Admit you killed our girls before you die
Parents’ plea to cancer-stricken Babes in the Wood monster
BABES in the Wood killer Russell Bishop has been urged to “come clean” before he dies of cancer.
But the families of the two girls murdered by notorious Bishop, 55, believe he is too much of a “coward” to make a full deathbed confession.
He has always denied killing best friends Nicola Fellows and Karen Hadaway, both nine, in 1986 and leaving their bodies in woods near their homes in Brighton, East Sussex.
This month it emerged Bishop had cancer that has spread to his brain and is now receiving palliative care in jail.
Both the girls’ families said in a joint statement given to the Mirror: “Russell
Bishop has a chance to come clean before he dies unless he is a bigger coward than he has always seemed.
“And if he doesn’t have the guts to confess his crimes and admit his guilt, he will be the loser, so our message to him is simple.
“We don’t need your admission of what you did to our beautiful girls. Your refusal doesn’t matter to us.
“We are satisfied with the correct verdicts of the Old Bailey jury in December
2018. You are guilty on both counts of their murders and you
are the creation of your own guilt-ridden demise. But your admission would show you have finally had the courage to take responsibility for your despicable crimes.”
Nicola’s parents Barrie Fellows and Susan Eismann and Karen’s mum Michelle Hadaway released the statement with the help of Nicola’s cousin Lorna Heffron.
It took more than 32 years to bring Bishop to justice for the 1986 murders in Wild Park after he was dramatically cleared at his first trial. Scientific advances and a change in the law – after a long campaign by the families – led to him going
on trial again three years
ago. And the jury that convicted him – as well as relatives of Nicola and Karen – heard Bishop confess, for the first time, he carried out a similar terrible attack.
He admitted he kidnapped, raped and tried to murder a seven-year-old girl from Brighton, leaving her for dead at the Devil’s Dyke beauty spot.
But the little girl he snatched from the street had miraculously survived – and her evidence put the former roofer behind bars for life.
Now the killer is riddled with cancer and may have just weeks to live in HMP Frankland in Durham.
The convicted paedophile was 20 years old when he sexually assaulted and strangled Nicola and Karen in a woodland den.