When David Taylor first appeared before the British judicial system in the late 1970s, the faded glamour of the Swinging Sixties underworld was still a recent memory.
The likes of the Kray Twins, Great Train robber Ronnie Biggs and even gangster ‘Mad’ Frankie Fraser evoked images of crooks in collar and tie who saw crime as a lifestyle choice which was to be envied, not disparaged.
Indeed, Taylor seemed to live by the same criminal code, once describing himself in court as an ‘old-fashioned villain’, a ‘bit of a scrapper’, who as a young man chose armed robbery with a sawn-off shotgun as a warped ‘vocation’, rather than staying on the right side of the law.
‘Bit of a scrapper,’ was an understatement, to say the least.
No matter how Taylor, now 64, glossed over his criminality – attacking other thugs he deemed to be below him, such as paedophiles, was a lifelong speciality – the truth was much darker.
Just how evil this hulking 6ft 2in ‘psycho’ really is finally emerged earlier this month when he was handed a whole life term for the callous murder of a vulnerable young woman whose family are pleading for Taylor to reveal what he did with her body.
His role in the crime could only be disclosed after he was convicted of murdering child killer Kyle Bevan in his prison cell in November last year, while being held on remand at HMP Wakefield for the young woman’s murder.
Taylor and two other convicts already serving whole-life sentences – double killer Lee Newell and gangland assassin Mark Fellows – stabbed Bevan 25 times and left him to bleed out in his cell.
Lee Newell, right, Mark Fellows left, and David Taylor are seen laughing and joking with each other before attacking Bevan
Today, for the first time, we can paint a full picture of David Alec Taylor, who has led a life of crime for almost half-a-century but had previously managed to stay under the radar.
By analysing contemporaneous newspaper reports and speaking to an associate who knew him well, we have pieced together the story of a man deemed so dangerous that, as far back as the 1980s, he was segregated in a pioneering prison unit created to deal with the country’s most volatile offenders.
Indeed, such was the fear that Taylor might turn violent – despite being well into his seventh decade – that even when he appeared in court from prison via video-link last year, he was double-handcuffed and a team of officers in full riot gear stood outside the interview room.
Taylor was born in Glossop, Derbyshire, in 1962 and grew up in Ashton-under-Lyne in the Tameside suburb of Greater Manchester.
He was the eldest of four children – two boys and two girls – but, according to one former friend from his childhood years, ‘didn’t have the best start in life’.
‘He didn’t have much direction from his parents [Brian and June],’ he said. ‘He didn’t have a role model to look up to.’
It is said that when he was 13, Taylor was turfed out of the family home and for a period was homeless.
It was around this time that he first dabbled in criminality, initially petty thefts, before developing a ‘speciality’ in armed robbery.
Just how evil this hulking 6ft 2in ‘psycho’ really is finally emerged last week when Taylor was handed a whole life term for the callous murder of a vulnerable young woman
Kyle Bevan, 33, was stabbed 25 times by David Taylor alongside fellow inmates Lee Newell and Mark Fellows and David Taylor, who then left the paedophile’s body ‘tidily tucked up in bed’ at HMP Wakefield
By 1977 – when Taylor was aged 15 – he had received his first criminal conviction and it wasn’t long before he moved to London ‘because he thought he could earn more money there and that’s where he got involved with some really serious criminals,’ according to his former friend.
He added: ‘He always used to boast that the first thing he would do on entering a shop or Post Office was to fire his sawn-off [shotgun] into the ceiling because he reckoned that ‘after that you had their attention’.
‘He became scary and was an absolute psycho. When he started attacking someone, he didn’t know when to stop. It’s as though he was always out to kill.’
Around this time, Taylor appears to have committed his first murder, bragging about killing a Leeds drug dealer, according to the former associate.
‘He said the guy was aggressive and dangerous and out to get him but that he’d got in first and killed him,’ his former friend said.
In 1986, Taylor received his first lengthy prison sentence: a 12-year term for a string of armed robberies stretching back three years.
