Original subtitles

When a murder is left unsolved...

No weapons, no eyewitnesses, no forensic evidence at all.

There was nothing. ..And a killer is on the loose...

These people are still out there. Who's going to be next?

..Britain's cold case detectives will never give up.

The best way to solve a cold case is to keep it warm.

No matter how long it takes... This case dominated my life.

..They'll investigate every angle and uncover every clue...

Searching through thousands of people.

They think they've got away with it, they haven't.

..Until the killer is caught at last. We all leave a trace.

We'd finally identified that golden nugget. Bingo, we've got it!

Ok, thank you. All right.

It was the 9th of October, 1986, in moulsecoomb, Brighton...

..When two nine-year-old girls, Karen hadaway and Nicola fellows,

vanished into thin air after out playing with friends.

They went off and played on their own but, as it got later

and darker, their parents started to worry about them and wonder where

they were and ultimately decided, no, they needed to call the police.

Nicola's dad, Barrie fellows,

immediately new how serious this was.

She was very prompt with Thursday nights -

top of the pops, EastEnders, would not miss them for anything,

you know, even if she was along her friends', she would not miss them.

Cheeky, naughty, just a nine-year-old, wasn't she?

Innocent, still believed in father Christmas, loved her mate,

Karen, along the road, inseparable.

They were good kids as well - they'd look out for each other.

This was a case of two children who'd disappeared from plain sight.

It was just too horrific for words.

Everyone was desperate to find these children.

Detective Graham bartlett's team wasted no time

and began a massive search for the two girls.

You had lots of police officers coming in from neighbouring

divisions as well as Brighton itself.

Police in Brighton have begun a widespread search for two

small girls who disappeared outside a sweet shop in moulsecoomb.

Uniformed police constable Paul Smith was

drafted in by Graham's team to help run the search on the ground.

We were doing house-to-house enquiries on the day that

the girls had disappeared.

Karen? Nicola?

And there were a lot of people searching.

Mums and dads who knew the girls - they were all up there with

families, searching up the back woods and that.

Moulsecoomb was one of the big council estates that

attracted a lot of policing, but underlying all that was this

strong sense of community - people felt they belonged in moulsecoomb.

Come on, then!

The community was desperate to help.

Barbara castleton was a friend and neighbour.

Come on, then! They were quite popular kids.

They were always together. Knew them quite well.

They'd always wave, "hello!" And you'd say, "all right, girls?"

"Yep," and off they'd go.

Obviously, I asked my children, had they seen them anywhere?

And my daughter said she'd seen them over by coldean chip shop earlier.

There was a real sense of urgency

and activity amongst the community - they were worried.

This was out of the ordinary.

Every second counted in the desperate search but,

as night fell, there was still no sign of the girls.

The following morning, the search was intensified.

Constable Paul Smith led a team of police officers

and members of the public searching woodland in wild park,

close to the estate where the girls lived.

There's a sudden shout, one of these lads appears and says,

"we found them, we found them!"

So I went crashing up through the undergrowth

and, as I got to the top, there's a path goes across.

I got there, went over to the girls,

and they were lying as if they were sunbathing.

I took their pulse, and they were absolutely stone-cold,

like marble, and they were obviously dead.

The bodies of the two young girls missing

since yesterday evening have been found.

Neither anybody went anywhere near or touched them.

I think I was probably in shock a bit.

It's not a nice thing to find two dead children.

I had nightmares of finding the girls,

and one of the nightmares was going down to take their pulse

and Nicky fellows looked at me and said, "please help us."

And that really was horrible.

The girls' bodies were found in a wooden den.

Detectives now cordoned off the site

and broke the tragic news to the children's parents.

Three policeman walked in - I'll remember it for my life.

A little man in the middle said, "mr fellows, I'm afraid I've got to..."

Didn't let him finish.

I went absolutely ape. I was just uncontrollable.

