The Child Murder Case That Changed Britain Forever | Famous Cases

“I always say that you know it was a it was a good thing for the young girls of Brighton and Hove and Sussex that that was the last time the bishop breathed free air in his life.”

“My name is Graeme Bartlett. I am a former police officer and now I’m a crime writer. When you hear the words babes in the woods, what’s the first image that comes to mind? The words babes in the wood just evoke this this image of of two little girls who were out innocently playing on an October evening and had their lives brutally and and viciously snatched away from them by a monster. Any double child murder is is obviously a horrific tragedy. This one has an extra edge because of the injustice that the family of both girls had to endure for 30 years. The case itself cast a deep shadow over Brighton and Hove for over a quarter of a century. So when this case broke, you know there there was no worse case going on at the time. We’d just come out of the aftermath of the Brighton bombing two years before, so the force was just getting back on its feet. But this was a case that everybody wanted to be part of, not not for any other reason than they wanted to help catch the killer.”

“So Brighton was quite a vibrant town. It was a town then, it wasn’t a city at that point. It was easy to get to for most people from from London and and from the south, so it was the go-to place for day trippers. It it had kind of two very distinct sides: it had the very sort of jolly touristy side with with all of those things, but also there was a lot of poverty in Brighton as well. You know, there there were wealthy people living there, but on the on the fringes, in in the council estates like Moulsecoomb and Whitehawk and Hollingdean and and other places. But it was also a very proud… it’s always been a very proud place, you know. People are very proud to say they’re Brightonians.”

“Once the girls had gone missing, the the the the horror and the fear started in Moulsecoomb. Moulsecoomb is a council estate on the northern edge of Brighton. Just absolute horror that these girls had gone missing, and then the ripples just kept went out across the whole city. Everybody was scared. A protective sort of shield went around every family. Kids weren’t walking to school on their own anymore. The the focus on the police to catch the killer was, quite rightly, really, really acute. Finding the killer, getting justice for those little girls, and finding answers for the families was everything the city was about for for weeks, frankly. The public and the press and politicians and the families were were were desperate for answers, and and rightly so. You know, the the the police are the only people that are going to be able to to solve this and bring this to a successful conclusion, making some good out of the bad. And we have to remember this is the days before social media and before people kind of had that voice that we we’re used to now. This was a day… in the days when you know it was all about the newspapers and and all about radio and all about public sort of showings of concern. But but still, the pressure was was immense on the officers, and I think that’s right. You know, I think it would be a very sad place if if people didn’t care.”

“The first call was from Karen Hadaway’s mom, and it was a 999 call, and she she phoned in to say that her little girl had been out playing with her friends and she hadn’t come home. The the call handler thankfully took that very seriously. I mean, when you’ve got a 9-year-old girl go missing, you should anyway, but very, very professional, the call handler. And she dispatched officers straight away to go and see what was it, what was it about? And and these calls weren’t unusual, but there must have been something in um in in Mrs. Hadaway’s voice that that told that that call handler that this was something different. So officers went to see what they could find out.”

“Nicola Fellows, Karen Hadaway: great friends, lived very close to one another on the Moulsecoomb estate. Quite big families, um both of them quite big families, both working-class families. I mean, I would describe them as kind of typical Moulsecoomb residents, you know. Very, very proud of their area, you know, very down-to-earth, very plain-speaking. Um absolutely adored the children. But the community itself was very protective, as you know. It was one of those communities where the children could go out and play on the streets and could go across to the park, you know, with their friends, and and it was just kind of you know there was this sort of mutual sort of surveillance, really, of each other’s children, where they could you know they could play safely even if they were out you know away from their actual home. There was something very, very different and very worrying about about this call, and and the officers, thankfully two very experienced, very good officers, recognized that straight away. And and sometimes it’s those gut feelings that that send you in one direction or another when you have missing children.”

“You know, whatever you think of the press and you know the relationship with the press at the time is pretty good, you need eyes out there, you need feet on the ground, you need people looking, you need people to be aware. And it you know that it was a… we’re looking for two two lost you know and and and the night was getting… the night was drawing in, it was getting cold, so this was all about finding the kids. So nothing the press could do could ever hinder that, you know. Even if they were negative towards the police, there’s no no such thing as bad publicity. We wanted the news out there as quickly as possible.”

