Speaker 1: In October nineteen eighty six, nine year old friends Nicola
Fellows and Karen had Away disappeared while playing near their
homes in Brighton, England.
Speaker 2: They were just seen being little girls around the estate,
nothing extraordinary at all until that point when they disappeared
off the face of the earth.
Speaker 1: The following day, the bodies of the two young girls
were discovered. The police had a prime suspect, twenty year
old Russell Bishop, but at his trial a year later,
the killer walked away scot free.
Speaker 3: Anyone with half a brain would have been careful never
to do it again, and yet he does it again.
Speaker 1: After attempting to kill a third young girl in nineteen ninety.
Bishop would eventually face justice in twenty eighteen, thirty two
years after the murder of Nicola and Karen the abes
in the Wood.
Speaker 4: Evil, insignificant, arrogant, is a creature. He's horrible, absolutely horrible.
Speaker 1: Russell Bishop had finally been unmasked as one of the
world's most evil killers. In December twenty eighteen, Russell Bishop
was serving time in Franklin Maximum Security prison for the abduction,
sexual assault, and attempted murder of a seven year old
girl in nineteen ninety, investigators were certain the fifty two
year old was also responsible for the nineteen eighty six
murders of nine year old friends Nicola Fellows and Karen
had Away, but in nineteen eighty seven Bishop had been
found not guilty of their murders.
Speaker 2: There was a huge shock within the police when Bishop
was acquitted of killing Nicola and Karen. The investigation had
been carried out so professionally and so assiduously, so when
the jury returned with not guilty verdicts, everyone was just stunned.
It just really rocked the whole police to the corps.
We just thought, what could possibly have gone wrong?
Speaker 5: We knew that it was Bishop. Everybody knew that it
was Bishop, yet he'd walked.
Speaker 1: Free since then. Graham Bartlett had studied Russell Bishop's career
of crime.
Speaker 2: When I was a very young detective Brighton, I became
involved in the second investigation into Russell Bishop. As a
result of that, I became very aware of the case
that had gone on before, in the injustice that had
been served through the acquittals. So I became fascinated with
the case, and as my career took off, I became
constantly involved in terms of just being aware and also
when I was the divisional commander of Brighton and how
this cloud over the whole policing of the city that
we hadn't delivered justice for those two girls.
Speaker 1: This killer's story begins in Brighton, on the south coast
of England. Russell Bishop was born in February nineteen sixty six.
One of five brothers. Bishop had a troublesome time growing up.
Speaker 6: Bishop had difficulties at school in terms of his learning.
He was dyslexic, so he was sent through a series
of different special schools and he ran away a lot.
So this says to me that from quite a young age,
this is somebody who thinks that the rules don't apply
to them. They simply don't want to follow them.
Speaker 1: As a teenager, Bishop struggled to stay on the straight
and narrow.
Speaker 3: The first brushes he has with the law offer mundane offenses,
a driving offense in nineteen eighty three when he's seventeen,
a burglary offense in nineteen eighty four when he's eighteen,
and then in nineteen eighty five he's convicted of more
burglaries and is given one hundred and fifty hours of
community service. He's bumping along at the bottom of the
law in a very minor way.
Speaker 2: He would smoke drugs, he would carry out theft, burglaries,
low level burglaries, steal from cars, just.
Speaker 5: Really the run of the mill, irritant on the estate.
Speaker 1: To try and fit in with his friends. Bishop would
embellish his criminal accomplishments.
Speaker 3: He has a bit of a ponchamp for bigging himself up.
I mean he likes to say, oh, oh, I'm a
master criminal. Absolute nonsense. I mean he might have tried
to steal the odd car, but on a scale of
one to ten, he's a zero. He's no master criminal
at all.
Speaker 6: Bishop was a compulsive liar. He would lie about sexual conquests,
how many women he'd slept with, the kind of criminal
activity that he'd been involved in. So he's somebody who's
very concerned with what other people think of him and
essentially giving a performance. So he will embellish, he will exaggerate,
he will report what he wants to have happened rather
than what's actually happened.
Speaker 1: By nineteen eighty six, twenty year old Bishop was living
in Mullscombe, a suburb of Brighton.
Speaker 2: At the time he was living with his common law wife.
His girlfriend had a child by her, but also was
seeing a sixteen year old girl and having a sexual
relationship with her. In some ways he did show that
he preferred younger girls, but nothing at all has come
out then or now that would suggest that he was
a pedophile.
