'Time capsule' of decades-old forensic evidence proves paedophile killed nine-year-old girls, court told

Prosecutor tells Old Bailey that modern DNA profiling can now show Russell Bishop murdered Brighton schoolgirls Karen Hadaway and Nicola Fellows in 1986

Brighton schoolgirls Karen Hadaway (PA)

Forensic samples preserved three decades ago now represent a “time capsule” that with the help of modern DNA profiling can provide “devastating” proof that a predatory paedophile killed two nine-year-old girls in 1986, a court heard.

The Old Bailey was told that Russell Bishop, now 52, sexually assaulted and strangled Karen Hadaway and Nicola Fellows in a Brighton park, but escaped justice when he was acquitted at a murder trial in 1987.

Three years after that acquittal, the court heard, Bishop grabbed a seven-year-old girl off the street, bundled her into the boot of a stolen car, and strangled and sexually assaulted her before leaving her for dead in gorse bushes at the Devil’s Dyke beauty spot in Sussex.

The girl, however, survived to identify her assailant, and Bishop was convicted of the 1990 attack.

The Court of Appeal has now quashed Bishop’s 1987 acquittal, allowing the convicted sex offender to be tried again in connection with the deaths of Nicola and Karen.

Bishop has always denied the murders of the two girls.

But Brian Altman QC, prosecuting, told the jury the forensic evidence collected in 1986 could now be used to help prove Bishop’s guilt.

He said they also showed that a light blue ‘Pinto’ branded sweatshirt found discarded on the night of the murder had been worn by Bishop when he killed the girls.

Mr Altman added that in 1986 the samples were taken in such a way that they were “locked in place and time”.

They represent a “time capsule”, he said, adding: “This is important, because items were re-examined in 2005, in 2012 and after by other scientists using modern techniques and science.

“The conclusions they arrive at in not one, but in several different scientific disciplines, are devastating for the defendant because they prove scientifically not only that he was the wearer of the Pinto [sweatshirt] and that that garment was connected to his home environment, but also that it is linked to the two girls and therefore their murder.

“Quite simply, its wearer, the defendant, wore it at the time of the murders and he was their killer.”

Russell Bishop in 2018 (PA)

Mr Altman said the re-examinations backed up the conclusions reached by forensic examiners in 1986 that there had been an exchange of fibres between the Pinto sweatshirt and the tops of both girls.

He added that in 1986 forensic evidence had also connected the sweatshirt to Bishop, because fibres from it had been found on a pair of his trousers recovered from his home.

Mr Altman said such evidence, updated by modern re-examinations, should be viewed in the context of the glaring similarities between the murder of Nicola and Karen, and the attack on the seven-year-old girl in 1990, for which Bishop had been convicted.

He outlined to the jury how Bishop had seized the seven-year-old in February 1990, as she went on roller blades from her home in Whitehawk, Brighton, to some local shops.

He bundled her into the boot of a stolen Ford Cortina and drove 14 miles to Devil’s Dyke on the South Downs, the court heard.

“He then put his hands around her throat and strangled her,” Mr Altman said. “She fell unconscious and while unconscious he stripped her naked and sexually assaulted her.

“He took her unconscious naked body from the car and dumped her in dense, gorse bushes in the woods, where he left her for dead.”

“Despite her injuries,” Mr Altman continued, “She survived. She regained consciousness and managed to struggle out of the gorse bushes where she was found by some passers-by.”

Emphasising that the murders of Karen and Nicola and the attack on the seven-year-old all involved strangulation followed by sexual assault and hiding victims in densely wooded or overgrown areas, Mr Altman said: “The similarities are so striking and so obvious that they, in combination with all the other evidence against this man, point to him and only him as [Karen and Nicola’s] killer.”

The trial continues.