Striking similarities with horrific cases, court told

A jury has heard of “striking and obvious” similarities between the deaths of two nine-year-old girls and a horrific sex attack on another young child three years later.

Russell Bishop, now 52, was convicted of the kidnap, indecent assault and attempted murder of a seven-year-old girl in 1990.

The attack came after he walked free from court on being cleared of murdering Nicola Fellows and Karen Hadaway who were strangled and sexually assaulted in Wild Park, on the South Downs near Brighton, in October 1986.

Bishop is on trial for a second time over their deaths on the orders of the Court of Appeal in light of fresh DNA evidence.

Detailing the 1990 attack, prosecutor Brian Altman QC told jurors: “We say the similarities between these offences and the 1986 murders are so striking that they, in combination with other evidence, point to him and only him as their killer.”

On February 4 1990, Bishop bundled the seven-year-old girl into the boot of a car while she was out roller skating in Brighton. He drove her 14 miles to Devil’s Dyke in West Sussex where he strangled then stripped and molested her while she was unconscious. Afterwards, the court heard, he dumped the girl in dense gorse bushes where he “left her for dead” but the little girl survived.

Bishop, formerly of Brighton, denies two counts of murder.