Armed police patrolled the streets around Liverpool Crown Court today amid fears of reprisals against the hitman who shot dead two gangsters during an underworld feud in Manchester.
Mark Fellows was today handed a whole life sentence for the murders of gangland ‘Mr Big’ Paul Massey and mob enforcer John Kinsella.
Fellows, 38, nicknamed ‘The Iceman’, murdered Salford mobster Massey with an Uzi machine gun outside his home in the city in July 2015.
Father-of-five Massey, 55, a notorious crime figure in Salford and beyond, was blasted at 18 times, hit five times and died on his doorstep.
Three years later, Massey’s friend and gang associate John Kinsella, 53, a martial arts expert and mob enforcer from Liverpool, was murdered by Fellows in a second execution.
Killers: Mark Fellows (left), was found guilty of the murders of Salford’s ‘Mr Big’ Paul Massey and his mob enforcer, John Kinsella. His ‘brother in arms’ and ‘spotter’ Steven Boyle (right), 36, was found guilty of the murder of Kinsella but found not guilty of Massey’s murder
Victims: John Kinsella (left), who helped footballer Steven Gerrard during a brush with gangsters, was murdered in May last year. ‘Mr Big’ Paul Massey (right) was gunned down outside his home in 2015
The judge described Fellows as a contract killer, a ‘gun for hire, prepared to kill whoever you were asked to kill’.
He added: ‘I have never had to deal with a contract killer of your kind before. There are few judges who have. Just punishment in your case requires you to be kept in prison for the rest of your life.’
Fellows’ co-accused and ‘brother in arms’ Steven Boyle, 36, who acted as ‘spotter’ in the Kinsella murder, was jailed for life with a minimum term of 33 years before parole is considered.
Both men were cleared of the attempted murder of Wendy Owen, who flew at the gunman before retreating as she came under fire.
Before he was led away, Fellows shouted from the dock: ‘I didn’t shoot at Wendy Owen. She’s lying.’
A member of Kinsella’s family, believed to be one of his sisters, screamed from the public gallery: ‘Rat! Rat!’ before the judge asked her to leave court.
Kinsella, whose help footballer Steven Gerrard called on to scare off a Liverpool gangster known as The Psycho who had been ‘terrorising’ him, was walking his dogs with his pregnant partner, Wendy Owen, near their home in Rainhill, Merseyside, on May 5 last year.
There was a heavy armed guard outside Liverpool Crown Court amid fears of reprisals
The prison van carrying the killers was protected by a cavalcade of police cars
Fellows cycled up, shooting his victim twice in the back with a Webley six-shot revolver. As Kinsella lay dying, the killer stood over him to fire twice more into the back of his head from close range.
Fellows was convicted of both murders on Wednesday following an eight-week trial at Liverpool Crown Court.
Boyle was cleared of involvement in the murder of Massey but convicted of the murder of Kinsella. Both were cleared of the attempted murder of Wendy Owen.
Fellows was snared after police plugged in his joggers’ Garmin watch and uncovered his movements
Both victims, ‘notorious’ heavy criminals in gangland Manchester and Merseyside, were murdered as a result of a deadly feud between rival gangs in Salford – the A-Team, linked to the victims and a splinter faction the defendants were with.
Passing sentence, Mr Justice Davis said: ‘Whatever the background of Mr Kinsella and Mr Massey, the impact on their families of their murders have been devastating.
‘This was execution, pure and simple.’
A gang war had erupted in 2015 in Salford, with a series of attacks resulting in seven people being shot, including a seven-year-old boy and his mother on their doorstep, a hand grenade thrown at a house, an acid attack and a victim left with ‘horrific’ injuries from a machete.
Fellows himself was shot in the hip two weeks after the murder of Massey.
He and Boyle were both with a splinter faction of the A Team headed by a man named Michael Carroll.
The A Team was headed by Stephen Britton, who regarded Paul Massey as a mentor.
The Greater Manchester Police (GMP) investigation into the Massey murder had stalled, until new evidence was uncovered by Merseyside Police during the Kinsella investigation, three years later.
Massey was given a huge funeral in Salford, Manchester following his death in 2015
Detectives had a ‘lightbulb moment’ when they raided Fellows’ home, seizing his Garmin Forerunner watch.
A type worn by keen runners and cyclists such as Fellows, he had used it as a ‘dumb’ stop-watch, police believe.
But the gadget also has a GPS function enabling routes run and cycled to be recorded.
When detectives plugged it into a computer it showed a few months before the murder of Paul Massey, the wearer of Fellows’ watch had travelled a route from his home to the area behind the church in which the killer lay in wait for his victim on July, 26, 2015.
The jury were told this key piece of evidence showed a ‘reconnaissance run’ for the first of their well-planned gangland hits.
Former nightclub security boss’s killing was part of bloody gang feud
Paul Massey was a former mayoral candidate whose security companies once controlled the doors of Manchester’s biggest nightclubs.
