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.
“He could never get over what Bishop done to his little girl. It destroyed him.”
She spoke of her relief at the guilty verdict, saying: “I lost my heart a long time ago and I was waiting for it to come back.”
Since Bishop was first acquitted, she never quite believed there was a chance of seeing him face justice throughout the campaign to get the double jeopardy law passed.
She said it was a “hard, long, sad” fight while also trying to raise her other young children.
Mrs Hadaway described Bishop as a “coward without a conscience” and an “evil paedophile”, who could not even go to court to face up to his guilty verdict.
She added: “I knew he was not innocent. When he was found not guilty in 1987 I knew he would strike again.”
Sue Eismann, Nicola’s mother, also lost her son Jonathan, just weeks before the double jeopardy trial started.
He desperately wanted to be there for his sister and felt somehow “responsible” because they had a “tiff” while out playing earlier on the day she was killed, she said.
Mrs Eismann, 69, formerly known as Fellows, said that she never really thought Bishop would be found guilty and added: “I just thought we are going to get the wrong verdict again like we did in 1987.”
On her daughter’s killer, she said: “I hated the sight of him and I hope he deserves what he gets when it comes to sentence.”
Nicola and Karen were like “chalk and cheese”, she said: “I just want to remember how she was when she was playing outside. Happy, laughing and the next minute – gone.”
She added: “I would not wish this on any parent. I had two children and lost two children.”
Emily Pennink interviewed family members as the representative of the media under a “pool” arrangement.
