On October 9, 1986, nine year old best friends Nicola Fellows and Karen Hadaway told a neighbour they were heading to Wild Park in Moulsecoomb, Brighton. It was the last time anyone saw them alive. The next afternoon, two civilian searchers found the girls hidden in a makeshift den in the park, and a case that would consume Sussex Police for the next three decades was born.
A 20 year old local roofer named Russell Bishop inserted himself into the search from the very beginning, bringing along his terrier and claiming the dog was a highly trained tracker. He was arrested within weeks. And in December 1987, after a four week trial and just two hours of jury deliberation, he walked free.
Then, in 1990, he abducted and tried to kill a seven year old girl.
This week we walk through the forensic failures that let a child killer go home: the body temperatures nobody recorded, the hand marks never measured, the blood evidence never analysed, and a blue Pinto sweatshirt that the prosecution built its case around and the police failed to preserve. We get into the 2005 double jeopardy reform that cracked the door open, the billion to one DNA match found on evidence taped in 1986 and stored for decades, the 2018 retrial at the Old Bailey, and the girlfriend who lied on the stand in 1987 and finally answered for it in 2021.
Bishop died in prison in January 2022. In April 2024, Sussex Police formally apologised for their failings, including the wrongful arrest of Nicola's father.
Two families waited 32 years. Here is how they finally got there.
Sources include BBC News, The Guardian, The Telegraph, The Independent, The Argus, and the published sentencing remarks in R v Bishop and R v Johnson.
Content note: this episode discusses the murder and sexual assault of children.
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