Following his murder, police were given the names of 112 people who might have wanted him dead.
But the investigation stalled in the face of a wall of silence and the high-tech encrypted phones through which the warring crime groups communicated.
Fellows and Boyle were members of the rival gang, dubbed the ‘anti A-team’ by detectives and led by Michael Carroll.
Police at the scene of Massey’s shooting in July 2015
As the wave of tit-for-tat violence involving machetes and a grenade continued to blight estates just a few blocks from the gleaming towers of the BBC’s northern headquarters, Fellows himself was shot in the hip less than three weeks after murdering Massey.
Then in October 2015, a seven-year-old boy and his mother were shot on the doorstep of their home.
The following year alleged A-Team leader Stephen Britton was arrested in Spain accused of plotting a revenge attack on those who ordered the killing of Massey who the trial heard had been his mentor.
Spanish police seized a horde of weapons including guns, ammunition, a knuckle duster and a weighted vest. However, last month a judge in Malaga dismissed the case against Mr Britton.
Quite what Fellows was paid for shooting Massey may never be known. It cannot have been a life-changing fortune as he lived in a rented home and was working shifts at a catering company at the time of his arrest.
Among those linked to the gang feud was Zak Bolland, who was jailed for life last year for the murder of four children in a petrol bombing of their home in Walkden, Salford.
The 23-year-old’s trial heard he had threatened to ‘burn’ enemies from the rival A-Team, although the full reasons for his falling out with 17-year-old Kyle Pearson in the run-up to the fatal arson attack as his mother and siblings slept have never been revealed.
Whole life sentences: Jail terms given to Britain’s most notorious killers really do mean life
Murder carries a mandatory life sentence but ‘life’ does not necessarily mean a killer will die in jail. Instead, killers can apply for parole after serving a minimum term.
In a small number of cases, life does mean life.
The Home Secretary has had the power to set a ‘whole life’ tariff – and has used this power against some of the most infamous criminals alive in Britain today, such as serial killers Rose West and Peter Sutcliffe.
Following the death of Moors murderer Myra Hindley, there are now around 70 people serving whole life terms. Among them are…
Rosemary West and Victor Castigador are among those given whole-life terms
Rosemary West. The judge at her trial in 1995 recommended that the ‘house of horrors’ killer serve a minimum 25 years for 10 murders but the Home Secretary later decided on a whole life tariff.
If the trial judge’s recommendation stood, she could be looking at release in 2020.
Levi Bellfield was found guilty of murdering French student Amelie Delagrange, 22, in 2004, and killing Marsha McDonnell, 19, in 2003.
He was found guilty of the murder of Milly Dowler, 13, in 2011. He will never be released.
Mark Bridger abducted and killed five-year-old April Jones in October 2012.
The paedophile was convicted of her murder and jailed for life after the youngster’s blood and 17 fragments of skull were discovered in his house, in Ceinws, not far from Machynlleth, where April lived with her family.
Serial killer Levi Bellfield and paedophile killer Mark Bridger are on whole life terms
Michael Adebolajo was jailed for life for the horrific killing of soldier Lee Rigby outside his barracks in Woolwich, south east in 2013.
Extremist Adebolajo told passers-by they had hacked Lee Rigby to death to ‘avenge Muslims killed by the British Army’ on the day of the attack.
Dale Cregan was told he would die in prison when he was jailed for life without parole for shooting police officers Fiona Bone and Nicola Hughes in 2012.
He was already on the run for the murders of David Short, 46, and son Mark, 23, when he killed the two policewomen after luring them to a house with a fake 999 call before shooting them 32 times on the doorstep and then throwing a grenade at them.
Terrorist Michael Adebolajo and cop killer Dale Cregan will both die in jail
Arthur Hutchinson, who was sentenced to life in 1984 for killing a solicitor, his wife and their son and raping their daughter during a burglary at a home near Sheffield.
The trial judge recommended that he should serve a minimum of 18 years, which expired last year, but he was given a whole life tariff by the Home Secretary.
Jeremy Bamber, who was convicted of murdering his adoptive parents, his step-sister and her six-year-old twin sons in 1986.
The trial judge recommended a minimum of 25 years, meaning potential release from 2011, but the Home Secretary imposed a whole life tariff.
John Duffy, the ‘railway rapist’. He was convicted in 1988 of two murders and five rapes and sentenced to a minimum of 30 years but later given a whole life tariff.
Victor Castigador, who doused two guards at a Soho amusement arcade with petrol and burned them to death because of a grudge.
The judge at his trial in February 1990 recommended a minimum of 25 years but he was given a whole life tariff by the Home Secretary.
Malcolm Green, who was jailed for life in 1971 for the brutal murder of a Cardiff prostitute. When he was released after 18 years, he bludgeoned to death a young tourist from New Zealand.
He was sentenced to life again in October 1991, with a recommendation that he should serve a minimum of 25 years, but was given a whole life tariff by the Home Secretary.