Babes in the Wood murderer Russell Bishop dies

Babes in the Wood murderer Russell Bishop has died at the age of 55 while serving life in prison.

Bishop died in hospital last night (Thursday 20 January) having been taken there from Frankland Prison in Co Durham.

He was jailed in 2018 for the murder of two nine-year-old girls, Nicola Fellows and Karen Hadaway, in a case that became known as the Babes in the Wood.

One family member said: “We won’t be shedding any tears for him.”

Michelle Johnson, Karen’s mother, said: “May you rot in hell for all eternity you evil wicked monster and I hope your family suffer in the same way as you made me and my family suffer for so long when you took the life of my beautiful nine-year-old daughter, Karen, and her friend Nicky.”

The family of Nicky Fellows said: “No tears will be shed by our family but we are pleased the cretin has gone to hell and we got justice for our girls before that happened.

“He had every opportunity to admit his guilt but the coward took it with him.”

Bishop was 20 when he molested and murdered the best friends in Wild Park, Brighton, a few hundred yards from where they lived in Moulsecoomb.

A year later Bishop was astonishingly acquitted at Lewes Crown Court after he and his then girlfriend Jennifer Johnson lied in evidence.

He struck again in 1990, kidnapping a girl as she played in the street in Whitehawk, bundling her into the boot of his car and driving her to the Devil’s Dyke.

He molested her, strangled her and left her for dead but miraculously she survived and her remarkable evidence led to Bishop’s conviction.

He was jailed for life.

In the meantime the families of Nicky and Karen kept up their fight for justice, winning a change in the law of double jeopardy in the most serious of cases.

Advances in forensic science enabled Sussex Police to bring vital new DNA evidence before the courts.

And in 2018 Bishop was retried at the Central Criminal Court – better known as the Old Bailey – in London.

His defence was to admit, for the first time, the 1990 kidnap, sex attack and attempted murder, saying that he was being honest about that while denying the Wild Park murders.

But after a nine-week trial, the evidence of his guilt led to the jury convicting him within two and a half hours.

Bishop was given two life sentences for a minimum of 36 years.

He later had cancer diagnosed.

Bishop never had the courage to admit the murders of best friends Karen and Nicky.