Russell Bishop murder trial: everything said by the prosecution on morning of day 1

Russell Bishop, 52, was cleared of killing nine-year-olds Nicola Fellows and Karen Hadaway following a trial in 1987, the Old Bailey heard.

The girls were found dead in Wild Park, on the South Downs near Brighton, a day after they went missing on October 9, 1986.

Within three years of his acquittal Bishop kidnapped, indecently assaulted and tried to kill a seven-year-old girl in Brighton, jurors were told.

He was convicted of the attack in 1990.

Prosecutor Brian Altman QC said Bishop's earlier acquittal was quashed at the Court of Appeal in light of new evidence following advances in DNA testing.

PROSECUTION CASE IN FULL ON MORNING OF DAY 1

Prosecutor Brian Altman QC said:

Thirty-two years ago, almost to the day, on Friday 10 October 1986, two nine-year-old girls, Nicola Fellows and Karen Hadaway, were found dead in the woods at Wild Park in Brighton.

Both had gone missing the evening before, Thursday 9 October 1986 and, despite searches by police and public, they were not to be found until the following afternoon.

That grim discovery led to the largest and longest-running police enquiry Sussex Police has ever known.

Post mortem examinations conducted that Friday evening revealed both girls had been strangled to death and they had been sexually assaulted.

The killings 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.

On the day of their murders, on Thursday 9 October 1986, the girls, who were friends despite attending different schools in the Brighton area, had gone out to play after school.

They both lived in the same street in an area known as Moulsecoomb on the northern outskirts of Brighton.

The residential area of Moulsecoomb nestles on the east side of the A27 and the A270 Lewes Road that runs between Brighton and Lewes.

On the west side of the road is Wild Park, which is part of the South Downs and beyond its playing fields there is a grassy bank that steeply rises up into dense woods to Highfields, a residential street and the Coldean area beyond.

It was here, a mere half a mile or so from their homes, that the girls were found dead.

This defendant was, as you will hear, arrested in 1986, charged and indeed tried the following year, in 1987, for the murders of both girls, but on 10 December 1987 he was acquitted by a jury at Lewes Crown Court.

Despite the acquittal, the case was never closed and the police have continued to investigate it.

One significant part of the enquiry has been to re-evaluate various areas of scientific work that were performed for the purposes of the 1987 trial but through the lens of modern-day techniques.

DNA profiling, which, although available in 1986 and 1987, was then in its infancy.

Because of the new evidence, and without it making any judgment about the guilt or otherwise of this defendant, the Court of Appeal has quashed the 1987 acquittals.

That means that the defendant can be prosecuted again based on the evidence that existed then and the new evidence that is available now.

Evidence of the re-evaluation of the science available at the time of the original trial and new science, we suggest, proves that Russell Bishop, was, to the exclusion of anyone else responsible for the murders of the two girls.

However, the case against him does not only rely on scientific evidence; it relies on it within the context of the story of the case as a whole, including the defendant’s movements, his actions and what he had to say to the police, including, as you will see, significant lies he told at the time.

Having been acquitted of these murders, the defendant was discharged as a free man and returned to live in the Brighton area.

In less than three years of his acquittal, on 4 February 1990, the defendant committed offences involving the attempted murder, kidnapping and indecent assault of a seven-year-old girl in the Whitehawk area of Brighton.

Unlike Nicola and Karen, the victim survived and she was able to identify the defendant as her attacker, which, together with scientific and other compelling evidence, led to his convictions by a jury at Lewes Crown Court on 13 December 1990.

We say that the similarities between the events of which he was convicted in 1990 and those in 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.

However, let me make this clear: the prosecution does not seek guilty verdicts on the murders of Nicola Fellows and Karen Hadaway by saying that because the defendant was guilty of a very similar attack on another young girl in 1990 he must necessarily be guilty of these murders.

What we do say is that there is other compelling evidence that this man was the killer of those two little girls and the evidence of his guilt of the other attack and the facts underlying it help identify him as the killer as well as reveal his disposition to behave in a certain way, which is happily both very rare and exceptional.

Read more: Russell Bishop murder trial: everything said by the prosecution on afternoon of day 1

I will return to these matters later on and tell you what we say those similarities are.

I am going to come to the detail of the case in a moment, but before I do so let me make a few other important comments about the nature of this case.

First of all, many of the events we will be focusing on took place in 1986 and 1987, well over 30 years ago. The scene and the surrounding areas have inevitably changed since then.

So, we will have to consider the area as it was then, not as it is now. In order to do that, we have images and maps from the time as well as from today which I will distribute in due course.

But to help you even more, the judge has approved a visit to Moulsecoomb, which means that, at the end of my opening address or at a suitable moment during it (if I have not finished it by the time we are due to go on the visit), we will travel to the area under strict conditions supervised by him and will see various of the landmarks and places that you will be hearing about in the course of the evidence in the case.