And it was down to Barrie to identify

his own daughter's dead body.

She was in the corner on this trolley.

And I walked across and said, "can I touch her?" And they said, "no."

That hurt, that I couldn't touch my own little girl.

Even today, it still gets me. She was my life. She's my only daughter.

Forensic investigators quickly established the shocking

details of how the girls had died.

The postmortems were carried out the night that the girls were found,

and both revealed that the girls had been physically assaulted,

sexually assaulted and strangled, which led to their death.

It was quite clear that this was a brutal,

sadistic killer that had brought these girls' life to an end.

The children - they were just left for the police to find

so, already, they'll be building up a picture that this is a perpetrator

that was driven by a sexual motivation who didn't plan enough to

conceal the bodies and therefore they're looking at somebody

who is driven by an impulse to offend.

They would determine that it's very likely that this offender

would offend again.

In 1986, frank le duc was a reporter.

He followed every step of the case.

The death of a child in Brighton

and hove in this sort of way is almost unheard of.

It's the only double murder of children that I can think of.

There was concern all the time the killer was at large -

streets that seemed safe, parks that seemed safe, parents were

worried and I think began to keep their kids on a shorter leash.

While the community struggled to come to terms with the shocking

news, the investigation quickly entered a dramatic new phase.

So, by now, this was a full-blown double murder investigation,

the like of which Sussex police had not seen before.

Officers were being drafted in from all over the county to

work on this to try and catch the killer before they could kill again.

With a hunch that the killer could be local,

Graham's team brought in inspector John rodway to lead a massive

operation to canvass members of the public around the moulsecoomb area.

This was far, far bigger than anything I'd ever done before.

At that time, I was a father of a seven-year-old,

and I was shocked at what had happened.

As a police officer,

I was determined to find out what happened and who was responsible.

I required in excess of 200 police officers to start this enquiry.

The role of the officers in the house-to-house was to find out

who was there on the day of the murders and on the day after.

We set up a system of road checks.

If you can imagine groups of 20 police officers standing on the

side of the road with clipboards, 20-40 cars would come through.

We interviewed over 2,000 people.

Incredibly, within just days of the murders,

the massive search had identified a suspect.

His name stunned everyone.

October 1986 - the bodies of two nine-year-old girls were

found in the moulsecoomb area of Brighton.

Now DC Graham bartlett's team was running one of the biggest

murder investigations in the history of Sussex police.

But little did they know that a suspect was lurking in their midst.

His name - Russell bishop. I used to play football with him.

I was in dismay. I thought, "why? It can't be him!

"What makes you think it's him?" Couldn't grasp it.

Russell bishop knew the families of the two girls

and the girls themselves.

He played darts in the local pub where the families would

go as well, which was part of their social life.

Russell bishop had been interviewed because he'd actually seen them

in the park with the park keeper, bumped into them.

He'd said some strange things to Paul Smith.

PC Paul Smith was the officer who had found

the bodies of the two young girls.

One of the members of the public helping him

in the search was 20-year-old Russell bishop -

a father of three and well known in the neighbourhood.

I used to smoke a pipe then, so I thought, I'll have a quick smoke.

So I lit my pipe and a voice behind said, "oi! What are you doing?"

And I thought it was the superintendent,

and I turned round - it was Russell bishop.

I said to bishop, you know, "are you going to carry on searching?"

He said, "if they're dead and I find them, I'll get nicked, won't I?"

I said, "what do you mean, you'll get nicked?" He said, "well, I've got a criminal record, you know.

"I'm sure the police will think it's me."

But when he said that, at the time, cos I was on like police mode,

I thought, hm, strange, it's a bit off, isn't it?

A bit weird.

When the bodies were actually discovered,

bishop had run into the woods ahead of PC Smith but, when police took

his statement, his account differed from the experienced constable's.

So, in his statement, bishop said that he touched the girls

or took their pulse - that's a complete lie.

