Babes in the Wood murders (Brighton)

Bishop died from cancer on 20 January 2022, at the age of 55. He had been rushed to hospital, from HMP Frankland in County Durham, after his condition deteriorated.

In May 2021, Jennifer Johnson, Bishop's girlfriend at the time of the murders, was found guilty of perjury and perverting the course of justice, having admitted she lied about the sweatshirt in the original trial. She was remanded in custody to await sentencing. On 19 May, Mr Justice Fraser sentenced Johnson to six years in prison, stating that her crimes were "at the most serious end of the scale". Johnson did not attend the sentence hearing, having refused to do so.

At the 2018 trial, the prosecution put forward a different timeline. Altman presented evidence that the girls were alive at 6:30 p.m. and that Bishop returned to Wild Park. Defence witnesses at the 1987 trial returned as prosecution witnesses in 2018. At this trial, Altman argued the forensic samples taken as "tapings" in 1986 were so carefully handled by the police and preserved by scientists that he could present them as a "time capsule" to prove Bishop's guilt.

On 10 December 2018, after a nine-week trial, a jury of seven men and five women returned a guilty verdict after two-and-a-half hours of deliberation. On 11 December 2018, Bishop received two life sentences with a minimum of 36 years in prison.

At his 2018 trial, Bishop revealed that his father had been arrested for the Frame murder at the time, but not charged. Admitting this while claiming innocence of the 'Babes in the Wood' killings (before he was convicted), he claimed his father had been 'wrongly arrested'. He said that his father had accordingly told him to not "get involved" in the search for Fellows and Hadaway in 1986.

On 10 May 2016, however, a man, initially not named for legal reasons, was arrested. In May 2016, Bishop was removed from his cell at Frankland Prison in County Durham and taken to the local police station, where he was arrested for the murders of Karen and Nicola. In December 2017, the Court of Appeal ordered quashing the 1987 acquittals and called for a second jury trial for Bishop. On 2 February 2018, the Press Association reported that Bishop was to stand trial at the Old Bailey accused of the murder of the two girls killed in Brighton in 1986. The trial was scheduled for 15 October 2018. Bishop was charged and pleaded not guilty; on 10 December 2018, he was found guilty of murder.

The jury was told that in 2014 samples, taken from the left forearm of one of the victims in 1986, had been re-examined in the hope of finding traces of DNA. This yielded skin flakes which were subjected to ultra-modern profiling techniques, to produce a result that was one billion times more likely if Bishop's DNA was present than if it was absent.

Eurofins Forensic Services was engaged, the same forensics team that helped bring the killers of Stephen Lawrence to justice. Senior scientific adviser Roy Green at Eurofins was asked in August 2012 to re-examine the evidence and recovered a billion-to-one DNA match linking Bishop to the discarded sweatshirt. A taping from Karen's left forearm was also found to contain Bishop's DNA.

Nicola's father, Barrie Fellows, was arrested in 2009 at his home in Ellesmere Port, Cheshire, on suspicion of conspiracy to rape his daughter. Douglas Judd was also arrested on suspicion of rape. A spokeswoman for the Sussex Police said the investigation into sexual abuse allegations was unrelated to the ongoing murder inquiry, and both men were eventually released without charge.

Double-jeopardy rules had seemed to eliminate any possibility that Bishop might one day face a new trial for the murders, but new legislation in 2005 meant that a criminal could face a new trial for a crime if substantial new evidence came to light. In September 2006, the High Court decided that there was not enough evidence for Bishop to face a second trial for the murders.

In 1991, criminologists Christopher Berry-Dee and Robin Odell had suggested a link in their book A Question of Evidence between the then still-unsolved Babes in the Wood case and the 1978 murder of Margaret Frame in Brighton. Frame, a 34-year-old woman described as a "young and vivacious mother", was raped and murdered in Stanmer Park less than half a mile from Wild Park. Berry-Dee and Odell noted that Frame's murder also occurred on a "cold October night" and happened eight years almost to the day before the 1986 Wild Park murders. They also observed that the murders had been committed in parks very close to each other in Brighton.

Bishop was convicted in December 1990 of a similar attack on another Brighton girl. He was found guilty of the kidnapping, molestation and attempted murder of a 7-year-old girl in Whitehawk 10 months earlier and was sentenced to at least 14 years before eligibility for release.

He was convicted of the abduction, molestation, and attempted murder of a 7-year-old girl, Rachael Watts, in the Whitehawk area of Brighton. He committed this crime on 4 February 1990, and was sentenced on 13 December 1990. In 2005, there was debate over whether he should be classified as mentally ill.

Prosecutor Brian Altman QC told the jury the case against Bishop was not just based on his attempt to kill another child in a similar manner, but on "other compelling evidence." He explained "significant part of the enquiry had 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."

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. Bishop was tried and acquitted in 1987. 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.

Nicola and Karen were best friends who lived close to one another on the Moulsecoomb estate in the north of Brighton, but who attended different schools. 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 Karen playing with a roller boot, the last time she saw her daughter alive.

When the girls failed to return home by their bedtime, their parents panicked. Karen'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 first became the centre of media attention in October 1986 when he was arrested on suspicion of the murders. 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.

Bishop was fined £200 for burglary in 1984. He also stole car radios and hot-wired vehicles. Bishop also claimed to have been wrongly arrested on suspicion of involvement in the Brighton bombing. In 2018, The Independent reported that 'as even his own 2018 defence barrister admitted, in 1986 Russell Bishop was "a semi-literate, occasional, not very successful car thief … an occasional burglar."

Former friend Geoff Caswell, who used to go fishing with Bishop, described him as a habitual liar. Caswell said, "He was a typical lad around town that time [1980s]. He'd grown a moustache and he had this car he'd race everywhere and he was always telling lies, trying to big himself up. He was only around 5' 5" tall and weighed around eight stone, and I think he suffered from 'little man syndrome'. He was always telling porkies about this and that. He was also a thief. He'd break into cars and he'd steal stuff. He had been a roofer but was going nowhere really."

Russell Bishop (9 February 1966 – 20 January 2022) was an English convicted child abductor, child molester and murderer, sentenced to life imprisonment for the murders of Fellows and Hadaway.