During an armed raid on a Post Office in his hometown of Ashton-under-Lyne, Taylor, then 24, fired five rounds from his sawn-off shotgun when the postmaster began grappling with one of his accomplices, which included his younger brother Brian, then 19.
One hit the 62-year-old postmaster in the arm but he miraculously escaped serious injury.
The court heard the younger Taylor had hidden two guns behind the fireplace of his home and also stole a car for his older brother to use in a robbery.
It was during this prison term that Taylor began to cultivate a fearsome reputation. ‘He was a tall gangly kid but not much of a threat to anyone until he got into prison and after his first lengthy stretch he came out an absolute monster,’ his former friend said.
Taylor was housed in a controversial unit at HMP Hull which dealt with some of Britain’s most dangerous prisoners, including Charles Bronson
He is said to have fought former heavyweight boxer Paul Sykes, who spent much of his adult life incarcerated and was known for his temper
‘He’d spent his time during his first long stretch in the prison gym and he bulked up until he was massive and very intimidating and he used that to stake a reputation in prison.’
He added: ‘He wanted to be the top dog and he was happy to take on anyone, whether that was other prisoners or guards.’
Taylor caused so much trouble that he was chosen as one of only a few dozen inmates to be sent to the Special Unit in HMP Hull, a pioneering segregation wing opened in 1988 to deal with prisoners with a history of disruptive and aggressive behaviour.
The unit adopted a controversial approach to the rehabilitation of dangerous offenders, with prisoners and guards on first-name terms and no one required to wear a uniform.
It would only hold around 10 prisoners at any one time, and one of its former inmates was Charles Bronson, often dubbed ‘Britain’s most violent prisoner’, who has been locked up for much of the last 50 years after making frequent attacks on guards and other inmates.
It was also at HMP Hull that Taylor is said to have encountered notorious Yorkshire prisoner Paul Sykes, once a contender for the British and Commonwealth heavyweight boxing title.
Sykes spent much of his adult life in jail and became known as one of the most troublesome inmates in the country. He died in 2007.
A source said: ‘Sykes sought out David Taylor because he had heard of his reputation and he challenged him to a fight.
‘Taylor has always told how he got the better of Sykes, putting him in the prison hospital after telling him: ‘There are no Queensberry rules in here.’
He added: ‘He’s been the victim of a prison attack as well as handing them out. He was in Full Sutton prison near York when he got into an argument with another prisoner over something trivial.
‘The guy stabbed him with a sharpened toilet brush and nearly killed him. David spent several days on the ITU [Intensive Therapy Unit, similar to an Intensive Care Unit] in hospital and would have died if he hadn’t been as fit and strong as he’d become.’
Despite being sentenced to 12 years’ imprisonment in 1986, by 1996 Taylor was back on the streets – and intent on returning to his old ways.
That year – now aged 34 – he was the focus of an armed police manhunt after he threatened a van driver with a double-barrelled shotgun before leaving him bound and gagged in a house in Ashton-under-Lyne. The man managed to free himself and escaped by jumping out of a bedroom window.
Taylor – only recently released from his robbery sentence – was also the subject of a West Yorkshire Police manhunt in connection with a shooting.
Greater Manchester Police warned the public not to approach him.
In 2007, Taylor was given a controversial Imprisonment for Public Protection [IPP] indeterminate sentence for aggravated burglary and possession of an offensive weapon.
He had accused a man in his 30s of being a paedophile and behaving inappropriately with his teenage daughter and forced his way into his property armed with a baton to attack him.
It was during this period behind bars that Taylor finally appeared intent on doing something productive with his life.
He is said to have studied humanist psychology and counselling, gaining a foundation degree from the Open University.
He was released on licence in 2013 and appears to have settled down to some degree. After leaving Greater Manchester for Lincolnshire, he moved to Willington, a small town in County Durham, to be closer to his younger sister Pauline. She died in 2019.
At one point, according to an associate, he even held down work with Samaritans, assisting people who were feeling suicidal.
But by 2022, the demons that had driven Taylor from a young age resurfaced as he entered his seventh decade.