All the time I was there,

neither he nor anybody touched the bodies or took their pulse,

and I stayed with the girls until the scenes of crime guys came,

and then I left. He was never there longer than a couple of seconds.

When challenged later,

bishop changed his account to say he never touch the bodies.

Graham's team were left deeply suspicious.

So, by the 31st of October,

the concerns about bishop's general

behaviour around the time that the girls went missing and the

bodies were found - the decision was taken to arrest him.

He was very detached about it, considering that he knew

the fellows family really well, and he must have known the hadaways.

He didn't seem to be that bothered, you know, he wasn't agitated,

he didn't look like he was going to cry or he was upset in any way,

but I took that to be shock.

It was a shock when his name was put up.

I was good friends with his mum, with Sylvia,

and I just knew him as Sylvia's son.

From what I knew of him, he'd always been quite a quiet lad,

and you sort of think, no, it couldn't be him.

So far, all Graham's team had against their only suspect

was intuition and no hard evidence.

So bishop was interviewed for a number of hours

and continued to keep changing his story about whether or not

he did go to the girls to then change his story to

the fact that he did go to them.

Bishop was seen before the girls disappeared,

talking to the park keeper and the girls, that he'd

bumped into them in wild park, and was wearing a light blue top.

A blue sweatshirt had been found by a member of the public

near moulsecoomb train station, close to wild park,

where the girls were found.

Graham's team now asked whether this sweatshirt could be bishop's.

Police went to Russell bishop's house to see his girlfriend,

Jenny Johnson, and took the sweatshirt with them,

and the first thing that she said when they walked in the door was,

"oh, you brought Russell's sweatshirt back."

They took a witness statement from her to say that it was

Russell's sweatshirt.

This might place bishop near the crime scene, but that was all.

It did not connect him to the actual crime,

so Graham's team of detectives requested a forensic comparison

between bishop's sweatshirt and the girls' bodies.

Tapings were taken from the girls,

so that's sellotape effectively being applied to the skin to

then recover anything that might be loose on there,

be that fibres, hair, anything like that, and then that's then examined.

While detectives awaited the results of the forensic analysis,

they had no option but to release bishop on bail.

And the first thing he'd done was come home and knocked on my door,

and his first words out of his mouth was, "I didn't top the kids."

And I thought, whoa! Not, Barrie, how are ya?

Not, I didn't kill your children. "I didn't top the kids."

Bishop's behaviour may have been suspicious,

but they still had little hard evidence against him.

Then the results of the forensic investigation into

the blue sweatshirt came back.

There were fibres matching the girls' clothes

on the pinto sweatshirt, there was traces of foliage on

the sweatshirt that related to the scene where the girls were found.

There was hope.

This meant that the killer had almost certainly been wearing

a blue top at the scene of the crime.

If the top was indeed bishop's,

detectives felt they had a watertight case against him.

The police were confident, as were the crown prosecution service,

that they had sufficient evidence to convict bishop and the forensic

evidence that was built around the sweatshirt, the girls' clothing

and the scene of the murder pointing towards bishop being the killer.

The family were obviously still grieving horrendously

for the loss of their child.

There was a satisfaction that the police had apparently found

who'd killed their little girls,

but a horror that it was somebody they knew.

Bishop was charged with both murders

and tried at lewes crown court, November 1987, in a four-week trial.

Russell bishop denied killing Karen hadaway and Nicola fellows.

There would be no-one

who worked in Sussex police around that time that didn't only

know about the case but was also intimately following the case.

It gripped everybody.

Despite Graham's team's confidence in their case against bishop,

what was about to unfold in the court room rocked

the investigation to its core.

The prosecution itself wasn't perhaps the best presented case

there's ever been, and there was a great deal of tension.

The forensic scientist, when he was called to give evidence, ended up in

a spat with the defence solicitor in terms of his methods, his recording,

why he didn't examine certain things and focused on others.