Speaker 1: On the afternoon of the ninth of October nineteen eighty six,
nine year olds Nicola Fellows and Karen had Away had
come home from school and were playing on the green
outside their homes in.
Speaker 3: Bullscom Everybody can pretty much see them through the window.
It's late afternoon and there are a group of girls,
not just two. After an hour, maybe forty five minutes,
Nikola and Karen split off from the rest of the
group and go in search of something else to do.
At about six point fifteen, the girls are seen outside
the fish and chip shop with a bag of chips
each and walking. Nothing all that unusual in that except
that by then both Nicholas and Karen's mother are becoming
rather concerned. When Karen didn't come home for tea, which
is something that she always do when had my master.
Both parents started to get worried, started to have a
look round, phone around friends and try and find where
they are.
Speaker 2: And they were drawing a blank in this sort of
a state, in any sort of a state in you know,
certainly in my childhood too, it wasn't unusual for kids
to go missing for you know, a couple of hours
or so. The evenings were still light. But something about
them go missing and not being seen nobody knew where
they were. That really people's worries about what was it?
What had happened to these two little girls.
Speaker 1: Throughout the evening. There had been various sightings of the
girls around the estate and in nearby Wild Park.
Speaker 3: The last time the two girls are seen is heading
towards Wild Park with their bags of chips and in
the same vicinity had around the same time. There's also
a sighting there of Russell Bishop.
Speaker 1: Bishop knew both girls through his friends and neighbors in
the world.
Speaker 5: It's a very close knit community.
Speaker 2: Bishop used to play for Barry Fellows football team. He
was a goalkeeper in Barry Fellows football team, so knew
the Fellows through.
Speaker 5: That that way.
Speaker 2: Also his girlfriend at the time that knew the hadaways,
so he got to know them through that means. Really,
but Moulscome is one of these places where people literally
know everybody.
Speaker 1: By eight point thirty pm, night had fallen and the
girls still hadn't returned home. Their worried parents decided to
call the police.
Speaker 2: When the officers drove into Newitt Road to go and
see the parents, immediately they sent something was different. They
both policed Mulscoom for a while, they'd been to these
kind of calls before, but the number of people out
on the street, the little huddles of concerned faces trying
to work out what was going on. Immediately they picked
up on that a.
Speaker 1: Police search begin and for the two nine year old friends.
Speaker 2: It's difficult when you're either commanding or taking part in
the search such as this, because your overriding emotion must
be hope. You must hope that you're going to find
these girls alive, find Nichola and Karen, bring them back
to their mum and dads. But in fact, the longer
it went on, the less likely that was becoming.
Speaker 1: The girl's parents. The police and the whole community were
desperate to find Nicola and Karen alive. It was cold
and dark, but the search continued until two am, when
it resumed later that morning. Detective Constable John Morton was
one of the huge number of police that had been
drafted in to help.
Speaker 7: The briefing started at nine o'clock and at that stage
we had all available uniform personnel at Brighton engaged and
the search had been ramped up considerably in an effort
to find the girls.
Speaker 1: Police Constable Paul Smith had also reported for duty. He
was tasked with searching homes in the area near Wild Park.
Speaker 8: We were doing every single house parallel to the park
and beyond. This is a massive estate and I think
there was sort of thirty forty guys involved. You knock
on the door, we say, look, we've got two little
girls gone missing. Can I search your house? And every
single person they said, every one of them said you know,
please come in.
Speaker 2: Hope was always there, but actually this dread that something
awful had happened to them was starting to grow in
people's minds.
Speaker 1: Members of the public also joined in the search for
Nicola and Karen. One of the Mulescomb residents was twenty
year old Russell Bishop.
Speaker 5: He was searching around with everybody else.
Speaker 2: He got in a car at one point and went
to the back of the park, but was constantly putting
him in or about the center of the search. Just
wanted to be kept coming back to our park, kept
wanting to talk to officers.
Speaker 6: Bishop literally can't help himself, and as with many narcissists,
he wants to be right in the middle of everything.
He can't step back from something, he can't be quiet,
and any kind of attention, whether that's positive or whether
that's negative, is something that he will value. So he
places himself right in the middle of this drama that
he's created.
Speaker 1: When Paul Smith continued with his search for the nine
year old girls in Wild Park, Russell Bishop was already
on the scene with his dog.
