Russell Bishop

The Babes in the Wood Murders were the murders of two nine-year-old girls, Nicola Fellows and Karen Hadaway, on 9 October 1986, by a 20-year-old local roofer, Russell Bishop in Wild Park, Moulsecoomb, Brighton, Sussex, England.

At around 3:30 p.m. on 9 October 1986 the two returned home from school before going out to play.

At around 5 p.m. Susan Fellows saw her daughter and Hadaway playing with a roller boot, the last time she saw her daughter alive.

When seen by a 14-year-old acquaintance near a parade of shops in the Lewes Road area, the girls were told to go home as their parents would become worried.

Fellows reportedly told Hadaway "Come on, let's go over to the park," referring to Wild Park, where they were not allowed.

At around 6:30 p.m., the girls were seen near a police box on Lewes Road, near where Bishop was also seen wearing "what appeared to be a light blue top."

That same day Bishop had gone to Fellows's house to speak to a lodger who lived there.

Fellows had told Bishop to go away and called his teenage girlfriend a "slag".

When the girls failed to return home by their bedtime their parents panicked.

Hadaway's mother, Michelle, made a 999 call.

A search party of around 200 police and neighbours was organised.

A helicopter was brought in to help search Wild Park.

Bishop joined the search, claiming his terrier, Misty, was a highly trained tracker dog and insured for £17,000.

The bodies of the girls were found in Wild Park by searchers Kevin Rowland and his friend Matthew Marchant on the afternoon of 10 October 1986.

The girls' bodies were found hidden in a makeshift den in the park.

Both had been strangled and sexually assaulted.

Bishop fell under suspicion due to his close involvement in the search.

When the bodies of the girls were found Bishop was close by and ran towards the scene with a police constable.

However the officer recalled that Bishop did not get close enough even to see them properly.

Bishop's story was littered with inconsistencies.

He told detectives that on the evening in question he had gone to Moulsecoomb because he intended to steal a car from the nearby University of Sussex campus.

He also claimed he had gone to a newsagent to buy a newspaper, but realised he had no money.

Bishop told detectives he had planned to see his teenage girlfriend that evening but failed to turn up because he bought some cannabis and went home instead.

He also tailored his story to fit the evidence, claiming he had felt the girls' necks for a pulse after finding them dead to explain any potential exchange of trace evidence.

Owing to the series of inconsistencies Bishop was arrested on suspicion of murder on 31 October.

Bishop first became the centre of media attention in October 1986 when he was arrested on suspicion of the murders.

Bishop was tried and acquitted in 1987.

However, he was acquitted on both rape and murder charges at his trial in December 1987 at Lewes Crown Court after two hours deliberation by the jury.

Bishop was ultimately acquitted, and later sold his story as a wrongfully accused person to The News of the World for £15,000.

The acquittal was later attributed to a series of blunders in the prosecution's case.

The pathologist and forensic investigation team failed to record the temperatures of the bodies and therefore could not accurately state a time of death.

At the trial, the prosecution suggested the girls were killed between 6:15 p.m. and 6:30 p.m. Without scientific evidence to back up the time of the murders, the prosecution could not challenge Bishop's alibis on the night of the murders.

Though the girls were fatally strangled, neither measurements of hand marks around their necks nor fingerprints left by the strangler were taken.

Forensic scientists did not analyse blood discovered on Hadaway's underwear.

A key piece of the prosecution's case rested on the recovery of a blue Pinto brand sweatshirt.

The top was found close to the railway line of Moulsecoomb station.

The case remained open until 10 December 2018, when Bishop was found guilty of the murders in a second trial.

The investigation into the two girls' murders is the largest and longest-running inquiry ever conducted by Sussex Police.

The murders became known as the Babes in the Wood murders after the children's tale.

Nicola Fellows and Karen Hadaway were best friends who lived close to each other on the Moulsecoomb estate in the north of Brighton but attended different schools.