The previous year, he had formed a relationship of sorts with 24-year-old Alisha Alpostoff-Boyarin, said to be a former girlfriend of the son of a friend of his from Greater Manchester.
He claimed the couple had stayed with him in County Durham but she was last seen on CCTV walking through an Asda supermarket near her home in Ashton-under-Lyne in January 2022.
Police established that Miss Alpostoff-Boyarin – who lived with her grandfather, looked ‘like a teenager’ and was described by detectives as ‘vulnerable’ due to being alcohol-dependent – was then driven to Durham in a distinctive gold-coloured VW Passat.
Alisha Alpostoff-Boyarin went missing in February 2022 – two years later Taylor was arrested at his home in Willington and charged with murdering the 24-year-old
She was last seen on CCTV walking through an Asda supermarket near her home in Ashton-under-Lyne in January 2022
She was never seen alive again and her body has still not been found.
Taylor was arrested at his home in Willington in March 2024 and charged with murdering Miss Alpostoff-Boyarin. Officers also found rifle ammunition when they searched the property.
While awaiting trial, he was recalled to prison under the terms of his licence and this seemed to spark a fresh wave of violence in Taylor after almost a decade of freedom.
He became ‘angry… enraged with what is going on with my life,’ he would later tell a court.
In July 2024, while being held at HMP Frankland, Co Durham, Taylor requested a meeting with officers from Greater Manchester Police who were investigating Miss Alpostoff-Boyarin’s disappearance and suspected murder.
He told them that he had information which could help locate her but, seconds after the two officers came back from a break in the interview, Taylor lunged at them with a ‘shank’ – prison terminology for a makeshift stabbing device – he had concealed in the side of the chair.
He succeeded in stabbing one of them, DC Darren Bratby, in the chest, narrowly missing his heart. The officer spent four days in hospital but made a full recovery.
When he was asked what had been going through his head at the time, Taylor responded: ‘I just don’t know. I just snapped. I lost it, I lost my mind, I lost my nerve. I completely lost it.
CCTV showed Alisha Apostoloff-Boyarinhad been a passenger in a gold-coloured VW Passat saloon car that went to the Bishop Auckland area, in County Durham
‘All I think is I’m being accused of something I haven’t done. It all came pouring out on that particular visit.’
In an exchange with the prison governor a few days later, Taylor added: ‘It was a planned attack and I went to f***ing kill him. There’s no two ways about it.’
He also admitted wanting to attack a more senior officer. ‘Even though they were still major crime team, the one I wanted was a sergeant, their sergeant, and obviously he’s f***ing not come up so I were kind of, I was kind of disheartened by that he wasn’t there. I just f***ing, I thought f*** it.’
Taylor’s wrath was clearly not satisfied by the attempted murder of the prison officer. He finally achieved a degree of notoriety this month after he was convicted for the fatal attack on child killer Bevan in his cell at HMP Wakefield in November last year.
Alongside the gangster Mark Fellows, known as ‘The Iceman’ for his ruthless demeanour while dispatching his victims, and Newell, who had previously killed another child killer in custody, the men were seen laughing on CCTV shortly before the frenetic five-minute attack on Bevan.
As Taylor was transferred from Wakefield, one nurse heard him shout at Newell: ‘Nice working with you and the Iceman.’
But make no mistake, Taylor is not the renegade hero or ‘old-school villain’ he may believe himself to be.
In February, he finally admitted murdering Miss Alpostoff-Boyarin, who was almost 40 years his junior.
Leeds Crown Court heard he had simply ‘tired of her’ and was trying to ‘end the relationship.’
Now that he knows he will never again be released from prison, her family are begging him to do the right thing. ‘David Taylor took advantage – preying on her, befriending her and leading her to her death,’ her great-aunt Theresa Robinson told the court.
‘I beg that he finds it in his heart to do the decent thing and tell us where her body is.’
But those who do know him doubt whether he will ever cooperate over the recovery of the body or express any remorse for his life of criminality.
As his former associate puts it: ‘He’s one of the most dangerous men in the entire prison system and he’ll stay that way until he dies in jail.’
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