“It was immediately sort of triggered as a as a what we would now call a critical incident. Immediately, this this was kind of all about getting as many officers and as many people out there to to to find the girls, but in a coordinated way, because you needed to kind of use your resources as best you could. So it needed that command with it as well. At the early stages, the the focus was very much around it being a Brighton case, and and it would be you know everyone was was was had a degree of optimism. Obviously, optimism kind of waned as the hours went on, but you know hoping that yeah, we would just they would just throw lots and lots of officers at it and they would find the girls. The girls would be be well and we could return to the family.”

“As things sort of developed into the next morning, and and it was picked up by the nationals, that impression changed. It was on… it was on the the you know lunchtime news and everything, you know. Everything was out there about it, about these missing girls and you know the the the activity that there was to try and find them, because it was a you know it was an important news story, you know, not just in Brighton but across the country.”

“The girls were last seen in a place called Wild Park, which is directly opposite the estate that they came in, and and it would be a natural place for them to search. And Wild Park is a is a big expanse of green with football pitches and playing fields etc., were surrounding it. It’s very dense woodland, uh forests etc., as part of the search.”

“…people going in and out of crime scenes wearing crime suits, that really wasn’t as strictly controlled as as it was now. So there were some… there were some flaws in that. I think that the prosecution was focused too much on a particular time, uh and and a time that could easily be disproved. My view is that the police should have tried to influence the prosecutor. There were flaws in that presentation of the case that would inevitably lead to an acquittal.”

“Fast forward to the the new trial, uh and the the the investigation was and the prosecution was was entirely focused on what could be proved without a shadow of doubt. So the forensic scientists developed a method that they they developed in the reinvestigation of the Stephen Lawrence murder, in that they had a a a very, very sort of eminent scientist actually doing the work, and then along… or not alongside them, but um at the same time, they had an equally eminent forensic scientist trying to basically undermine what that scientist was was was finding. It was really interesting that the defense didn’t bring their own forensic scientists to try and um undermine what the prosecution forensic scientists were saying, because actually all of that work had already been done. And I can only imagine that the defense went to other forensic scientists who looked at it and said, ‘Sorry, we can’t help you. They’ve done a… they’ve done a brilliant job.’”

“31 years to the day after Bishop was acquitted of the murders in Lewes Crown Court, an Old Bailey jury found him unanimously guilty of both of the girls’ murders. They took next to no time to do it, and it was the right, but a very late verdict. The judge took no time at all in telling Bishop, who didn’t appear either for the delivery of the verdict or for sentencing, that had he been older when he committed the crimes, he would have received a whole life sentence. What he did receive was a life sentence, but with a minimum tariff of 36 years, which means that he wouldn’t be eligible to even apply for parole for 36 years. Suddenly, the family got the justice that they’d been craving for over a quarter of a century.”

“I’m delighted with a sentence of 36 years, which reflects the magnitude of these terrible crimes against these two young girls. Bishop, I hope, will spend the remainder of his life behind bars, where he truly belongs. Finally justice, if not solace, for two families that suffered so much for so long. And it just goes to show that, you know, justice will catch up with you, and it was almost the final piece of the jigsaw for the family in resolving, in as much as a way as you could ever could, the deaths of their their beautiful little girls.”

“How do you think this case shaped you?”

“I would say this is probably the most um disturbing, frustrating, but affirming investigation that I’ve ever been involved in. And I say affirming because it taught me that with tenacity, with skill, with the right people, and with an open mind, even if the police and the prosecution can get things wrong before, they can always… they’ll never give up. I think that what what this case tells us is that when tragedies leave the headlines, when the public stop talking about deaths, murders, and loss, the families still carry that burden for the rest of their life. And if they don’t get justice, then the depth of their grief is even worse than than it would be otherwise. So I think the police have a duty to continue to to to to track down killers, to continue to work with families, uh to continue to influence law change where it’s necessary, so that people who commit these heinous crimes don’t get away with it.”