzied attack lasting just five minutes.
Gangland assassin Mark Fellows, known as “The Iceman,” fellow convicted murderer Lee Newell, and David Taylor ambushed Kyle Bevan, 33, in his cell at HMP Wakefield on 5 November last year. Bevan, who was serving a life sentence for the murder of his partner’s two-year-old daughter Lola James, was stabbed and slashed more than 25 times before his killers arranged his body in bed to make it appear he was asleep. Makeshift weapons were used, including one fashioned from metal taken from the back of a television, with further “weapons” later discovered hidden inside a bottle of chilli sauce in Taylor’s cell.
At Leeds Crown Court, all three were sentenced to “new and separate” whole life terms. Taylor, 64, also received a whole life term for the murder of 24-year-old Alisha Apostoloff-Boyarin, who vanished after travelling from Manchester to Durham in January 2022, and for the attempted murder of a police officer. None of the three men will ever be released from prison. There are believed to be only around 75 whole life prisoners in the country, a category that includes Sarah Everard’s killer Wayne Couzens, Rose West and Levi Bellfield.
It can now be reported that Taylor was on remand awaiting trial for Miss Apostoloff-Boyarin’s murder at the time of the attack on Bevan. He initially denied any involvement in her disappearance, but confessed to her murder in February, a week before his trial was due to begin. He has consistently refused to reveal the circumstances of her death or the location of her body. The court heard that while on remand, Taylor lured a detective to HMP Frankland in County Durham under the pretence of providing information about her disappearance, before producing a concealed weapon and stabbing Detective Constable Darren Bratby of Greater Manchester Police close to the heart. The officer made a full recovery after four days in hospital.
In a victim impact statement, Miss Apostoloff-Boyarin’s great-aunt, Theresa Robinson, described the toll of the past four years. “The last four years have been a living nightmare,” she said. “Despite him pleading guilty the pain will continue as we do not have answers as to why this has happened and more importantly where Alisha is now. This man knows where Alisha is and if he had any remorse for what he has done he would allow us to bring her home and put her to rest beside her mother and grandmother. I beg he finds it in his heart to do the decent thing and tell us where Alisha’s body is.”
Sentencing Taylor, Mrs Justice McGowan told him: “You killed a young and vulnerable woman and have refused to tell the authorities where you put her body, so that her family could have the ability to grieve and to bury her with some dignity.” She described it as “outside my experience to have ever had to sentence somebody for a third murder, and in two of these three defendants’ cases, that’s what’s just happened.”
Bevan had been classed as a vulnerable prisoner at HMP Wakefield and rarely left his cell, having become a target because of the severity of his crime. He inflicted 101 separate injuries on Lola James before delivering the fatal head injury, comparable by doctors to trauma sustained in a high-speed car crash. He had been ordered to serve at least 28 years for the attack, carried out at the toddler’s home in Haverfordwest, Pembrokeshire, in 2020.
The court heard that tensions on the wing had been fuelled by the housing of “vulnerable” prisoners — often those convicted of sexual offences or crimes against children — alongside “mainstream” prisoners, creating what was described as a “distorted moral hierarchy” in which paedophiles and similar offenders were viewed by other inmates as beneath them. The trio targeted Bevan partly out of frustration with prison conditions, with Fellows and Newell wanting to be transferred from the facility. Mrs Justice McGowan said that after the murder, the men were “congratulatory,” with word quickly spreading around the landing that the child killer was dead. “His last moments must have been terrifying,” she added.
Fellows, 45, earned his “Iceman” nickname through his calm and ruthless execution of contract killings for organised crime figures in north-west England. He was already serving a whole life term for the gangland assassinations of Salford figure John Massey and Merseyside enforcer John Kinsella, having fired 18 bullets from an Uzi submachine gun at Massey in July 2015 before shooting Kinsella while he walked his dogs in St Helens three years later. He had also strangled fellow inmate Subhan Anwar, 24, after taking him hostage in his cell at HMP Long Lartin in February 2013.
Newell has been imprisoned since 1989 after strangling his 56-year-old neighbour Mary Neal to death and stealing £60 from her home. In 2014, he lost an eye after being attacked by double murderer Gary Vinter in the exercise yard at HMP Woodhill.
Taylor’s criminal record stretches back to the mid-1980s and includes a string of armed robberies, during one of which a postmaster was shot. He was jailed on an indeterminate sentence in 2007 for assaulting a man in his own home whom he believed to be a paedophile, and was released on licence in 2013 before being recalled to custody in 2022 as police investigated Miss Apostoloff-Boyarin’s disappearance. A search of his home in County Durham uncovered rifle ammunition. He had also reportedly boasted to other prisoners about his ability to craft makeshift weapons from “anything.” His barrister, Paul Kelleher KC, told the court there were “no mitigating features” to his offending.
Bevan’s murder came less than a month after disgraced Lostprophets singer Ian Watkins, 48, was fatally attacked in his cell at the same prison on 11 October last year. Two serving inmates, Rashid “Rico” Gedel, 25, and Samuel Dodsworth, 44, have since been charged with his murder.
