The anguished father of one of the Babes in the Wood victims has broken down as he described the horror of being wrongly accused of murder, saying: “What have I done? All I have done is lost my little girl.”
Barrie Fellows, 69, spoke out after Russell Bishop was finally found guilty of the murders of two nine-year-old girls after 32 years.
During his Old Bailey trial, Bishop’s barrister accused Mr Fellows of being complicit in the sexual abuse and death of his daughter Nicola.
On facing the accusations in the witness box, Mr Fellows said: “It’s the worst thing that can ever happen to anyone. You sit or stand there and you take so much crap off one person through his barrister. He had no evidence, none whatsoever.
“I just wanted to jump out that box and get him but I’m told I have to keep my cool.
“Thirty years ago he would not be living now.”
Mr Fellows described the “indignity” of being arrested by police when they first looked into the accusations by Bishop’s teenage ex-girlfriend.
Crying, he said: “Why me? What have I done. All I have done is lost my little girl.”
He described Nicky as his little “nursemaid” when he suffered epilepsy, saying: “She was dotty over me and I was dotty over her.”
When he heard the guilty verdict, Mr Fellows had to leave court. He said: “It’s hard to comprehend that we finally got him. We got him bang to rights as well.”
Asked if he ever harboured doubts that the day would come, he said: “None whatsoever. The man is a complete pig. He does not even deserve to breathe the air we breathe.”
Karen’s father Lee Hadaway never got over the shock of identifying the body of his daughter and died before he could see Bishop brought to justice.
Her mother Michelle Hadaway, 61, said: “He was away working at the time and he heard his daughter had been murdered on the radio.
“On Saturday 11 October he had to go to Brighton mortuary to identify his daughter. She was our first born and the apple of his eye.
“He went in to that mortuary the man I loved and adored and would do anything for and he came out a complete stranger.
“I could never get him back. My children have never had the dad he was, although his love for them never waned.
