A mother’s gut-wrenching account of the “Babes in the Wood” murders tells of how her love for her daughter sustained her fight for justice for more than three decades.
On Thursday, October 9, 1986, Michelle Hadaway's nine-year-old daughter Karen and her best friend Nicola Fellows were murdered and sexually assaulted in a Brighton park.
The killer, Russell Bishop, was only convicted of the murders in December 2018, having been cleared at an early trial in 1987.
My Girl recounts in vivid detail three decades of suffering, determination and resilience from the moment Karen didn’t return home for her dinner, Bishop being acquitted in 1987, the vilification of Nicola’s father Barrie, the devastating impact the murders had on the two families and the hope for justice as laws changed and scientific advancements were made.
In the book, after Karen fails to come home for her dinner, Michelle relives her 23-hour search for her daughter while seven months pregnant.
“I was frantic. In Wild Park I was clambering over tree trunks, struggling through bushes,” she wrote.
“I didn’t think about my unborn baby. I searched all night, going home from time to time for water, but never staying for more than ten minutes.”
The book also reveals the huge toll the murders and subsequent fight for justice had on the family.
Michelle described how her husband Lee was never the same again after having to identify Karen’s body.
“He went in that place the man I loved and adored - a wonderful, kind, caring father to our children – and came out of that place a stranger, a different person. We had lost him.”
Another passage of the book describes how she felt in January 2022 when she was told of Bishop’s death.
She wrote: “For us, it was not a day of wild celebration, but there was a quiet satisfaction in knowing that he was finally and completely out of our lives.
“He was apparently struggling to breathe, so I like to think he experienced what the girls must have felt as he throttled them.”
In the final paragraphs of the book Michelle describes how she is coping now and how writing My Girl has helped her.
“My life is all about my family, and the shadow that hung over me for all those years has finally gone,” she wrote.
“Writing my story has helped me a great deal. Throughout the years that we fought for justice for Karen, I felt a responsibility to hold all the details of her murder in my memory – to be the bearer of all the facts of the case.
“Now I have set everything down on paper I am relieved of that duty, and I can simply carry the joyous memories of my daughter in my heart, thinking only of the girl I knew, not how she died.
“My girl Karen and her friend Nicola can now rest peacefully, knowing that I and all my friends and family never gave up the fight for their story to be heard, and their murderer to be held to account.”
My Girl by Michelle Hadaway is out now (£8.99 Penguin Books).
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