You will find that although we have contemporaneous and current images and maps, the visit to the area will enable you to understand distances and landmarks like no images and maps can.

Because the time frame for this case is October 1986, our visit taking place this October means that we do not have to worry about seasonal changes, but the time difference of 32 years will make things seem different and we have to remember the terrible damage caused by the great storm which tore its way across the south coast a year after the murders, in October 1987.

Secondly, as is clear from what I have been telling you, this is an historic case.

I have touched on the reasons why this case is being brought again.

You must decide the case on the whole of the evidence that is presented to you today.

What is however of some consequence is you will be hearing from some witnesses about a number of different things they saw, heard or did back then – a variety of people who witnessed tiny aspects of an otherwise uneventful Thursday evening in October 1986, who did not know then that they would be asked about it in criminal proceedings then, let alone over 30 years later.

Many of the witnesses were spoken to all those years ago and made witness statements to the police but have now only their dim and distant memory to rely upon and the statements they made.

So, you shall have to make allowance for the real possibility of failing or faulty memory and the effect of the passing of the years between 1986 and today; and this of course applies equally to the defendant, should he give evidence, as well as any witnesses he chooses to call.

Also let me deal with some notoriously difficult issues which arise in all cases: the assessment of time – the time an event was witnessed and the length of time an event lasted.

Witnesses will often provide a rough clock time or a time period during which they saw or heard something.

The time and the timing of an event, even provided to police a relatively short time after an otherwise uneventful event occurs, is often fraught with difficulty.

Rarely do people look at their watches (if they are wearing them) and time an event they did not realise might assume importance later.

Of course, a witness may be entirely accurate about a time; but they may not be.

Equally notoriously difficult is providing a description of a person, their clothing, distance, height, age or age range.

So, make sensible allowances for all that, especially where a witness is using their memory today to give their account rather than simply relying on the statement made at the time when matters were that much fresher.

Of course, some people’s memories for detail when asked closer to the time of the events can be very good. Others’ may not be.

So, you must bear that in mind too; everyone is different.

Some things may be easier to recall than other things.

Also, do not be surprised by witnesses who may be describing the same event placing a different time or date on it entirely, or even misremembering an important date, or witnesses who are describing the same incident or part of it, albeit from different angles or positions, describing the event quite differently.

Read more: Russell Bishop murder trial: everything said by the prosecution on afternoon of day 1

All this is the ordinary stuff of human nature and the human experience.

It simply reflects what we all know: that most people’s memory is not photographic, that memory fades or even disappears over time and one person’s perception is inevitably going to be different from another’s.

The important point is the giving of evidence in the course of this trial is not going to be a test of memory – very few people would sensibly lay claim to having a better memory of events today than they did over 30 years ago.

In the end, it will be for you to decide what you make of any inconsistencies or discrepancies you detect in the evidence when you come to consider it against the picture the evidence provides as a whole.

Thirdly, some of the witnesses in this case are now dead or too ill or infirm to attend.

How are they to be dealt with?

The answer is their evidence can be read or summarised to you, either as agreed evidence, or, if it cannot be agreed, because all or part of it is disputed, it can be read to you as evidence of what the witness has said to others and relied upon, so long as you bear in mind that the defendant through his counsel will not have had any opportunity to cross-examine or put an alternative case that might have changed your view about the witness’s reliability or accuracy.

Fourthly, this case is built mostly on a series of factual circumstances, which, say the prosecution, when you combine them, makes a compelling case that this defendant killed Nicola and Karen.

Do not think however that a circumstantial case is some poor relation to a case based on direct evidence such as accounts from eyewitnesses.

There are rarely witnesses to killings like these.

Indeed, the location for the sexual assaults and killings in this case was what has been referred to as a den; it was a small clearing in the woods hidden from view and from anyone else.

A case such as this, which is built on a series of factual circumstances, can provide an overwhelming picture of a defendant’s guilt, as we say the evidence does here, allowing you to draw fair and sensible conclusions from the facts.

But do not expect that every question you may have can be answered.

It would be an exceptional case, and this will not be one of them, where every question you may want answered will be answered.

If the prosecution is right that the defendant killed these little girls and successfully left the scene that night without being caught red-handed, then in so doing you can be sure that his intention was to ensure that there would be no answers to any number of questions if he was prosecuted for their murder.

Whether his success was by luck or design does not matter one bit.

The prosecution says that despite any unanswered questions you may have, the evidence in this case provides a compelling and powerful picture, consistent only with this defendant’s guilt of Nicola and Karen’s murder.

Fifthly, this: while the prosecution has no obligation in murder to prove the motive for any killing, the killing of these two girls clearly has the most obvious motive.

Plainly the main, if not the only, motive here was sexual and paedophilic.

As I have said, both these little girls were sexually assaulted, which I am going to have to tell you more about later.

