Inmates accused of murdering child killer ‘have never given explanation’ – trial

Katie Dickinson, Press Association

Three prisoners accused of murdering a child killer and leaving him “tucked up in bed” have never provided an explanation of what happened in the cell “because they can’t”, prosecutors have told a jury.

Inmates Mark Fellows, 45, Lee Newell, 57, and David Taylor, 64, are accused of murdering 33-year-old Kyle Bevan at high-security HMP Wakefield in West Yorkshire.

Bevan was serving a life sentence with a minimum tariff of 28 years for murdering his step-child in Haverfordwest.

He was killed on November 4 last year. Prosecutors say the three defendants were seen on CCTV going into his cell and emerging less than five minutes later.

Bevan was put in his bed after the attack and was not discovered until the following morning when it was found he had bled to death after suffering 25 stab wounds.

The three defendants have all chosen not to give evidence in their trial at Leeds Crown Court.

Giving his closing speech to jurors on Wednesday, prosecutor Jason Pitter KC 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.”

Mr Pitter said the killing of Bevan was a “carefully coordinated venture carried out with real efficiency by people who … knew what they were doing”, who then left him “tidily tucked up in bed … as he bled out on his mattress, looking like, for all intents and purposes, as if he was asleep”.

He told jurors the attack took place in “four minutes and 39 seconds when all three of them were in that tiny cell together”.

The prosecutor said that, as Taylor was transferred out of Wakefield, he was heard to shout by a nurse in the vicinity of Newell: “Nice working with you and the Iceman” – a nickname for Fellows.

‘Proud’

He told the court those words showed Taylor “could not have been more proud of the work … they had done together” and were spoken as the three men were being “shipped off … away from HMP Wakefield”.

The trial has heard that, unlike other prisons, vulnerable prisoners were not separated from other inmates at HMP Wakefield.

Mr Pitter said the regime meant that the three defendants “had to mix with, in a distorted moral hierarchy, other criminals that were beneath them”.

He said the defendants had a hostility to people who had committed offences against children, and Fellows and Newell had expressed a desire to move away.

Mr Pitter told jurors that Fellows had previously committed two murders “to take out people he was opposed to or did not like”, while Taylor had in the past “committed serious offences in which he expressed a dislike of paedophiles”.

He told the court Taylor went on to murder an associate and invited a police officer to the prison before trying to kill him with an improvised weapon he had hidden in his waistband.

Mr 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”.

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,’” Mr Pitter said.

“To do either of these things would be to fail in your duty.

“The moral considerations are dealt with in other places.

“Your job is simply to apply the law and make decisions on the facts.”

CCTV

Joe Stone KC, defending Newell, told jurors that there was no CCTV in the cell, saying: “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 said there was “not a scintilla of evidence” of Newell being armed, or any “blood evidence” linking him to the attack.

Justice

Nick Johnson KC, defending Fellows, told jurors: “In this country you don’t just say ‘those three bad men going into a cell, they probably did it’…Only you decide where justice lies in this case.”

He asked the jury to consider an alternative, that Fellows went to Bevan’s cell for another purpose and “that violence erupted that he played no part in, even if he was happy to cover it up afterwards”.

Mr Johnson said Fellows was not alone in disliking child killers, or the new regime at the jail under the governor.

All three defendants deny murder and the trial continues.