The Pinto sweatshirt, which had almost been overlooked, was now central to the enquiry. No witnesses described it being worn by anyone, including Bishop, on the night the girls were killed. It was not found close to where they were discovered, or in any of the places where they had been spotted in the hours before their deaths. So, what was Detective Superintendent Wells’ fixation with this dumped sweatshirt?
Mr Gander, the electricity worker who had spotted it on the footpath by Moulsecoomb Station, could easily have ignored it and got on with his day. Yann Svenski and his friends, as well as a woman who had prodded it with her foot, understandably did just that. The officers who Gander handed it to treated it as another piece of found property, destined, were it not for Redman, to lie unclaimed, clogging up the property store at Brighton Police Station.
Those initial forensic examinations on the clothing, however, did reveal some significant findings. There were eleven green fibres, indistinguishable from Karen’s long-sleeved sweatshirt; four pink fibres, indistinguishable from Nicola’s V-neck sweatshirt; and hundreds of ivy hairs matching those at the den, all now present on the Pinto, together with fibres which appeared to have come from Marion Stevenson’s clothing.
The shirt Karen was wearing also bore eleven fibres that were probably from the Pinto and Nicola’s top had nine. There were also some Pinto fibres found on the trousers Bishop had handed over to the police. Finally, the same tiny ivy hairs that had coated the Pinto were also found on the girls’ jumpers and their bodies. Despite the meticulous examination, the scientists were unable to find any of the girls’ hairs on the Pinto. Nor did they find Bishop’s hairs on the girls’ jumpers.
The Pinto did have animal hairs on it but whether they came from Bishop’s dog, no one could be certain.
Next the scientists turned to the paint stains on the Pinto. Under a microscope different samples of paint can be quite distinct. Bishop was forever working on, and spraying, cars – sometimes stolen ones. Furthermore, a number of outhouse doors at the block of flats where Bishop lived had been graffitied in red. He had admitted spraying the cars but not the doors.
After careful testing, the red staining on the Pinto was found to have come from a paint identical to that used to graffiti two of the outhouse doors and to paint Bishop’s Ford Escort. The maroon paint also found was exactly the same as that found on one of Bishop’s friend’s cars which he had sprayed as well as a can of paint found at Bishop’s flat. Frustratingly, the paint on Bishop’s trousers was different from that on the Pinto. This scuppered the theory that he had worn both the trousers and the Pinto while spraying cars, which, if proved, would have shown that he owned both. That would have nailed him.
The shared ivy hairs suggested that the Pinto had been in contact with both girls’ jumpers and probably had been at the scene of the killings. This, and the various matching fibres, made it almost certain that the killer, whoever it was, had worn the Pinto at the time. It was also very likely that whoever had worked on Bishop’s friend’s car and had used the paint can had worn this sweatshirt.
The link between the Pinto and the murders was extremely strong. Slightly weaker was the link between Bishop and the Pinto, but that was tantalizingly close. The key was in proving it belonged to Bishop and that he had been wearing it when the girls were killed. Unfortunately, even this amount of circumstantial evidence would only stand up if the paint, and fibres, were totally unique. Without that certainty, all it would take was a smart lawyer to chip away at each piece of the theory, bit by bit, until the whole house of cards came crashing down.
Paint and clothing fibres do not contain DNA, so, in the 1980s, cast-iron proof was rare that one item came from or had been in contact with another. The problem also remained that no one had seen Bishop wearing that exact top on the night and there was nothing on it that could be scientifically proven to show he did. It did not take Jenny Johnson long to change her almost spontaneous identification of the Pinto to DC Evans into a denial.
It seemed irrefutable that all the paint samples were from a similar source. However, a reputable owner of a car accessory shop, just a few hundred yards from Wild Park and Stephens Road, scuppered that hope when he showed that in the month before the girls were killed he had sold around thirty cans of the same red paint.
All was not lost though. During the post mortem, three hairs and a fibre were found on Nicola’s stomach. An examination of these could go a long way to putting Bishop – or someone else – and the girls together at the time of the murders. It would only take a small leap to then conclude who the killer was.
But no one thought to examine them. This was a huge oversight, the like of which as a detective both junior and senior I have never come across or heard of before or since. Given the lack of hard evidence and the fact that other forensic techniques were pretty basic, it beggars belief that these fragments, which could have nailed the killer once and for all, were overlooked.