Speaker 8: We were sort of talking about searching, you know, looking
for the girls, and he was quite negative about that.
He said, I've been searching all day. My dog knows him,
he's a good tracker, and I've decided to give up.
I've been doing it all day. And I said, well,
we've got to keep looking, got to find him. You know,
if we find him, rush him to hospital and have
him checked over, and then they'll be back with the
mums and dads sort of thing. And he said, oh, well,
I'm not doing that. He said, because if I found
them and they're dead. I get arrested one out for
killing them. With my background and the fact I'm being
in trouble with the police, I'll get nicked. And I said, no,
you won't. You've just got to give a statement, you know.
Speaker 1: At around four pm, police officer Paul and local resident
Bishop were still searching for the girls, who'd now been
missing for almost twenty four hours.
Speaker 8: We were sort of walking towards Wild Park by this
time into our part and there was a shout from
a boy and he said, we found them. We found them.
We went rushing off towards them, and I had wet
weather trousers, ons had been raining, I had a long raincoat,
I had boots, so I was a bit slower than
he was. And I said to Bishop, look, you run
on ahead, and if they're there, you keep them away
from the girls. And you keep away from the girls.
Speaker 1: Paul Smith arrived just after Bishop. Nightmare that everyone was
dreading had become a reality.
Speaker 8: I kept them away. It was about twelve thirteen feet
away from where the girls were, and I could see
that they were They looked dead. I went across to
them and I took the pulse and sorry I still
get to me, I took the pulse and there were
stone cold, dead like pieces of marble.
Speaker 1: The two teens who'd found the girls told Detective Constable
John Morton that no one apart from Paul Smith had
gone anywhere near the bodies. But Russell Bishop had a
totally different story.
Speaker 7: He said to me that he had been searching with
the other two along this path and they'd come to
a fallen tree which they had to cross, and that
he had crossed the tree, gone to the girls and
sinned that they were both dead. And to verify that,
he said he took a pulse from both girls at
the neck. Frankly, I was so staggered by what he
said that I sat down immediately and wrote down what.
Speaker 5: He told me in my notebook.
Speaker 8: You know, it was nothing to him, you know, like
you swat a fly and then you get rid of it.
It was like that he was just not bothered. There
was no emotion. You know, I would have expected him,
because he knew him to be like, oh my god,
you know, even if you're in shock. But nothing there
at all, just not you know, it was if it
could have been a dead dog.
Speaker 6: The police were suspicious of bishop from the beginning, because
he was overly enthusiastic and some of the information that
he was sharing really didn't stack up. So he claimed
to have checked the girl's pulses. He claimed to have
seen blood coming from the mouth of one of the girls,
and he couldn't have been close enough to see that.
So the police were quite concerned at this behavior. There
were a lot of red flags here, so he was
the prime suspect.
Speaker 7: Really.
Speaker 1: Nicola Fellows and Karen Hadaway had been sexually assaulted and
strangled to death. The news of the discovery quickly spread
amongst the residents of Bullscombe. The entire community was in shock.
Speaker 2: Any murder is big, Any murder is a tragedy, but
the loss of two little girls in such brutal circumstances
is probably the biggest thing that can happen in terms
of policing.
Speaker 3: It's a dreadful scene and it's a dreadful crime. It
has a monstrous effect on the community in Brighton. Originally
the killings were known as the Wild Park murders, but
they later became known as the Babes in the Wood
killings because the girls were so innocent and young.
Speaker 7: I've gone to school in Moscow for part my childhood,
so it was a personal blow to me that somebody
would take two young girls from that estate and decided
he was going to murder them. To me, you don't
do that, not on my beat.
Speaker 1: The search for two missing girls had now become a
double murder case. Evidence from the surrounding area were scrutinized.
Speaker 7: That a brief England next morning, her attention was drawn
to a blue sweatshirt which had a logo across the
front Pinto in white lettering. It had been handed into
the police box by a railway engineer who was at
Muscoam station and found it hanging over the wire that
separated the station from the footpath.
Speaker 1: In nineteen eighty six. DNA was still in its infancy,
but that didn't mean the words any clues to be
found on the sweatshirt.
Speaker 2: As time went on, the various forensic items were recovered
from it, fibers from the girls, jumpers, ivy spores that
were peculiar to the area where.
