The uncle of one of the two nine-year-old schoolgirls murdered in Wild Park, Brighton, has called on Sussex Police to publish a report into a complaint by the victims’ families.
Nigel Heffron, the uncle of Nicola Fellows, spoke to the BBC after the chief constable of Sussex publicly apologised for failings in the initial investigation.
Despite the apology, the report on the failings has not been made public and Mr Heffron said: “It all falls back to that one word – the truth. Tell us.
“We’re 36 years down the line. How much further down the line have we got to go before the truth really comes out? That’s what we need, the truth, at the end of the day.
“You’re big enough at the moment to apologise. Now go that extra mile and tell us the truth. Tell us what that report says.”
The failings started after Russell Bishop murdered Nicola and her best friend Karen Hadaway in 1986, first coming into focus a year later when he was acquitted by a jury at Lewes Crown Court.
Bishop tried to shift the blame on to Nicola’s father – and Mr Heffron’s brother – Barrie Fellows. Although he was investigated in 1988, he was arrested in 2009 when Bishop made the same claims again.
The chief constable said: “I have further apologised to Nicola’s father, Barrie Fellows, for his unjustified arrest in 2009 and for the distress and the long-lasting impact this had on him and his family.
“I make it clear now. Barrie should not have been arrested. There was, and remains, no evidence of any wrongdoing on his part.”
A joint statement by the immediate families said that they welcomed the apology and “are particularly relieved that Nicola’s father, Barrie Fellows, has been also been fully vindicated of any wrongdoing”.
They said: “Barrie was made a public scapegoat while his life and that of his family was already in pieces.”
The families said: “There are still more answers to be sought in relation to the 1987 failures but the part that Sussex Police had to play in the initial miscarriages of justice has now been answered.”
Mr Heffron told the BBC: “Thank you to Sussex Police for finally getting around to admitting their mistakes and apologising. But now it is time for the CPS to do the same.”
He said that the “ripple effect” of the mistakes made by Sussex Police were vast, adding: “You don’t see how much damage it does.”
He told BBC Radio Sussex: “It cost me my marriage. It cost Barrie and Susan their marriage. There were times I wanted to give up. But the only thing that kept me going was the truth.”
The broadcaster added that the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) had said that it was conducting a thorough review of the case.
The CPS said: “We have received a complaint. It would be inappropriate for us to comment further at this time.”
Despite Bishop’s acquittal in 1987, the families never gave up their fight for justice for the nine-year-old best friends and the case became known as the Babes in the Wood murders.
Bishop, though, was free to strike again and, in February 1990, he snatched seven-year-old Rachael Watts from the street in Whitehawk, shoved her into the boot of his car and drove her to the Devil’s Dyke.
At the Dyke, he sexually assaulted her, strangled her and left her for dead in bushes. Miraculously she survived and her evidence and remarkable bravery helped to put Bishop behind bars.
In the meantime, the families’ – along with others – campaigned for a change in the law of double jeopardy while advances in forensic science led to a crucial breakthrough.
And whatever, the shortcomings of the original investigation and prosecution, there was enough evidence to ask the Court of Appeal to quash Bishop’s original acquittal – still a rare step.
Bishop was tried again in 2018 – this time at the Central Criminal Court, better known as the Old Bailey, in London. And a jury saw through his lies and convicted him of the murder of Karen and Nicola.
He was jailed for a minimum of 36 years but died just over three years later in early 2022.
The families said in their statement earlier this week that they had submitted their complaint to Sussex Police in May 2019, with the apology coming almost five years on.
Police and CPS will never admit error.