Mark Fellows: Gangland hitman jailed for life over murders of ‘Mr Big’ Paul Massey and John Kinsella
‘Contract killer’ convicted after wearing GPS fitness watch on trip to scout mobster’s home ahead of shooting
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A gangland hitman has been sentenced to a whole life jail term over the murders of two high-profile organised crime figures.
Mark Fellows, 38, murdered Salford mobster Paul Massey with an Uzi machine gun outside his home in the city in July 2015.
Massey, a notorious crime figure known as “Mr Big” in Salford and beyond, was shot five times in the attack and died on his doorstep.
Three years later, Massey’s friend and associate John Kinsella, a mob enforcer from Liverpool, was also murdered by Fellows in a “cold-blooded” execution.
Fellows, who earned the nickname “The Iceman” in the crime world, was convicted of both murders on Wednesday following an eight-week trial at Liverpool Crown Court.
His co-defendant, Steven Boyle, 36, was also found guilty of the murder of Kinsella, but cleared of involvement in Massey’s killing. He was sentenced to life in prison and will serve a minimum of 33 years.
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.”
The judge described Fellows as a “gun for hire,” adding; “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.”
Jurors were told during the trial how martial arts expert Kinsella, who had once helped footballer Steven Gerrard by scaring off a gangster who had been “terrorising” him, was shot dead by Fellows.
The 53-year-old had been walking his dogs with his pregnant partner, Wendy Owen, near their home in Rainhill, Merseyside, in May 2018 when the hitman cycled up to them, opening fire with a revolver.
As Kinsella lay dying on the floor, Fellows stood over him and fired twice more into the back of his head from close range.
His co-accused, Boyle, acted as a spotter during the killing, ensuring the planned target was in place and waiting as back-up if needed, the court head.
Fellows planned both murders meticulously, using a bicycle to avoid automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) cameras and making multiple trips to scout out the scene of each killing.
He and Boyle communicated through a pair of £3,000 encrypted EncroChat phones, which police have been unable to decipher.
However, detectives trawling through thousands of hours of CCTV footage and phone analysis were able to put the men close to the scene of both murders, as well as during reconnaissance trips.
Detectives were said to have had a “lightbulb” moment when they raided Fellows’s home in Warrington, Cheshire, seizing the Garmin fitness watch the keen jogger is thought to have used to time his runs.
However, the gadget also had a GPS function, which when plugged into a computer showed the wearer travelled several months before Massey’s murder from Fellows’s home to a field opposite Massey’s home.
Jurors were shown images of Fellows wearing the distinctive green watch captured by an official photographer when he took part in the Great Manchester Run in 2015.
The killings came during a vicious gang war in Salford, which started in 2014 as a series of petty rows over respect but soon erupted into serious and repeated violence.
A series of attacks saw seven people shot, including a seven-year-old boy and his mother on their doorstep, while another home was targeted with a hand grenade.
Fellows himself was shot in the hip two weeks after the murder of Massey.
He and Boyle were both aligned to a splinter group of the A Team crime gang, allegedly headed by a man named Michael Carroll.
The A Team itself was headed by Stephen Britton, who regarded Paul Massey as his mentor.
Additional reporting by PA