Speaker 5: The girls were killed and not where the sweatshirt was found.
Speaker 2: So it became very clear that whoever had murdered Nicola
and Karen had been wearing this sweatshirt at the time.
They did that because otherwise those fibers would not have
retained on there. So it was really really significant this sweatshirt.
Speaker 1: Russell Bishop had been acting suspiciously and he had been
spotted in the area at around the same time as
the girls were last seen alive. Investigators were convinced that
the Pinto sweatshirt belonged to Bishop. The evidence appeared to
be pointing in one direction. In December nineteen eighty six,
Bishop was charged with the murders of Nicola and Karen.
Almost a year later, in November nineteen eighty seven, his
trial began at Lewis Crown Court.
Speaker 2: They never quite got to the point where they could
say through science that that sweatshirt was worn by Bishop
on that night. They knew that it had been worn
by the killer, but they couldn't put it on Bishop's back.
Speaker 1: At that point, the prosecution put forward the case that
Bishop had murdered Nicola and Karen had around six thirty pm,
but one witness testified she'd waved hello to the two
girls at a court of the seventh fifteen minutes after
the killings had supposedly taken place.
Speaker 6: The judge asked the jury to go away and consider
three propositions, and if one or more of them they
didn't agree with, then they had to acquit. So the
first one was that the girls were dead by six
point thirty, The second was that Bishop had worn the
Pinto sweatshirt, and the third was that the Pinto sweatshirt
had been worn by the murderer.
Speaker 7: Absolutely stunned. The most stunning thing of all was that
the jury came back within two hours were not guilty verdict.
Speaker 1: The case put forward was just not strong enough to
convince the jury of Bishop guilt. It was a gut
wrenching blow to the families of the two girls, the investigators,
and the community as a whole.
Speaker 2: Bishop knew when he heard those words not guilty, that
he got away scot free.
Speaker 5: In his mind and in everybody else's mind.
Speaker 2: There was no possibility of him being prosecuted again for that.
Speaker 6: The way that the law stirred at this time we
had a principle called double jeopardy, which meant that somebody
couldn't be tried for the same crime twice. Once they've
been acquitted, that was it. Prosecution couldn't just keep trying.
So Bishop is acquitted and he feels absolutely invincible. At
this point in.
Speaker 3: Time, Bishop leaves Lewis Crown Call with his arms in
the air, shouting I am innocent, and rushes across the
road to celebrate in the pub opposite. Now some brass neck,
wouldn't you think? Some ego there? After all, he knows
perfectly well, these killed those two innocent young girls.
Speaker 1: In the minds of the people who worked on the case,
Russell Bishop had just got away with murder.
Speaker 8: Ordinary blogs like me p season that was summed because
you know, after we'd heard about the case and we
knew what had got on, we were sure that he
was the killer.
Speaker 2: It was absolutely devastating for everybody that they had a
child killer, a double child killer, in their hands, and
he got away.
Speaker 1: Investigators were certain Bishop was the perpetrator, but they couldn't
prove it in a court of law, so he walked
away a free man. By nineteen eighty nine, Bishop himself
was seeking.
Speaker 9: Justice and as we've still got to get this cause open,
and that's all what's been on my mind is to
get this causero opened.
Speaker 6: After he's acquitted, Bishop doesn't just go away and live
a quiet life as a narcissist, He feels entitled to attention,
and he quite likes the infamy that comes with being
involved in this case. So in nine eighty nine, he
goes on a march with the family and the local
community to a local police station to basically raise awareness
about this case, which is apparently still unsolved.
Speaker 5: Some people might be surprised that you're now linking up
with the parents.
Speaker 10: Of the two murdered schoolgirls, having been accused yourself of
their murder.
Speaker 9: People are very surprised that the kid master me. Why
do I keep on and on and on. The fact
is I want to say this case with open my
name isn't cleared until someone else has brought the justice
to real person.
Speaker 6: He really enjoys being at the center of that because
it enables him to claim the victim status for himself.
He's saying, everybody, look at me, I am the victim
of a miscarriage of justice. Feel sorry for me.
Speaker 1: By February nineteen ninety, Sussex police were still trying to
move on from what they believed to be a grave
miscarriage of justice when a similar attack took place in
the county.