It got to the stage where

the scientist pulled out a notebook and started writing down what

he was being accused of whilst he was in the witness box.

I'd never seen that before.

Constable Paul Smith was also in court,

fully prepared to give evidence about bishop's

behaviour during the search for the girls' bodies.

He was equally astounded by the court proceedings.

When we went to trial, the prosecuting barrister -

I was waiting for him to initiate the conversation where bishop

had said to me on the path, "if we find them

"and they're dead, I'm going to get nicked," and he didn't.

I was quite surprised, really.

There were more surprises to come.

The prosecution's key witness was bishop's

girlfriend, Jenny Johnson.

Her evidence that he owned the blue sweatshirt was what linked

bishop to the crime scene and the crime.

The trial of Russell bishop at lewes crown court in 1987 was

astonishing in many ways.

One of the key prosecution witnesses, his common-law wife,

Jenny Johnson, became what's termed a hostile witness.

Her testimony in the witness box shocked everyone.

She changed her story in the most dramatic fashion.

She stuck to the story that that sweatshirt,

the pinto sweatshirt, wasn't bishop's.

She said that the police had made her sign the statement,

hadn't let her read the statement

and that she'd never seen the jumper before.

Without proof that it was bishop's, the forensic

link between the sweatshirt and the girls' bodies was meaningless.

But worse was yet to come.

There was another weak point in the prosecution's case which

the defence now began to exploit.

The prosecution wedded themselves to a time of death

for the girls, and that time was 6:30 on the night.

Now, the reason that they did that was

because bishop was seen to leave the park at 6:30.

Crucially, a defence witness claimed to have seen the girls still alive,

eating chips near wild park, 15 minutes later at 6.45.

The jury was left to decide what to believe.

The very first question that they were asked to address was,

"if you don't believe the girls were dead by 6.30, you must acquit."

That was really significant,

because the evidence showed that they were still alive at 6.30.

After just two hours of deliberation,

the jury returned a verdict...

..Not guilty.

And bishop's brother was bursting to share the news.

Reporter: The verdict... Yay!

I loved that girl.

Do you feel angry now?

No. It just hurts.

Every detective that had been involved in the investigation,

from the senior investigating officer right the way

down the ranks, were devastated with the result. Absolutely devastated.

The hadaways and the fellows hadn't got justice for their little girls.

And that hurt.

That rug was pulled away from them by that verdict.

While Karen and Nicola's families and Sussex police

tried to come to terms with bishop's acquittal,

he made the most of his freedom.

Russell bishop was paid £15,000 by the news of the world

for his story. After he was acquitted, he left court

and went for a slap-up meal at the Gatwick Hilton

with journalists from news of the world,

where family members - Jenny Johnson - gathered as well.

Whether or not bishop was the killer,

no sense that there were two little girls that didn't come home

on the 9th of October.

And it was, frankly, horrendous.

Reeling from the verdict,

the tight-knit community of moulsecoomb were living in fear.

"He's been acquitted. He didn't do it. Who did?

"Who's still wandering the estate or living on the estate?"

And you started to think, "well, I wonder if it was that person,"

or "I wonder if it was that person."

Now bishop was acquitted, he went back to the estate -

and his life - still under suspicion.

You're looked at. Even though there's no nasty comments I've had,

it's always that feeling I've got, and it isn't a very nice one.

But with no witnesses or new evidence pointing Graham's team

towards any other possible killer, the investigation ran cold.

In the summer of 1989, after two years and no new leads,

the local community's frustration turned into open protest.

They can't shelve it and let it gather dust. I think it's wrong.

There's a man out there who murdered two little girls.

When they said they weren't looking for anyone else,

I was not very happy.

Barrie fellows orchestrated a very public campaign,

backed up with petitions, public meetings and, subsequently,

a march on the police station to reopen the investigation.

The problem for police was a law known as double jeopardy.

