Paedophile charged with murdering girls ‘bullied by police’

A CONVICTED paedophile accused of the ‘Babes in the Wood’ murders has told a jury how he was once wrongly arrested for the Brighton bombing.

Russell Bishop (52) is on trial for the second time over the deaths of nine-year-olds Nicola Fellows and Karen Hadaway.

He denies killing the girls, dubbed Babes in the Wood, who were sexually assaulted and strangled in a den in Wild Park, Brighton in October 1986.

Former roofer Bishop was cleared of their murders in 1987 but within three years was jailed for life for the kidnap, sexual assault and attempted murder of a seven-year-old girl at Devil’s Dyke on the South Downs.

He was ordered to stand trial at the Old Bailey for the killings of Nicola and Karen in light of new forensic evidence linking him to the girls.

Bishop’s defence team has cast suspicion on Nicola’s father Barrie Fellows.

Giving evidence, Bishop said he feared he would be blamed Murdered schoolgirls Karen Hadaway (left) and Nicola Fellows

when he joined the search for the girls on October 10, 1986.

He said he was “bullied” into making a false account by “downright nasty” police.

He told jurors: “There was a few things that led to that kind of thinking. A couple of years before this I was wrongfully arrested for the Grand Hotel bombing in Brighton.”

Before then, his father was wrongly arrested for the unsolved murder of a local woman called Margaret Frame who was buried in a shallow grave, the court heard.

Bishop said his “old man” had even warned him “don’t get involved” before he set off to help in the search, during which he showed some of Karen’s clothes to his dog Misty in the hope it would track the missing children, he added.

When two 18-year-olds found the girls, Bishop said he was told to go up and keep people away from the scene in Wild Park.

He said: “The young man sitting down said he did not know whether they were asleep or dead.

“I went straight to the victims, felt for a pulse, neck on Nicola and Karen on the right arm.”

Bishop told jurors he felt “shocked, totally sickened”.

Later, he changed his account to fit what the teenagers had said during a 13-hour police interview without a solicitor, the court heard.

He said: “I started getting all frustrated, confused, tied up in knots.”

He alleged officers showed him pictures of the dead girls and the area where they were found.

Bishop denies two counts of murder. The case continues.