Speaker 2: I remember, in my first month as a detective at
Brighton's the idea as a very junior DC bottom of
the pile. Working one Sunday evening it happened to be
the third anniversary of the girl's funerals, and then suddenly
everything changed. The sergeant came in and told us that
a little girl had gone missing from Whitehawk, which is
a similar estate to Mulscom, a different part of Brighton,
and shortly after she'd been reported missing, a little girl
had been found naked, scratched, crying on Devil's Dike, which
is a big wind swept part of what's now the
Southdowns National Park.
Speaker 1: Detective Inspector Malcolm Bacon was in charge of the investigation.
Speaker 4: She comes to she's in the middle of nowhere, so
she stumbles out and she's been seen by a couple
who were on the main road deck. So she goes
to the mess and the first thing she said, you're
not kidnappers, are you? Bless her? But of course they weren't,
wrapped her up in a pullover and a coat and
took her to the Dyke Golf Club.
Speaker 1: The seven year old girl that survived a terrifying ordeal,
which she bravely shared with Malcolm and his team. After
roller skating to the local shop to buy some sweets,
her young life would change forever.
Speaker 4: She was on her way back when she said she
saw this red car and she was scooting past it.
Suddenly she was grabbed, literally grabbed, snatched off the street
and dumped into the boot of this red car, this
red Corteina. She was scared, absolutely scared, witness and she
realized she saw can of WD forty. She described it
as the stuff that her dad uses to get the
car started. And she also found in there like a
hammer type thing, and she started bashing on the lid
of the boot with this hammer. Suddenly the driver shouted
down and told her to shut up, stop doing her
or killer.
Speaker 1: The girl kept quiet, hoping that she'd be set free,
but her ordeal continued.
Speaker 4: She was bundled straight into the back seat of the car,
and from there she realized and she saw the person
who was responsible, and she strangled. She was strangled certainly
to the point of view that she passed out. And
I am sure, I am sure that Bishop was convinced
that he killed her.
Speaker 1: Three years after the murders of Nicola Fellows and Karen
had Away, Russell Bishop was hoping to claim a third victim.
Speaker 4: At that point, unconscious, hardly any life signs at all.
She was sexually assorted. Bishop then just takes what he
considers to be the dead, naked body of a seven
year old child that he is just assorted and abused
and just discance her. There's no other word for it.
He discards her. He just throws her in the middle
of these gorse bushes. On a freezing cold Sunday night in.
Speaker 1: February, Bishop sped off in his car, but the monster
had made a mistake. The girl was not dead.
Speaker 6: I think he did seriously believe that she was dead
because strangulation was a method that he'd used before on
Karen and Nikola, and it had been successful in relation
to that case, so he assumes that it's worked again
and that he's gotten away with it again because there
are no witnesses.
Speaker 4: We don't normally use forensic pathologists to do examinations of children,
but on this particular case, it was because he noticed
not only the pinching on the round the throat, but
also particular hemorrhages, which is indicative of a suffocating injury.
That's the sort of thing that you look at when
a person has been strangled and they're killed. That's how
close she was seconds, I would suggest, seconds away from death.
Speaker 1: The seven year old girl's incredible testimony immediately helped Malcolm
and his team come up with a prime suspect.
Speaker 4: So I gave a briefing to the troops and I
mentioned about the red cardiff that and the other and
the uniform chief inspector said, are you aware that Russell
Bishop was seen in a red car this week?
Speaker 1: Less than two and a half years after his acquittal
for murder. The police were paying twenty three year old
Russell Bishop another visit.
Speaker 2: They drove up to his house and saw him scrubbing
as if his life depended on it.
Speaker 4: Washing his red courtena on a Sunday night in February.
That didn't sit night.
Speaker 5: So Bishop was arrested and taken to the police station.
Speaker 1: Bishop was back in custody. It was a moment of
bittersweet redemption for Sussex Police.
Speaker 4: People were volunteering to come in as soon as somebody
heard it was Russell Bishop that had been nicked as well.
You've got to be honest that that was like a
magnet as well. That was like a magnet and I
went down with the sergeant from the seen as a
crime officer to look at this car. And when we
opened up the bootlead, we saw the WD forty, We
saw the hammer, we saw the chip marks to the
boot and we thought we're going in the right direction.
Speaker 1: Evidence collected at the scene near Devil's Dyke didn't help
Bishop's cause.
Speaker 4: We find tire marks at the area where we've the
assault took place. The tire marks later found to be
exactly identical to the ones that are on Bishop's car.
