‘Not enough cops for job’
Babes in the Wood accused tells how he snatched girl, 7
PLEA Police chief Mike Veale A POLICE chief has told how devastating austerity cuts have not left him enough PCs “to do the job”.
Mike Veale of Cleveland Police said one night they had just 10 officers covering Hartlepool, a town of 92,000 people.
The force has suffered £40million in cuts and lost nearly 500 PCs since 2010.
Groups of locals now patrol the streets as violent crime has shot up 45%.
Police spending is due to be reviewed next month. Karen Hadaway and Nicola Fellows, both nine A SELF-confessed liar accused of the Babes in the Woods murders has told how he abducted and tried to kill a young girl after he was cleared.
Russell Bishop, 52, admitted grabbing the seven-year-old off the street, taking her to an isolated spot, sexually assaulting her and leaving her for dead in 1990.
He said after injuring himself while fixing his car, he “started to go mad, screaming, shouting” and it was then he said he saw the girl and “grabbed hold of her”.
Bishop said: “I feel deeply ashamed.” Asked if he lied at the trial, at which he was found guilty of the attack in Brighton, East Sussex, he said: “I did not tell the truth in any way, shape or form.”
He had been cleared three years earlier of sexually assaulting and strangling nine-year-old friends Nicola Fellows and Karen Hadaway in Wild Park, Brighton.
Giving evidence for the first time at the Old Bailey, Central London, Bishop became emotional as he recalled the 1990 attack.
Wearing a grey Adidas T-shirt, the balding, 5ft 5in defendant said he was “in a bad state” after being cleared of the first murders.
EVIDENCE
Bishop is on trial for the second time over the murders of Nicola and Karen, after new forensic evidence was uncovered.
The court heard a sweatshirt discarded along Bishop’s route home was linked to him and the girls. He denied ever wearing it.
Bishop admitted he had seen the girls shortly before they vanished.
And he said he had touched both girls’ bodies the next day to “look for a pulse”.
Asked why he had later denied touching the girls, he said: “I started getting all frustrated, confused, tied up in knots.”
Bishop’s legal team has cast suspicion on Nicola’s father Barrie Fellows, suggesting he had a gap in his alibi, had watched a video of his daughter being abused and had been violent in the past.
The trial continues.