The BBC has said that it was a “matter of very deep regret” that the missing clothes of “Babes in the Wood” murder victim Karen Hadaway were never found.
BBC director-general Tim Davie wrote to Conservative MP Julian Knight, chairman of the House of Commons Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) Committee, after he appeared before the committee in September.
The letter, dated Monday 8 November but published by the committee yesterday (Tuesday 16 November), said that after a review, the BBC had concluded that “regrettably 30 years on, little more can be done to find the missing clothes”.
Mr Davie said: “The distress caused to the families is a matter of very deep regret.”
The clothes belonged to schoolgirl Karen Hadaway, who was found sexually assaulted and strangled alongside her best friend Nicola Fellows in a woodland den in Wild Park, in Moulsecoomb, in October 1986.
The case became known as the Babes in the Wood murders and the girls’ families’ heartache was compounded in 1987 when Russell Bishop was found not guilty of their murder.
In August 1991, Karen’s mother, Michelle Hadaway, handed her daughter’s clothes to reporter Martin Bashir, to have them DNA tested by the BBC as part of investigations for a programme called Public Eye, the letter confirmed.
In 2002 and 2004, Nicola Fellows’ uncle, Ian Heffron, contacted the BBC for the clothing, after a change to the law relating to double jeopardy, which would allow Bishop to be retried.
But BBC investigators were unable to locate the clothing.
Bishop was convicted at a retrial in 2018.
In the letter, Mr Davie said: “We hope that it is some little consolation that the police have confirmed that all forensic evidence needed had been already obtained from the clothing in 1986 and stored separately.
“And therefore the unavailability of the clothing had no material impact on the investigation or the 2018 prosecution which eventually brought Russell Bishop to justice.”
In the letter, the BBC confirmed that the clothes were lost after being given to Mr Bashir, who signed a receipt for them, adding that it was “fundamentally wrong that better care was not taken of the clothing”.
Mr Davie added: “This should never have happened. We are appalled that it did and extend our sincere apologies to the families, both that the clothing was lost in such circumstances and that we have been unable, both now and in 2004, to give them any answers about what happened to the clothing.”
The story of the lost clothing re-emerged after the publication of a report by former senior judge Lord Dyson on the 1995 Panorama interview with the late Diana Princess of Wales.
He found that Mr Bashir had deceived the princess in order to obtain his exclusive interview with her.
In his letter to MPs, Mr Davie said that he had instructed one of his senior editorial executives to oversee a review of what steps had been taken in 2004 to find the clothes and “to ensure that there was no further action that we could take now that may help to locate them”.
As part of the review, Mr Bashir acknowledged that he had signed a receipt for the clothes but “very regrettably” had no recollection of what had happened to them.
The review, which was “hampered by the passage of time”, concluded that the clothes had not been found.
A BBC spokesman said: “The BBC is extremely sorry for the distress this has caused Ms Hadaway and we deeply regret we have not been able to give her any answers about what happened.
“The director-general wrote to Ms Hadaway to offer our sincere apologies for the distress caused to her and her family, and extended that apology to the family of Nicola Fellows.”