Speaker 1: Soon news reached the station of even more evidence that
pointed towards Bishop's involvement.
Speaker 2: There was a taxi driver that found a bundle of
clothing on a road. It was fairly busy, but was
the natural route away from the Dike to where Bishop lived.
This bundle of clothing would ultimately be a parcel of
evidence that had both the girls and Bishop's DNA in
it together.
Speaker 4: Shippings from the bootleg that were on there. There was
clothing fibers which later matched up to the ones that
little girl was wearing. There was blood and they were
seamen on those trousers, immediately linking the little girl to
those trousers to Bishop and then the car as well.
Speaker 1: In a bid to make sure Bishop didn't escape justice.
The brave seven year old girl was willing to face
her attacker once more.
Speaker 2: Almost at the time a decision had to be made
was whether Bishop was going to be freed or not.
His solicitor asked for an identification parade. This was a
bit of a last desperate throw over dice.
Speaker 5: In my view.
Speaker 2: It was a chance for Bishop's solicitors to see how
well this little girl would stand up to the account
that she'd given.
Speaker 4: They set it up in a room with a one
way mirror, and so she could stand back and she
can observe. He sat down, he was given his.
Speaker 9: Number, and I'm going to ask you in a moment
to look through the window at the line.
Speaker 5: Of men who are sitting there.
Speaker 8: I should then ask you whether the person who you
saw on that day is fear.
Speaker 2: The girl looked up and down the line, stopped at
the Bishop, looked at Bishop.
Speaker 5: He couldn't see her. You think it's number line, thank you.
Speaker 4: So it was really quite a tear jerking moment in
a sense. It was so emotional that that little bit,
I mean, it was just wonderful for her and for us,
definitely for us.
Speaker 1: Bishop was charged with kidnap, in decent assault and attempted murder.
At his trial in November nineteen ninety, he took to
the stand in a bid to discredit the police investigation.
Speaker 3: The ever slippery Bishop attempts to convince the world that
he has been fitted up for the crime because of
his fame. Oh, I'm the man that got away with
the babes in the woodkillings. I was acquitted, but now
they're trying to make up for lost time.
Speaker 4: He got in a box and he started to give evidence,
and his arrogance just shone through. He didn't have to
do anything. Just let him talk, Just let him talk me,
and it just showed this psychopathic behavior throughout. He couldn't
stop himself from being the victim to this arrogance that
he showed throughout.
Speaker 1: With incredible bravery, the young girl, who had since turned eight,
agreed to take to the stand in order to help
get a conviction.
Speaker 3: It must have been the most extraordinary moment. You've got
this man full of all kinds of slippery stories, and
you've got this little girl sitting on a high stool
with pillows, saying I know who attacked me. He did.
Speaker 5: It was a moment of the highest drama.
Speaker 6: I think this kind of courage and resilience is something
that Bishop will never have because he's such coward. Very
often in these cases, the victims embody everything that the
perpetrators aren't, and that is very much the case here.
Speaker 1: There is no escaping justice this time. On the thirteenth
of December nineteen ninety, Russell Bishop was sentenced to life
in prison.
Speaker 2: Sometimes when murderers are convicted and good sentences are passed down,
the police have a bit of a celebration, might go
out for a drink or you know, just a very
satisfied with the outcome. There were no celebrations this time.
You know, we locked up a very very evil man.
But there was no cause for celebration because the families
of those two little girls were still waiting for their
day in courts, still waiting for justice.
Speaker 1: The guilty verdict to reaffirm the communities believed that Bishop
was behind the nineteen eighty six murders of Nicola and Karen, even.
Speaker 2: Though Bishop had been convicted of a very similar offense
against very similar girl in very similar circumstances. Nothing would
have allowed the police to recharge Bishop with those earlier
murders and put in before the court. The law simply
didn't allow it. So we were stuck. We knew that
Bishop had killed Nicola and Karen. Everybody knew that. Within
the police, the families knew that nothing we could do
about it.
Speaker 1: By two thousand and four, thirty eight year old Russell
Bishop had been in prison for fourteen years. The convicted
pedophile was due to be released at any moment. Detective
Jeff Riley had been recruited in the same year that
Bishop was sent to prison, but he was still aware
of the miscarriage of justice surrounding the babes in the
Wood murders.