It meant that back in 1987, someone acquitted of a crime

could not be tried for the same offence of second time.

I understand why people would want the police

to have reopened the investigation. The pressure was huge.

There was political pressure, there was family pressure.

Though detectives were taken aback by the family's demand,

the sight of one man on the march staggered Graham and his team.

And who was front and centre of the march?

Who was interviewed on television in an orange reflective vest,

as if he was a marshal on the march?

Russell bishop.

I want to see this case reopened.

My name isn't cleared until someone else is brought to justice -

the real person.

In one of their biggest ever murder investigations,

Sussex police thought they had identified Russell bishop as the man

who sexually assaulted and then murdered two nine-year-old girls.

But he'd been acquitted by a jury, leaving police with no other leads.

Back in the community, bishop took part in a protest

aimed at forcing police to find the killer.

Russell bishop took part in that demonstration, in that march,

in that demand for the police to re-investigate the crime.

Chanting: Justice!

And the families felt compelled to walk alongside the bishops.

When he came on that march, jumping on and off buses,

showing bits of paper to people - "we want justice" -

I didn't want to go on that march.

But my brother said, "you've got to, to save face."

Bishop's common-law wife, Jenny Johnson,

whose dramatic change of evidence had helped acquit him,

made her feelings clear to Sussex police.

Despite the protests,

there was nothing Graham and his team could do.

With no new evidence and no other suspects, the case ran cold

and the killer remained at large.

Then, in 1990,

over three years after Karen hadaway and Nicola fellows were murdered,

police received the call they'd been dreading.

I was on a late shift.

And as I drove back into the police station, two or three police cars

came rushing past me on blue lights and sirens.

The sergeant then came out and said a little girl

had been out roller-skating in whitehawk and had gone missing.

She was discovered later that day,

over ten miles away in an isolated area known as devil's dyke.

She was crying, she was scratched, she was cold,

and she was wandering around this hilltop.

Devil's dyke is a very bleak part of the south downs.

And she was up there just wandering around, naked,

this little seven-year-old girl.

She'd been kidnapped and then sexually assaulted.

She was then thrown into the bushes and left for dead.

It was almost identical to the murders of Karen and Nicola

nearly four years earlier.

Determined to find who did this,

Graham threw everything he had at the investigation,

whilst inspector John rodway was put in charge of carrying out

a fingertip search of the wilderness where the girl had been found.

I developed a system whereby there were three lines.

The first line of officers had bushcutters, axes.

The second line had rakes and forks,

to find out if there was any evidence.

And the third line was scenes of crime officers,

who would, as soon as something was found,

photograph it, bag it and keep it sterile.

The search was massive.

There was nothing left on the area that we searched.

It was all taken down to bare soil,

to find absolutely everything that was there.

John's intensive search paid off.

Under a tree was some rolled-up clothing

that was of the same colour and the same type

the abducted girl was wearing.

The scenes of crime officers, when they removed it,

found everything that we were looking for,

even down to the pound coin that the little girl had been given

by her father to go shopping.

John hoped these finds would hold clues to the girl's attacker.

Meanwhile, detectives took a statement

from the seven-year-old girl.

And her account stunned everyone.

Her memory and recollection was staggering.

She was able to remember not only the person that had snatched her

and dumped her in the boot of the car, she could describe

what was in the boot of the car by look, sound, smell.

The girl said the car she'd been abducted in was a red Ford cortina.

This astounded police.

One of the uniformed chief inspectors had come in and said,

"did you know that Russell bishop was seen

"with a red cortina the other day?"

So he sent a couple of dcs out there to go and see him,

and they got there, and bishop was, at that time of a Sunday evening,

furiously cleaning his car inside and out.

He was clearly trying to destroy evidence of something.

Police immediately brought bishop in for questioning.

The piece that brought all this together

was an identification parade.

And I'm going to ask you in a moment to look through the window

at the line of men who are sitting there.

