Two jailed for assisting Max and Mason killers

Two men have been jailed for four years for helping the murderers of best friends Max Dixon and Mason Rist.

In 2024, Riley Tolliver, 18, Kodi Wescott, 17, and Anthony Snook, 46, and two teenagers who cannot be named for legal reasons, were convicted of the murders of Max, 16, and Mason, 15, in Bristol.

Dominic Smith, 26, and Marcus Williams, 32, have now been handed prison sentences at Bristol Crown Court after being convicted in December 2025 for driving the group out of Bristol.

Ellie-Mae Maddocks, 26, and Jillian Tolliver, 51, were also found to have assisted the killers, but received a suspended sentence of two years and a supervision order respectively.

The best friends were stabbed to death with machetes just yards from Mason's front door in Knowle West on 27 January last year in a case of mistaken identity.

The pair had been wrongly identified as being the masked youths who had thrown bricks at a house in the Hartcliffe area of the city earlier that evening.

Handing down the sentences, Judge Blair paid tribute to Max and Mason's family and said "a line must be drawn" to prevent further violence.

"Some families in the communities of Hartcliffe and Knowle West have perpetuated violent hostility," he said. "It must stop."

Jillian Tolliver, of Hartcliffe, arranged for Marcus Williams, also from Hartcliffe, to transport her son, Riley, out of Bristol the day after the murders.

He drove Riley Tolliver to an address in Weston-super-Mare in a bid to evade the police.

On the same date, Dominic Smith and Ellie-Mae Maddocks, both of Westbury-on-Trym, harboured Wescott and one of the other murderers at their address overnight.

Giving Williams four years in prison, the judge said: "Having considered all of the evidence I am sure you knew the boy you had been transporting had been involved in the murders."

Smith, also received a four-year sentence, with the judge saying: "You tried to avoid punishment, and persisted in your denials to this day."

Maddocks was given a suspended sentence of two years and 120 hours of unpaid work after the court heard of the potential detrimental impact of her young child if she was jailed.

Tolliver was previously deemed unfit to stand trial and the judge gave her a supervision order of two years.

The judge told Tolliver that her "terrible parenting played a significant part" in what happened, and that she would have gone to prison for "a very long time" if she was fit to stand trial.

In his closing remarks, the judge said: "There are already five people serving life sentences for the most shocking murders of two innocent children.

"Their distraught family and friends deserve our utmost support.

"No effort can be wasted in finding those who try to find and hide murderers. A line must be drawn. These two communities will spiral down into self destructive madness if not."

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