Speaker 10: Well I joined the police in nineteen ninety, so of
course that was only a few years after he had
been acquitted at trial. Now I was aware of the investigation,
and I was aware had a massive impact clearly on
the families, a massive impact on the community in Wull's Comb.
And I think it always hung as a bit of
a dark crowd over Brighton and over Sussex place because
you never want to see the murder of two little girls,
you know, with the guy not brought.
Speaker 1: To justice, but all that was about to change.
Speaker 10: The big change came in in two thousand and three
when the Criminal Justice Act was brought in. It was
actually became law in two thousand and five, and that
was a real milestone in the UK justice system because
it meant that someone who's found not guilty i acquitted
at trial could now potentially be taken back to trial
and be retried for the original offense.
Speaker 1: The new legislation that removed the so called double jeopardy
law meant Bishop could be retried for the murders of
Nicola and Karen, but only if there was some new
evidence against him.
Speaker 2: When we talk about new evidence, we weren't talking about
evidence that had been sat there and the police hadn't
bothered to look at, or the prosecution had decided not
to use. It could had to be new evidence, and
it had to be compelling.
Speaker 1: Gathering the new evidence would take years, but fortunately, as
Bishop was still considered a danger to young girls, his
parole was continually denied. By twenty thirteen, Jeff and his
team believed they had made a breakthrough. Although DNA testing
wasn't readily available to detectives in nineteen eighty six, forensic
science had come on in leaps and bounds. The blue
Pinto sweatshirt once again became pebotal in the case.
Speaker 10: Normally they would always test around the neck, they would
test under the armpits. But they took the view that
actually had like a double cuff on the sweatshirt. So
if we unpicked the cuff and pulled it apart, we
may find some evidence of the wearer within that cuff.
And that's exactly what they did, and that's exactly what
they found. They actually recovered a full DNA profile from
Russell Bishop from within that cuffed area that had been
there since he bore the jumper in nineteen eighty six.
Speaker 1: Back in nineteen eighty six, the sweatshirt had merely been
regarded as lost property and had been handled so many
times contamination of the evidence couldn't be ruled out in
a court of law. Incredibly, it was back to square
one for Jeff Well.
Speaker 10: That was a massive blow for the investigation. We'd been
running two years. You know, I'd been discussing with the family.
We'd built their hopes up, we'd invested a lot of money.
From Sussex Police's point of view, we'd invested a lot
of time, but of course the impact of the family
could have been significant. But the scientists were quite upbeat
and they said, look, we've got lots of other options
to test evidence. So you know, just because we've lost
this DNA and the calf which was our original bit,
doesn't mean to say there's not other avenues.
Speaker 1: Some evidence from the original investigation was still securely sealed away,
forensic examples taken from the bodies of Nicola and Karen
using an adhesive tape.
Speaker 2: They decided that they would go back to these tapings,
the tapings that have been taken back in the eighties
by the scientists who was looking for fibers, hair foliage,
those sorts of things. Because these tapings were sealed parcels
in time, really there were time capsules of evidence.
Speaker 5: There was no break in seals.
Speaker 2: So they examined the tapings and this was a Eureka
moment because within those tapings was Bishop's DNA.
Speaker 1: Modern science had proved what detectives back in nineteen eighty
six couldn't. The new DNA evidence firmly placed Russell Bishop
at the scene of the crime and proved he had
been in physical contact with the two nine year old girls.
It also meant, without a doubt, Bishop had been wearing
the now infamous Pinto sweatshirt.
Speaker 10: So even though we'd lost the calf, we had DNA
on the sweatshirt. We had DNA victim and made all
the other evidence that actually stood the test of time.
Speaker 2: Bishop's assertion, and it was probably his only consistent assertion
other than the fact he hadn't killed the girls, was
that he knew nothing about that sweatshirt and it wasn't
his here it was sprinkled in his DNA.
Speaker 1: Based on this new evidence, investigators knew that the Court
of Appeal would agree to a retrial. The only thing
left to do was break the news to Russell Bishop.
Speaker 10: He was a Category A prisoner because of his security risk,
so we had to take him to a Category A
holding police station. And that's the first thing he would
have known about our investigation was when he drove into
the rear yard of Durham Central Police Station and he
just kept saying that I want to go back to prison.