I shall then ask you whether the person whom you saw on that day

is here.

Ten people were brought in to the identification parade,

and she definitively said...

Number nine. You think it's number nine? Thank you.

Number nine was Russell bishop.

Bishop was confident that he would not be identified

by this little seven-year-old girl, but he underestimated her.

New advances in forensic science now offered Graham's team

further evidence to link bishop to the crime, through DNA.

The nail in the coffin for bishop here was this was one of

the first cases where Sussex police were able to use DNA

to prove a case.

And, crucially, bishop's DNA was found on the little girl's clothing,

the little girl's DNA was found on his clothing.

We can see in this case that there is elements of control,

but there's also a lot of disorganisation.

He leaves his victim. He hasn't killed her, he thinks he has,

so he's careless. He's made mistakes.

And often, we see that.

We see offenders who start off very careful,

but the more they get away with it, they make mistakes.

Bishop was charged with attempted murder, kidnap and sexual assault.

He was tried in December 1990 at lewes crown court.

He was convicted and sentenced to a minimum of 14 years in prison.

Reporter: When the verdicts were announced,

the defendant held his head and sobbed.

I think there was great relief that this predatory paedophile

was finally behind bars...

..And was likely to be behind bars for a very long time.

Spectators in the court clapped and cheered.

Police released a message of thanks from the local girl.

"All my scratches have gone," she says.

"I'm having a lovely Christmas."

For Graham, there was satisfaction that bishop was now in prison

for one horrific crime, but that was all.

There was no sense of delight,

no sense of celebration for bishop being now incarcerated,

because there were still two families out there who hadn't

got justice and two little girls who were laying in a grave

without their killer being in prison for their crime.

There was nothing Sussex police could do,

and the case continued to run cold.

But then, in 2005, the investigation turned a dramatic new corner.

The law changed in 2005,

effectively enabling the re-prosecution of people

that have been acquitted of serious crimes under certain circumstances.

For nearly 30 years, Graham and his detectives were dogged

by their failure to convict Karen and Nicola's killer.

Now, at last, they had a chance to put it right.

The new law said if they could find new and compelling evidence,

they could retry bishop.

The forensic science had moved on a pace and forensic scientists

were able to apportion guilt where they couldn't before,

so why should somebody continue to get away with crime

when new evidence showed that they were guilty?

I was always waiting for the news that bishop was going to be

re-investigated and hopefully re-tried for these crimes.

I mean, we knew it was Russell bishop.

You know, the evidence pointed to the fact that it couldn't have been

anybody but Russell bishop.

Even so, Graham's team couldn't gather enough new evidence

to meet the standard required for a second trial.

That opportunity didn't come for another eight years,

after giant leaps by forensic science.

By 2013, Graham had retired from the investigation.

It was now left to detective superintendent Jeff Riley

to review the cold case.

Jeff Riley, who's one of Sussex police's finest

and most successful senior investigating officers,

and he would go forward, then, to lead the team.

Using the latest forensic tools available,

he began an entirely new forensic investigation.

I became involved in 2013.

It was always one of those cases that, kind of, people talked about.

There was always a suggestion that somehow we'd done something wrong,

and that's kind of the narrative that I kind of had heard

before I kind of became involved in it -

that somehow we'd not done something properly back

in the original investigation or we'd done something wrong at trial.

This pinto sweatshirt was always the key exhibit,

as part of the original investigation.

And that was from day one.

You know, we'd never been able to link that blue pinto sweatshirt

to Russell bishop.

Now, Jeff Riley hoped forensic science

would prove that decisive link.

But the bar was high.

And the double jeopardy, the evidence had to be new

and compelling and in order for it to be compelling,

it had to be substantial and it had to be reliable.

The modern forensic team began by analysing the blue sweatshirt

found at the crime scene.

And fibres from the sweatshirt were found on the girls' bodies.

