The mother of a murdered schoolgirl who was killed almost 37 years ago says she is only just now beginning to grieve after decades fighting for justice.
Speaking on the release of her book My Girl, the first and only insider’s account of the Babes in the Wood murders, Michelle Hadaway said writing has helped her process what happened all those years ago when her daughter Karen and her friend Nicola Fellows were discovered in Brighton’s Wild Park on October 10, 1986.
The nine-year-olds were found lying close together in dense undergrowth and had been sexually assaulted and strangled.
Unemployed labourer Russell Bishop was charged with both girls’ murders, but he walked free in 1987 after a three-week trial at Lewes Crown Court.
The jury found him not guilty after just two hours of deliberations due to a robust attack on the forensic evidence.
A key piece of the prosecution’s evidence rested on the recovery of a blue Pinto sweatshirt which they were confident held a cache of forensic clues. Under questioning previously, Bishop denied the sweatshirt belonged to him but his partner, Jennifer Johnson, alleged the sweatshirt was his.
At the trial, however, Johnson changed her story, telling the jury she had never seen the top before and indeed that her statement had been fabricated by the police and her initials forged.
For decades, Michelle fought tirelessly alongside Nicola’s parents Barrie and Sue Fellows to get justice for the girls.
A major change in the law of double jeopardy in 2005, which previously prevented a defendant in a murder case once acquitted from being retried for the same crime, meant police could rearrest a defendant if there was new and compelling evidence.
The case was re-examined, and new forensic evidence was presented, including a "one in a billion" DNA match to Bishop on the Pinto sweatshirt and on Karen Hadaway's left forearm.
Finally, in 2018, 31 years to the day when Bishop was first acquitted, the jury took less than three hours to find him guilty of the murders.
He was sentenced to life imprisonment and to serve a minimum of 36 years.
He had already been serving a life sentence with a minimum of 14 years after being convicted in 1990 of a similar attack on another Brighton girl. He was found guilty of kidnapping, molestation and the attempted murder of seven-year-old Rachael Watts.
“I had so much kept inside me and my life was on hold,” said Michelle.
“For all those years I held everything in this little bubble inside my head.
“As time went on, I decided maybe I should write a book.
“I thought maybe it would help bring things to a close.
“I felt that with my health not being good and with having all this pressure that I’ve got in my head about it all, if I don’t let it out it’s going to burst, and I’ll remember nothing.
“So many people’s lives were destroyed by what he did to those little girls.
“When we didn’t get justice, we said we’d never stop fighting.
“So we carried on.
“I’m never going to forget about what happened all those years ago.
“It’s something I’ll take to the grave with me.
“Writing the book did help me to free myself from the torment.
“It was about getting out there what we had to face on our journey.
“It has been a sad and lonely road.
“It has been heartbreaking at times.
“But in the end we got there.
“We just didn’t think it would take 30 odd years to get through.”
The 66-year-old said she wants the world to know the truth about what happened and about “evil monster” Bishop.
She spoke of her fury at the “scapegoating” and hounding of Nicola’s father Barrie, who was accused of murdering the girls.
“The world needs to know what a monster Bishop was,” she said.
“And Brighton needs to know about all the people who stuck up and protected him.
“I owe it to Karen and Nicola to tell the world about him.
“He wiped everybody’s lives out in a blink of an eye.
“Barrie Fellows was used as a scapegoat.
“How must he have felt and his family all those years to be made out to be something that he wasn’t.
“It didn’t just affect him, it affected me as well and my children.
“For 31 years that poor man was still made out to be the perpetrator.”
Michelle said she felt nothing when she got the news of Bishop’s death in January 2022.
A report, from the Prisons and Probation Ombudsman (PPO), concluded that the 55-year-old died from Covid-19 pneumonitis and heart disorders and said that he also had diabetes and metastatic bowel cancer
“I spoke to victim’s support and they asked if I wanted any updates about him and I said no just ring me when he’s dead,” she said.
The mum of five says she has now started therapy and has recently become a great grandmother for the first time.
She has a memory garden at her home in Walton, Surrey, where she remembers Karen, Nicola, and her husband Lee, who died of a heart attack in 1998.
Michelle said Rachael, who was instrumental in putting Bishop behind bars, is always in her thoughts too.
“My little great grandson keeps me going, he keeps my feet on the ground because I’m not getting any younger,” she said.
“I’ve started to get therapy and I’ve started to heal a bit.
“And I’m actually trying to start to grieve.
“Because I’ve not been able to grieve for that number of years I don’t know how to.
“Because I had to focus on getting justice for those little girls.
“I would never have got through anything without my friends and family.”
My Girl by Michelle Hadaway is out now (£8.99 Penguin Books).
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