You know, this has been dealt with, This has gone away.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 10: I think he was hoping it had gone away, and
I think he convinced himself it had. But of course
he hadn't thought about double jeopardy. He hadn't thought about
the Criminal Justice Act, and he hadn't thought about the
fact that we'd never forgotten about this case. And there
he was in custody, being arrested again for the murders
of Karena Nicola. It was a massive moment for us.
Speaker 1: The retrial began that the Old Bailey in October twenty eighteen.
Further evidence was presented against Bishop, including explicit letters he'd
written to a thirteen year old girl from his prison
cell while on remand for the original trial in nineteen
eighty seven.
Speaker 10: He started shouting that it wasn't right that he was
questioned in this way. He appealed to his council, He
appealed to the judge. The judge very clearly told him
that these questions were appropriate and if any stage they weren't,
he would step in, but he didn't need to. As
this went on and went forward, Bishop became more and
more angry. He then asked for break. He then left
the witness box. He then refused to return, and the
following day refused to return to trial. So actually he
never came back to court after his initial evidence.
Speaker 3: I think he realized at that moment that he'd blown it,
because the jurors could see for themselves exactly what he
was capable of.
Speaker 1: After just three hours of deliberations on the tenth of
December twenty eighteen, the jury had reached a decision.
Speaker 2: When they filed back into the court, the families were
all there, the barristers were all there, the police officers
were there.
Speaker 10: Everyone was in court apart from Bishop. The family was
sitting just behind me. The courtroom was packed, but the
atmosphere was electric, I mean absolutely electric. The jury came
back in. You know when you all look at the
jury trying to get an indication of what you think.
You know, we've all done it over the years, but
we just couldn't tell.
Speaker 5: The foreman stood up.
Speaker 2: The clerk asked whether they'd made a decision on which
they were all agreed. The foreman confirmed they had, and
then when asked whether or not they found Bishop guilty
or not guilty of murdering Nicola, he replied guilty, And
when asked whether they'd found the defendant guilty or not
guilty of murdering Karen, he replied guilty.
Speaker 10: The fitting in the court was just astounding. Like you know,
I looked at the family and just to look on
their face and they let out a gasp. I think
there was a gasp, but just went around the court.
Speaker 2: It was a huge moment for the whole city, for
the police, for the retired officers, that this was a
cloud that had now lifted from the city.
Speaker 1: Unlike his acquittal exactly thirty one years earlier to the day,
Russell Bishop would not be celebrating in the pub. The
following day, the fifty two year old refused to appear
in front of the judge to hear his fate.
Speaker 2: His sentenced Bishop with a withering attack to two life
sentences and a minimum term of thirty six years. Bishop
will be at the very least eighty eight when he
is eligible for parole. I would be astonished if that
man ever walked the streets again.
Speaker 10: Detectives don't like to get too emotional with these things,
but this was just such a massive moment for the team.
And I remember sitting next to one of my guys
and I was just shaking hands and you know, and
just look looking at the family and smiling at Barry
and Michelle and Susan and just thinking, I'm so pleased
for you, you know, I'm so pleased that finally you've
got justice for your daughters. It was an amazing moment,
you know, one that I've never had before, and I
don't think whatever have again.
Speaker 1: A weight had been lifted from Wolscombe and the city
of Brighton as a whole.
Speaker 6: I think the feeling in the community amongst the family
and the officers involved was that they had finally achieved
justice for Karen and Nicola. But I don't think it
was very much as celebratory moment. It was more the
closing of a chapter because Karen and Niccola would now
be women with years of life behind them and in
front of them, and this is something that Bishop has
denied to them. So I think there is a sense
of justice here, but we'll never be able to get
back what he's taken away.
Speaker 1: For thirty two years, Bishop thought he'd got away with murder,
but justice eventually caught up with the Keller's killer.
Speaker 2: Russell Bishop is an evil, pedophile psychopath. His crimes speak
for themselves. The way he conduct himself, the way he's
conducted himself throughout just underline the evil that that man is.
Speaker 5: I used to say.
Speaker 2: That there were people that did evil things, but very
few evil people. Well, Bishop is one of those evil people.
Speaker 1: Bishop was a pedophile who couldn't resist his selfish and
impure instincts. He squeezed the life from two innocent young girls,
and it was only his own ineptitude that saved the
life of a third. Justice was thirty two years in
the making, but the scars he's left on the community
he ripped apart will take even longer to heal, making
Russell Bishop one of the world's most evil killers.