BBC chief turns on Bashir over murdered girl’s missing clothes
MARTIN Bashir ‘just cannot remember’ where the bloodied clothes of a murdered schoolgirl are, the new BBC director general told MPs yesterday.
Tim Davie said he was appalled the items – belonging to ‘Babes in the Wood’ victim Karen Hadaway – had gone missing.
Former BBC journalist Bashir took away the garments for forensic testing 30 years ago.
His BBC2 Public Eye programme into the sexual assault and killing of nine-year-olds Karen and her friend Nicola Fellows never aired. And Karen’s mother Michelle Hadaway said her calls to the broadcaster to return the clothes were ignored.
Grilled by MPs on the Commons culture, media and sport committee yesterday, Mr Davie said: ‘We are extremely sorry for the distress this has caused Miss Hadaway.
‘It’s very distressing that we haven’t been able to give her answers in terms of what happened to that clothing.
‘I’m appalled that it got lost, I’m appalled by it and it’s a serious issue, a very serious issue for the BBC.’ The families of the two girls spent decades fighting for justice after their killer, Russell Bishop, was initially acquitted of their murders in Brighton in 1987 – but was eventually found guilty after a second trial in 2018.
Bashir approached Miss Hadaway in 1991 and asked to have her daughter’s clothing DNA tested, saying that science had advanced in the five years since the murders. The BBC is now reviewing the case in a fresh bid to locate the items.
Mr Davie said: ‘We have talked directly to Martin Bashir. He doesn’t know where the clothes are. I want to find out if there’s any loose ends or any more we can do in terms of finding this clothing, and stop this distress.
‘At the moment, we’ve got [that] someone gave some clothes to someone and this person just cannot remember where they are.’ Mr Davie told MPs it was important to note that Sussex Police said the issue had ‘no material impact whatsoever on the investigation then or later’. Tory MP Julian Knight, the committee’s chairman, told Mr Davie: ‘This is about as grim as it gets as far as journalism and television morality goes.
‘It seems to be quite incredible that this individual has run absolute roughshod over your reputation and over the lives of very vulnerable people.’
Referring to Bashir’s trickery to land his Princess Diana interview for Panorama in 1995, the MP added: ‘I consider this infinitely more serious than the Diana situation because of the absolute sensitivity involved.’
He asked the director-general if there was anything that could be done about the journalist in terms of his BBC pension.
Bashir left his role as BBC religion editor in May on health grounds, before the publication of the Dyson inquiry into the Diana interview. Mr Davie said legal advice suggested ‘we can’t do anything with the pension’.