Bishop always denied owning it,

but new forensic analysis now suggested otherwise.

And we were able to unpeel the cuff and find DNA from Russell bishop

in that sweatshirt and this was a massive step forward for the case.

But one of the forensic scientists identified a major problem.

And she said, "I've got some really bad news. I can't confirm

"the reliability of that sweatshirt."

The sample they'd taken, the way it had been stored

and bags opening, she said, "I can't say 100% that has not

"come from some form of cross-contamination."

We thought we actually had quite a strong case.

So it felt like it collapsed around us, which was just a very dark day.

But Jeff's forensic team didn't give up.

Instead, they turned to the rest of the original 1986 evidence

and identified exhibits they were confident could not have been

contaminated. Crucially, what Jeff was about to find out next

would suddenly break the case wide open.

We had a swab that was taken of Karen hadaway that actually we had...

So it was taken at postmortem in 1986, it was sealed under acetate,

it was then put into a frozen storage in the forensic archives,

when that was re-examined,

many years later, we had a DNA result on the arm of Karen hadaway.

And we then started to get some forensic results back.

And that forensic hit is what started off the whole

new re-investigation.

In 1990, Russell bishop began a 14-year sentence for the

attempted murder, kidnap and sexual assault of a seven-year-old girl.

He had also been tried in 1987 for the murders of Karen hadaway

and Nicola fellows.

He was acquitted, yet remained a prime suspect.

But with a new change in the law and forensic advancements,

detective superintendent Jeff Riley finally found a combined a DNA match

on the arm of one of the murdered school girls.

We now had Russell bishop's DNA on the arm of Karen hadaway that

was found in 1986 at postmortem,

which was massive and set everything off running.

But Jeff would only have one shot at convincing a jury of bishop's

guilt, so the case needed to be watertight.

He turned his attention back to the sweatshirt.

We always had paint evidence from the first investigation

because bishop used to spray cars

and there was lots of red spray over the sweatshirt,

but in order to bring it up to date, we had it re-examined

and because we had now new techniques and new,

more powerful microscopes, what we could see was the sweatshirt

was covered in tiny, tiny red paintballs,

as were some of the clothing from the girls,

as were some of the swabs from the girls.

It was more evidence to directly link bishop to the girls' bodies.

Jeff finally had what he needed to arrest bishop for a second

time in 2016.

30 years after the girls' murders,

bishop once again faced detectives in the interview room.

So, basically, during interview, he was... he mainly said no comment.

What we're asking you now, that's not clear to us,

ok, where your position stands on touching Karen's forearm.

I didn't touch no-one, so...

As I said, I've got no comment to make.

But that's what I'm asking you - if you didn't touch her...

Well, you've got me answer, so write it down and move on.

Please. That's fine. I just want to be clear,

you're saying you didn't touch Karen hadaway.

I've got no comment to make.

I'm not going to sit here, like I did 13 years ago,

and went over and over and round in circles. Not happening.

Please, crack on with your questions.

Bishop was unable to explain away Jeff Riley's new forensic

evidence, so Jeff charged him again with the murder of Karen and Nicola.

Bishop would now face trial yet again.

This was a massive moment for us.

It was a massive moment for the families cos it meant

we were back to trial.

And all the old evidence that had been gathered since '86

and all the new evidence that we'd gathered, it would

all come together, I felt, with a really strong case.

On the 16th of October 2018,

bishop appeared for trial at the old Bailey in London.

There was huge interest in the retrial of Russell bishop.

There are so few double jeopardy trials,

cases where somebody is tried a second time for such

a serious offence. The courtroom was packed each day.

The case cast a long shadow in the way that people look

after their children.

Russell bishop stole the innocence of the childhood of a generation.

I travelled to the old Bailey on almost every day of the trial.

And was following all of the evidence, all of the

witnesses and watching some of them

going through the pain that they'd experienced back in 1986.

True to form, bishop once again displayed unpredictable behaviour.

