JUSTICE AT LAST FOR BABES IN WOOD
Sex beast who killed two little girls finally convicted and branded ‘evil personified’
A VIOLENT paedophile was finally convicted over the ‘Babes in the Wood’ murders of two schoolgirls yesterday – three decades after a string of blunders let him escape justice.
The families of the two nineyear-old victims described Russell Bishop, 52, as ‘evil personified’ after he was found guilty of sexually assaulting and strangling the pair in woodland.
One of the girls’ mothers spoke of her anguish that she would never see her daughter grow up, saying Bishop had deprived the families ‘of a happy life’.
The former labourer was always the prime suspect for the 1986 murders of Karen Hadaway and Nicola Fellows – known as the Babes in the Wood after their partiallyclothed bodies were found entwined in a secret den in woodland near their Brighton homes.
But mistakes by police, forensics experts and prosecutors meant that he walked free from court.
Four years later he tried to kill another young girl. He was caught and jailed for life.
A forensic breakthrough and reinvestigation of the Babes in the Wood case after a change in double jeopardy laws saw Bishop, who had been trying to win parole, rearrested two years ago.
Bishop, who refused to attend the Old Bailey yesterday as he was convicted 31 years to the day after his initial acquittal, will be sentenced today and faces dying in jail. His brother David, 56, who has campaigned to stop him being released, said: ‘The sooner he dies the better.’
Last night, Karen’s mother Michelle Hadaway labelled Bishop an ‘evil monster’. She said: ‘After 32 years of fighting, we finally have justice for Karen and Nicola.
‘Time stood still for us in 1986. To us them beautiful girls will always be nine years old. They will never grow up. What people like Bishop inflict on the families of their victims is a living death.’
Bishop walked free after police mishandled vital evidence, forensics teams fumbled potentially damning clues and prosecutors bungled the timings of when the girls were killed.
But during a re-investigation using cutting-edge forensic techniques, experts were able to find a minuscule trace of Bishop’s DNA from a ‘taping’ of microscopic debris taken from Karen’s left forearm. This was at the centre of compelling physical evidence including clothes fibres, paint deposits and even plant spores.
These were combined with a careful examination of Bishop’s lies – and disturbing evidence of his sexual interest in young girls – and used to snare him.
A second DNA trace on a sweatshirt thrown away by Bishop as he fled the crime scene was never shown to the jury.
Despite being a billion-to- one match, investigators feared it could be deemed contaminated.
In the witness box, Bishop tried to blame Nicola’s father Barrie Fellows for the murders, accusing him of sexually abusing his daughter. Prosecutor Brian Altman QC criticised Bishop and his defence team for ‘dragging that man’s name through the mud’.
Sources said Bishop built his defence around one used by triple killer Levi Bellfield, with whom he once shared a prison wing.
Outside court, Mrs Hadaway, 61, said: ‘We have been deprived of a happy life. What people like Bishop inflict on the families of their victims is a living death.
It was ‘hard, horrendous and heart-breaking’ to hear they were murdered by a paedophile ‘who we actually knew’ and ‘trusted’.
Mrs Hadaway, who now uses the name Johnson, added: ‘I can never forgive or forget what that evil monster did.’
Lorna Heffron, for the Fellows family, said: ‘He is a monster. He is a predatory paedophile. Russell Bishop truly is evil personified.’
Speaking as he left court, Mr Fellows said: ‘It’s hard to comprehend that we finally got him. The man is a complete pig. He does not even deserve to breathe the air we breathe.’
‘He has inflicted a living death’