Three inmates accused of murdering child killer Kyle Bevan at HMP Wakefield refuse to give evidence

Three prisoners on trial for the murder of child killer Kyle Bevan at HMP Wakefield have declined to testify about the attack, which prosecutors say left the victim “tidily tucked up in bed” to appear as if he were asleep. The defendants—Mark Fellows, 45, Lee Newell, 57, and David Taylor, 64—are accused of stabbing Bevan 25 times in his cell in a coordinated assault lasting less than five minutes in November last year.

At Leeds Crown Court, prosecutor Jason Pitter KC told jurors that the three men entered Bevan’s “tiny cell” in a “carefully co-ordinated venture” and that the attack was over in four minutes and 30 seconds. Bevan was placed in his bed after the stabbing and was not found until the following morning, having bled to death, yet “looking like, for all intents and purposes, as if he was asleep.”

Pitter stated that none of the defendants had explained what happened, saying: “None of them has taken the opportunity to explain to you, to the court, to the police at any stage, what happened. We say, that’s because they can’t.” It was also revealed that when Taylor was transferred out of Wakefield, he shouted in the vicinity of Newell: “Nice working with you and the Iceman”—Iceman being a nickname for Fellows. Pitter argued that this showed Taylor “could not have been more proud of the work they had done together.”

All three defendants are said to harbour hostility towards individuals convicted of offences against children, and the court heard that vulnerable prisoners were not segregated from others at the high-security jail. Fellows has previously committed two murders, Taylor has a history of serious offences involving a dislike of paedophiles, and Newell is serving a whole life order for strangling a man who murdered a child and leaving him in his bed. Pitter noted “a chilling similarity” between that case and the death of Kyle Bevan.

Defence counsel Joe Stone KC, representing Newell, countered that there was no CCTV footage of the cell and urged the jury to be cautious: “The reality is, you don’t know 100% what went on in that cell, during that five minutes. It’s a tricky task for a jury to assess the evidence for these three men when that evidential black hole is staring you in the face.” He added there was “not a scintilla of evidence” that Newell was armed or any blood evidence linking him to the attack.

Bevan was serving a life sentence with a minimum term of 28 years for the 2020 murder of his two-year-old stepdaughter, Lola James, in Aberystwyth, Wales. The trial continues, and all three defendants deny murder.