Bishop sat in the dock, he obviously listened to the evidence.

He would mumble under his breath at different stages.

When certain bits of evidence came up that he didn't like,

he would shout out about them,

and several times, the jury had to be asked to leave.

He would shout at his counsel, you know,

even throw questions at the judge.

Meanwhile, bishop's own testimony failed to address the new

forensic evidence Jeff Riley had built against him.

DNA evidence, pretty much every step of the way,

linked bishop pretty conclusively to all the key

aspects of the evidence, including the bodies of the girls.

There was no way he could explain away how his DNA was

found on one of the girls' bodies.

There was no way he could explain away how the girls' DNA

was found on his clothing.

After a 32-year investigation, the trial took eight weeks,

until finally the jury reached an unanimous verdict.

The whole court was packed, you know.

It was packed with other barristers, it was packed with kind of... The media, and when the jury came

back in, I mean, the atmosphere was absolutely electric.

So the jury came back in.

You were looking at their faces, you can't tell.

I'm conscious of the families sitting just behind me. I turned...

I remember looking at the families and they're starting to weep.

They came back as guilty.

A convicted paedophile has been found guilty of murdering two

school girls. And it was just like you felt your heart race.

You could just feel it in the pit of your stomach.

The families, they were so dignified when that verdict came back.

We just sat there and hugged each other, cried.

Cried like a baby.

There was a bit of relief. Vindication.

Russell bishop is a truly wicked man

and has rightly now been convicted of his dreadful crimes.

I was absolutely delighted.

The family knew the truth, they knew what had happened,

they had all of their suspicions validated and so did we.

I spoke to a number of police officers.

So many of them broke down in tears.

We knew we had the right person all the time.

I had no feelings for Russell bishop at all,

as a human being, he was a pervert,

he was a paedophile and he was the lowest of low of criminals.

Bishop refused to attend the verdict.

In his absence, he was given two life sentences

and ordered to serve a minimum of 36 years.

While police celebrated putting bishop behind bars, there was

one loose end that Jeff Riley needed to tie up.

But we still had one thing left unsolved

and that was what to do with Jenny Johnson.

Her statement under oath that Russell bishop never owned the

blue sweatshirt was crucial to his acquittal,

but that evidence was now clearly a lie.

So one of the last things that I did was

I arranged for Jenny Johnson to be arrested and interviewed.

She was arrested and interviewed

and she admitted during interview that, yes, she had lied.

She said that it was because of the way that bishop was very violent towards her

throughout their time together and she was absolutely petrified of him.

After over three decades of hiding a dark secret, Jenny Johnson

was finally put on trial at lewes crown court in may 2021.

She was convicted of perjury

because she'd lied at the original trial in 1987

and she was also convicted of attempting to pervert

the course of justice because she'd lied about the sweatshirt.

And because she'd kept that lie going throughout

a number of years, then that was really significant.

Potentially, we would have convicted Russell bishop in 1987, had she

not lied, and therefore he wouldn't have then gone on to attack

a little girl in the 1990s. That's a massive thing.

Johnson was sentenced to six years in prison

and is currently appealing her conviction.

It will hurt me for an eternity.

It's like having your heart ripped out and put back differently.

She still believed in father Christmas, still

believed in the tooth fairy, that's what I remember most about her,

her innocence, and her friends' innocence.

The murders of Karen hadaway and Nicola fellows stand out

as being the most significant crimes of my service within Sussex police.

One man's evil basically robbed children of their childhood.

I will never forget what happened on that night

and they demonstrated how resolute and dignified families can be

and how determined

and persistent the police can be to bring people to justice.

The case of a missing schoolgirl...

Right from the start,

I didn't ever expect she would be found alive.

..Becomes a complex murder investigation...

This case dominated my life.

Took so many twists and turns.

..That leads police on a nine-year hunt for justice.

Bingo. We've got them.