A paedophile who was acquitted of killing two nine-year-old girls more than three decades ago is on trial again due to scientific advances in forensics and evidence from the 1987 court case, the Old Bailey has been told.
The court heard that Russell Bishop sexually assaulted and strangled Nicola Fellows and Karen Hadaway to death on October 9, 1986 in woods near where they lived in Brighton.
The girls’ families, including Karen’s mother, Michelle Hadaway, were in court for the start of the trial.
The court was told that Bishop was arrested in 1986, charged and tried for the murders in 1987 but was acquitted.
The case was never closed and has become the largest and longest inquiry in the history of Sussex police.
Bishop, who was 20 at the time of the killings, denies murder charges.
A major part of the investigation has involved re-evaluating scientific work performed for the 1987 trial using modern techniques.
DNA profiling was available then but was in its infancy.
The court of appeal has quashed the acquittals due to fresh evidence, meaning that Bishop can be prosecuted again.
Brian Altman QC, for the prosecution, said the case against Bishop did not rely solely on scientific evidence, but on his movements and actions and what he said to police.
This included telling “significant lies” to police at the time, he said.
Bishop returned to live in the Brighton area after his acquittal, but less than three years later, in February 1990, committed offences involving the attempted murder, kidnapping and indecent assault of a seven-year-old girl in the Whitehawk area of the city.
She survived and identified Bishop as her attacker, the jury was told.
This, with scientific and other evidence, led to his conviction in December 1990.
Altman said: “We say that the similarities between the events of which he was convicted in 1990 and those in 1986 are such that, together with all the other evidence in the case, they can lead you to the sure conclusion that the defendant was responsible also for the murders of Nicola and Karen a few years earlier.”
The jury, which will visit Moulsecoomb, East Sussex, were warned about the challenges of hearing evidence relating to events 30 years ago.
The crime scene and surrounding areas have changed considerably, not least as a result of the great storm that tore across the south coast a year after the murders.
Altman warned that jurors would hear from “a variety of people who witnessed tiny aspects of an otherwise uneventful Thursday evening in October 1986, who did not know then that they would be asked about it in a criminal proceedings then, let alone over 30 years later”.
Jurors will be shown images of the girls’ bodies as they were discovered in a clearing in the woods.
The images will show that Bishop knew important details about the situation and condition of the girls at the scene that only the killer could have known, Altman said.
Nicola and Karen were friends despite attending different schools, and had gone out to play after school on October 9.
They lived on the same street in Moulsecoomb, on the northern outskirts of the city.
Their bodies were found in dense woodland half a mile from their homes.
The trial continues.
Karen Hadaway and Nicola Fellows, who were killed in October, 1986.
