Three of Britain’s most dangerous inmates forced their way into the cell of a notorious child killer at HMP Wakefield and stabbed him to death in an attack that lasted about five minutes.
Mark Fellows, the gangland hitman known as “The Iceman”, Lee Newell — who had previously killed another child murderer in prison — and convicted killer David Taylor carried out the ambush on 33-year-old Kyle Bevan on November 5 last year at the maximum-security jail.
Bevan, who was serving a life sentence for murdering his partner’s two-year-old daughter Lola James, suffered more than 25 stab and slash wounds. After the attack, his killers placed his body in bed in an apparent attempt to make it look as though he was asleep.
The men used improvised weapons, including one fashioned from metal removed from the back of a television. A later search of Taylor’s cell also uncovered other makeshift weapons hidden in a bottle of chilli sauce.
It can now be disclosed that Taylor, 64, was on remand at the time of the killing while awaiting trial over the murder of 24-year-old Alisha Apostoloff-Boyarin, described in court as vulnerable. She disappeared after travelling from Manchester to Durham in January 2022.
Taylor, who had been living in Durham, initially denied any involvement in her disappearance. But in February, one week before he was due to stand trial, he admitted murdering her.
However, he has refused to reveal the circumstances of her death or what happened to her body.
Newell and Fellows were already convicted double murderers and serving whole life terms when they attacked Bevan.
At Leeds Crown Court today, they received ‘new and separate’ whole life terms while Taylor also received a whole life term for the murders of Bevan and Miss Apostoloff-Boyarin and the attempted murder of a police officer.
This means they will never be released from prison.
There are only believed to be around 75 whole life prisoners in the country, including the likes of Sarah Everard killer Wayne Couzens, Rose West and Levi Bellfield.
The court heard that, while on remand, Taylor lured a detective to HMP Frankland, Co Durham, on the basis that he had information to share about Miss Apostoloff-Boyarin’s disappearance.
CCTV footage from inside HMP Wakefield showed the three defendants prior to entering Bevan’s cell
CCTV within the prison showed the killers laughing and joking as they plotted the murder
This footage shows the moment the trio entered Bevan’s cell
Kyle Bevan was serving 28 years behind bars after subjecting two-year-old Lola James to a fatal assault at her home in Haverfordwest, Pembrokeshire, in 2020
David Taylor was found guilty of Kyle Bevan’s murder and pleaded guilty to a separate murder
Mark Fellows was known as ‘The Iceman’ or ‘Wakefield Dexter’ because of his ruthlessness in dispatching fellow criminals
Bevan murdered Lola James having inflicted ‘catastrophic’ injuries on the two-year-old, later claiming a dog had pushed her down the stairs
But he instead produced a concealed weapon from his waistband in the interview room and stabbed the Greater Manchester Police officer, Det Con Darren Bratby, close to the heart.
After spending four days in hospital, miraculously, he made a full recovery.
In a victim impact statement, Miss Apostoloff-Boyarin’s great-aunt, Theresa Robinson, said the ‘last four years have been a living nightmare.’
‘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,’ she said.
‘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.’
Bevan – classed as a ‘vulnerable’ prisoner who rarely left his cell – was a target on the wing at HMP Wakefield because of his heinous crimes.
He inflicted 101 separate injuries on his partner’s daughter Lola James before delivering a final catastrophic head injury which killed her.
Alisha Apostoloff-Boyarin, 24, from Ashton-under-Lyne, was also murdered by Taylor
He had been ordered to serve at least 28 years behind bars after subjecting the toddler to the assault at her home in Haverfordwest, Pembrokeshire, in 2020.
One head injury was so severe it was compared by doctors to something suffered in a high-speed car crash ‘where a child is thrown from the collision.’
The trial heard details of the animosity between prisoners at the notorious jail, where those who were classed as ‘vulnerable’, often because they had committed serious sexual offences or offences against children, were housed alongside ‘mainstream’ prisoners.
This led to increased tensions as so-called ‘main prisoners’ lived in a ‘distorted moral hierarchy’ where they felt paedophiles and such other criminals were beneath them.
The trio targeted Bevan because they were annoyed with conditions on the wing and Fellows and Newell wanted to be moved from the prison, the court heard.
Taylor and Newell both appeared for their sentencing today on video-link from HMP Full Sutton, near York.
Fellows, 45, was nicknamed ‘The Iceman’ because of his calm exterior and ruthlessness in carrying out so-called ‘contract killings’ for gangsters in the north west of England.
He was already serving a whole life tariff for the gangland assassinations of Salford ‘Mr Big’ John Massey and his Merseyside enforcer John Kinsella.
Fellows fired 18 bullets with an Uzi submachine gun at Massey in July 2015 before gunning down Kinsella three years later while he was out walking his dogs in St Helens.
He later said in letters from prison that he hid in a graveyard wearing a fake beard and mask until Massey arrived home and fired bullets at his feet so he ‘danced like a cowboy’ before firing the fatal shots.
He also said, given his whole life term, he could ‘kill people… if I need to.’
Lee Newell was serving a whole life term for double murder at the time of the attack on Bevan. He lost an eye when he was attacked in prison in 2014
Newell, meanwhile, had previously murdered another child killer inside his prison cell and left him dead on a bed.
He took Subhan Anwar, 24, hostage in his cell at HMP Long Lartin in Worcestershire in February 2013 before strangling him with his own tracksuit bottoms.
Newell has been in prison since 1989 after tricking his way into the home of his 56-year-old neighbour Mary Neal before strangling her to death and escaping with £60.
In 2014, he lost an eye after being attacked by double murderer Gary Vinter in the exercise yard at HMP Woodhill.
Taylor has a criminal record stretching back to the mid-1980s for a series of armed robberies.
During one robbery of a Post Office, a postmaster was shot, Leeds Crown Court heard.
He also robbed a cash-and-carry with a firearm and was locked up on an indeterminate sentence in 2007 for assaulting a man inside his own home who he believed to be a paedophile.
He was released on licence in 2013 but recalled to prison in 2022 as police investigated Miss Apostoloff-Boyarin’s disappearance.
When police searched his home in Co Durham they found rifle ammunition.
He also bragged to other prisoners about his ability to craft ‘shivs’ – makeshift weapons – from ‘anything.’
At their sentencing hearing Taylor’s barrister, Paul Kelleher KC, said there were ‘no mitigating features’ to his offending.
Handing him a whole life term for the murders of Bevan and Miss Apostoloff-Boyarin and the attempted murder of the police officer, the judge, 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 said that after murdering Bevan, the trio were ‘congratulatory’ and when they went back to their landing word quickly spread that the child killer was dead.
‘His last moments must have been terrifying,’ she added.
Sentencing the men to whole-life orders, she said: ‘It is certainly 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’s death came less than a month after the disgraced Lostprophets singer Ian Watkins, 48, was fatally attacked in his cell at the same prison.
The paedophile rock singer – who was serving 29 years for child sex offences – was killed on October 11 last year.
Two serving inmates, Rashid ‘Rico’ Gedel, 25, and Samuel Dodsworth, 44, have been charged with his murder.
