Predatory paedophile killed two girls then cynically joined search for 'missing' nine-year-olds, court hears

A predatory paedophile escaped justice for more than 30 years after sexually assaulting and murdering two nine-year-old girls in 1986, a court has heard.

Russell Bishop, 52, killed Karen Hadaway and Nicola Fellows in a hidden corner of a Brighton park on 9 October 1986, the Old Bailey in London was told.

Then, the court heard, Bishop joined the search for the missing girls in what the prosecution called a “cynical and deliberate attempt to divert attention away from himself”.

But he escaped justice when he was acquitted at a murder trial in 1987, Brian Altman QC, prosecuting, told the court.

Now, however, Bishop is being retried after some of the old scientific evidence was reassessed using modern-day DNA profiling techniques, the jury was told.

In addition, Mr Altman said, “the defendant’s movements, his actions and what he had to say to the police, including significant lies” also provided “compelling evidence that this man was the killer”.

The jury has now also been told that three years after walking free from the 1987 murder trial, Bishop kidnapped, indecently assaulted and attempted to kill a seven-year-old girl in Brighton. The girl survived and was able to identify Bishop, leading to him being convicted for the February 1990 attack.

Mr Altman told the jurors: “All the similarities between the events of which he was convicted in 1990 and those of 1986 are such that, together with all the other evidence in the case, they can lead you to the sure conclusion that the defendant was responsible also for the murders of Nicola and Karen but a few years earlier.”

Prior to the trial starting on Tuesday, the Court of Appeal quashed Bishop’s 1987 acquittal without drawing any conclusion about his guilt or innocence.

Bishop has always denied murdering Karen and Nicola.

The investigation into the two girls’ deaths has become the largest and longest-running enquiry Sussex Police has ever known.

On the day of the murder, the two girls, friends on the Moulsecoomb council estate in the north of Brighton, had gone out to play after school.

On the following day, 10 October 1986, after a search by police and public, they were found dead in the woods at Wild Park in Brighton, about half a mile from their homes.

“Both girls had been strangled to death and they had been sexually assaulted,” Mr Altman said. “Plainly the main, if not the only motive here was sexual and paedophilic.

“There are rarely witnesses to killings like these. The location in this case was what was referred to as a den; a small clearing in the woods hidden from view and from anyone else.”

Bishop, Mr Altman said, “knew important details about the situation and condition of the girls at the scene that only the killer could have known.

“Russell Bishop was, to the exclusion of anyone else, responsible for the murders of the two little girls.”

“The killings,” Mr Altman added, ”Were entirely intentional and they were carried out in the woods by a man who sexually assaulted them for his own gratification. That man, say the prosecution, was this defendant, Russell Bishop.”

And yet, Mr Altman said, after killing the girls, Bishop joined the search for the missing nine-year-olds.

“It was all a pretence,” the prosecutor told the jury. “His effort was a cynical and a deliberate attempt to divert attention away from himself. Knowing full well that it was only a matter of time before the girls would be found dead in the very area he was helping to search, this was his way of deceiving others into thinking he was not responsible.”

As Mr Altman opened the case, Karen’s mother Michelle Johnson sat in the back of the court tightly clutching the hands of her daughters, Karen’s two sisters.

The court heard that on the afternoon of 9 October 1986, Karen went out to play even though her tea was in the oven.

“Michelle [her mother] told her not to be long,” Mr Altman said. “And Karen said she would not be. That was the last time Michelle saw her daughter alive.”

The Old Bailey heard how Karen’s mother had considered her to be “a very sensible girl who knew right from wrong”, but who, like all children, could occasionally be “cheeky”.

Nicola, Mr Altman said, was described by her family as friendly and outgoing.

Both girls, the court heard, were afraid of the dark.

At the time of the murders, Bishop was a 20-year-old roofer living in Hollingdean, Brighton, about one and a half miles from the girls’ homes.

He knew Nicola’s father, but the jury was told that neither family wanted the girls to have any contact with Bishop because at the time he was in a sexual relationship with a 16-year-old girl, despite having an adult woman partner.

On the afternoon of the murder, the court heard, Bishop called at Nicola’s house, hoping to talk to a lodger who also lived there.

The court heard, however, that Nicola told Bishop to go away and called his teenage girlfriend a “slag”.

Mr Altman stressed that there was no physical contact between Bishop and Nicola during this exchange, and explained: “This [will be] significant when we come to consider the scientific evidence that was later found to show a contact between the defendant and Nicola.”

The court heard that Nicola’s mother Susan Fellows saw her daughter and Karen playing with a roller boot at about 5pm.

“This,” said Mr Altman, “was to be the last time she saw Nicola alive.”

Tracing the girls’ movements after they left the sight of their mothers, Mr Altman said they were seen by a 14-year-old acquaintance near a parade of shops in the Lewes Road area. The teenager, said Mr Altman, “told them they should tell their mothers where they were going because they [their parents] would get worried”.

“The girls ignored her,” Mr Altman said. “She particularly recalled Nicola repeatedly saying to Karen, ‘Come on, let’s go over the park.’”

The court heard that shortly afterwards, at about 6.30pm, Nicola and Karen were seen near a police box on Lewes Road.

Other witnesses, said Mr Altman, placed Bishop near the same police box at about the same time.

The court heard that earlier, while it was still daylight, Bishop had been seen wearing “what appeared to be a light blue top.”

“As we shall see,” said Mr Altman, “a blue top bears a great deal of significance in this case.”

After news of the girls’ disappearance spread and was broadcast on the local CB radio, Moulsecoomb residents organised their own search party.

Using torches to peer through the mist about at about half past midnight on Friday 10 October, they discovered a sweatshirt near a footpath described by Mr Altman as “an obvious route for the defendant to take from Wild Park to his home.”

The garment, said Mr Altman, “was a light blue sweatshirt bearing the ‘Pinto’ brand name.

“It was inside out. The garment appeared to have been thrown to the ground, which suggests it had been taken off and discarded. It felt dry to the touch in contrast to the wet ground around it, which suggests the sweatshirt had not been lying there for very long.”

When police questioned Bishop at about 10am that Friday, his partner Jenny Johnson produced a blue sweatshirt with a stripe across the chest. Both Bishop and his partner said this was the top he had been wearing the previous afternoon.

The trial continues.