Prisoner 'tucked up in bed' after stabbing - court

Three prisoners accused of murdering a child killer and leaving him "tidily tucked up in bed" have refused to give evidence about what happened in the cell he died in, a court heard.

Inmates Mark Fellows, 45, Lee Newell, 57, and David Taylor, 64, allegedly attacked Kyle Bevan, who was serving a life sentence for murdering his stepdaughter, at HMP Wakefield in November last year in an onslaught that lasted less than five minutes.

Leeds Crown Court heard all three defendants had a hostility to people who had committed offences against children but that vulnerable prisoners were not separated from other inmates at the high-security jail.

All three deny murder and the trial continues.

The court heard that the three men entered Bevan's "tiny cell" in a "carefully co-ordinated venture" and in four minutes and 30 seconds he was stabbed 25 times.

Bevan was put into his bed after the attack and was not discovered until the following morning when it was found he had bled to death but "looking like, for all intents and purposes, as if he was asleep", said prosecutor Jason Pitter KC.

Giving his closing speech to jurors earlier, Pitter also said: "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."

The jury was told that when Taylor was transferred out of Wakefield, he was heard shouting in the vicinity of Newell: "Nice working with you and the Iceman" – a nickname for Fellows.

He told the court those words showed Taylor "could not have been more proud of the work they had done together".

Fellows had previously committed two murders while Taylor had previously "committed serious offences in which he expressed a dislike of paedophiles".

Pitter said Newell, who is serving a whole life order, had previously strangled a man who murdered a child and left him in his bed, telling jurors there was "a chilling similarity to that and the circumstances of Kyle Bevan's death".

Joe Stone KC, defending Newell, told jurors that there was no CCTV in the cell, and said: "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.

"Who was the stabber? Were there stabbers in the plural? Was there someone who was merely in there and did nothing?" he added.

Stone also said there was "not a scintilla of evidence" of Newell being armed, or any "blood evidence" linking him to the attack.

The prosecutor said all inmates at HMP Wakefield "had done very unattractive things, offences of the most terrible kind".

"But you must not simply adopt the approach of 'they are murderers therefore they are guilty' or, for Mr Bevan, 'he's killed a child therefore he deserved it," Pitter added.

In 2023, Bevan was given a life sentence with a minimum term of 28 years for the murder of two-year-old Lola James in Aberystwyth, Wales, in 2020.

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