Finally, let me add this. In the course of the case – indeed in the course of this opening address – I am going to be showing you a few images of the den and the girls as they were found.

Inevitably, they are upsetting. However, I can assure you that this is not being done to prejudice you against the defendant, but because, as you will come to see, the detail in those images cannot be reproduced in any other way and because they show that the defendant knew important detail about the situation and condition of the girls at the scene that only the killer could have known.

So, against that introduction, let me now come to the detail. Inevitably, I have a good deal of ground to cover and so this address will take some considerable time, but the detail will help you become familiar with the story of the case and where witnesses fit into it and with other evidence in the case.

BACKGROUND

Nicola (who people called ‘Nicky’) and Karen were both nine years old at the time of their death. Nicola was born on 22 February 1977 and Karen, who was slightly older than her, was born on 21 December 1976.

Had they lived, Nicola would now have been 41 and Karen would have been 42 in December this year.

As I have said, the two little girls lived in the Moulsecoomb area of Brighton and were near neighbours.

Nicola lived with her mother, Susan (now Eisman, but I shall call her Fellows to avoid confusion), her father Barrie, an older brother (unhappily recently deceased) and Mable, Susan’s mother and Nicola’s grandmother, in a house at 26 Newick Road in Moulsecoomb.

In around 1985, a man called Douglas (‘Dougie’) Judd came to live with the Fellows family as a lodger. Nicola went to Moulsecoomb Junior School situated in The Highway, Lewes Road, Moulsecoomb.

Karen, who went to Coldean Junior School on Coldean Lane, in the Coldean area of Brighton, lived with her mother Michelle (now Johnson, but again but I am going to call her Hadaway for the same reason), her father Lee (sadly since deceased) and a younger sister in a house at 20 Newick Road, a few doors down from the Fellows home.

An older brother was a boarder at a school in Brighton.

As I said before, although they went to different schools the girls lived close to each other and would regularly play together after school.

At the time she went missing, Karen had a small cut behind one of her ears from having a drinks can thrown at her.

According to Lee Hadaway, Karen’s late father, Nicola was the stronger of the two.

Indeed, Nicola’s mother told the police at the time that Nicola was a very friendly girl, she was very outgoing and would speak her mind to the point of embarrassing her mother.

According to Michelle Hadaway, Karen was a very sensible girl who knew right from wrong, but she could be cheeky like all children.

Both girls were afraid of the dark.

At the time of their murders in October 1986, the defendant, who was a roofer by occupation, was 20 years old. He was born on 9 February 1966.

He is now 52 years of age.

At that time, he had fair hair and he sported a moustache.

He was living in a ground floor flat at 17 Stephens Road, in the Hollingdean area of Brighton, which is about 1½ miles away from the home addresses of both the girls and he lived there with Jennifer (‘Jenny’) Johnson (now Robinson) with their young son, Victor.

He resprayed cars as a side-line and had sprayed a number of cars.

At the time of these events, the defendant owned a red Ford Escort, MGX 681P, which he had resprayed.

He also had a dog called Misty, which was a brown and white terrier type cross.

The defendant knew Barrie Fellows and Dougie Judd and he had been to the Fellows family home before, and it is known that he had had previous contact with both of the girls. However, Susan Fellows had not seen him at her home since about the second week of September 1986 and Michelle Hadaway, Karen’s mother, did not think that Karen had seen or been in contact with the defendant also since around September time.

Despite being in a long-term relationship with Jenny Johnson, the defendant was also in a sexual relationship with a 16-year-old girl called Marion Stevenson.

This caused tension between members of their friendship group and it was also a reason why neither the Fellows nor the Hadaway families wanted the girls to spend time with the defendant or Marion Stevenson.

With that background in mind, I am now going to come on to deal with the significant events from Thursday 9 October 1986, when the girls disappeared, to Friday 10 October 1986, when they were found dead, before moving away from the sequence of events when I will come to deal with several other discrete topics.

On Thursday 9 October 1986, Nicola returned home from school at about 3.30pm, a short time after which Michelle Hadaway (who was friendly with Susan Fellows) arrived at the Fellows home with another woman, Theresa Judd.

At the time, Susan Fellows was at home with her mother, Mable.

At about 4pm, the defendant called at the Fellows home, looking for his friend Dougie Judd who, as you will recall, was lodging there.

The defendant was with his girlfriend, Marion Stevenson and another young woman called Tracy Cox, both of whom Susan recalled being at the gate.

According to Susan Fellows, Nicola went to the door and showed the defendant that Dougie Judd was not in by opening the door of the downstairs bedroom he lodged in.

But there was no physical contact between Nicola and the defendant.

As they left, Nicola shouted after Marion Stevenson, who she did not like, “Slag!”

Read more: Russell Bishop murder trial: everything said by the prosecution on afternoon of day 1