Even though the march and the meetings failed to spark a new enquiry, they certainly triggered renewed vigour from both the press and public to get the police to do something, anything, to catch the killer.
In September 1989, almost three years after the murders, a brand-new community centre, St George’s Hall, opened in the heart of Moulsecoomb. Planning had started long before the girls’ murders but it seemed the deaths pushed it up the development agenda, as the dearth of facilities on the estate for young and old alike was becoming an embarrassment.
In tribute to Karen and Nicola, two memorial clocks were installed either side of the main hall. All these years on, it is hard to remember Moulsecoomb without St George’s Hall, let alone that it was tragedy that finally prompted its building.
There was no doubt that Councillor Gordon Wingate was still the driving force behind the quest for justice for the Fellows and Hadaway families. He led a Brighton Borough Council debate calling for a motion to demand the reopening of the enquiry. The matter became intensely political with accusations coming from the Conservative opposition that Wingate was police bashing; that he was using the deaths as a political pawn. He countered by insisting that Bishop was innocent. Despite the challenges, his motion was passed and the council were forced to urge the police to reopen. Regardless, this was not legally binding. UK police are, at least on paper, operationally independent of party politics.
A flurry of activity over the next six weeks saw campaigners seeking out their own legal advice to force the police to reopen the case. Bishop’s uncle, Mick Dawes, threatened to privately prosecute an unnamed man he was convinced was the real killer. Meanwhile, the police’s announcement that the package of apparent ‘new evidence’ was not new at all only served to rile those who were convinced that justice could still be delivered. Councillor Wingate stormed out of a meeting with Chris Page, by then a detective superintendent, describing him as ‘subtly hostile and openly dismissive’, alleging others were playing politics and there was a cover-up.
By now Bishop was preparing to sue the police for wrongful arrest. The Evening Argus described the campaigners’ demands as ‘shrill’ and the police ‘aloof’. They rightly pointed out that while the police were being sued by Bishop, their public response had to be circumspect, but who can condemn the families for being so angry?
As the three-year anniversary loomed, press coverage once again intensified. A vigil lasting twenty-three hours – the time from the girls going missing to their bodies being found – was held at Wild Park, as there would be every year going forward. Cutting a cold and lonely figure, Michelle Hadaway, who had since moved away from the city that brought her so much sadness, sat on a bench just yards from where her daughter was slain. Periodically she was joined by friends and supporters, but her husband Lee was too distraught to be there. So too was Susan Fellows, but Barrie and his brother Nigel Heffron turned out to pay their respects.
In Argus interviews to mark the occasion, Michelle reflected on how her once-active life had been reduced to a mere existence since Karen’s murder. ‘There just doesn’t seem to be any purpose to things. It doesn’t get any easier at all,’ she told the newspaper. She had been prescribed drugs to help get her through, yet had received no professional grief counselling. Some mornings she could barely get out of bed and found each day a struggle to believe Karen was dead. ‘I still lay the table for her,’ she said.
Through her unimaginable grief, she said she kept strong. Despite the insensitive advice from some less than helpful friends, she told journalists, ‘They don’t really know how it feels. You just take each day as it comes and hope to get through, and at night sometimes you don’t sleep.’ She channelled her grief into keeping Karen’s and Nicola’s memory alive. However, she opposed a return to capital punishment, even for her daughter’s killer, which surprised many. ‘I don’t want to be barbaric. I’m not particularly religious, but I think you could run the risk of lowering yourself to their level.’ That did not mean she did not crave justice. Once new technologies emerged, she searched for ways to have Karen’s blood-stained clothing DNA-tested, but was never successful on her own.
On the same day as Michelle’s anniversary vigil, Councillor Wingate led a four-hour silent vigil outside Brighton Police Station. This culminated in a 5,000-signature petition being presented to Chief Superintendent Tomlinson. The flurry of campaigning concluded with another high-profile Labour Councillor and Sussex Police Authority member, Ken Bodfish, demanding another force be brought in to reinvestigate the murders.
At a meeting of the Sussex Police Authority, Chief Constable Roger Birch eloquently explained how thorough he felt the investigation had been. He described the levels of external scrutiny it had already received, before and during the trial, and the absence of independent criticism. Little would be gained, he said, by reopening the case. He reassured members that he would keep the matter under review and reminded them of Councillor Wingate’s new evidence that was currently sitting with the Director of Public Prosecutions. He went on to acknowledge the immense public concern of there being a double child murderer still at large and the parents’ dreadful grief. Then, changing tack, he took a swipe at what he called ‘ill-informed comment, unwarranted criticism and unforgivable speculation’ over the handling of the case.
This briefing did the trick, as a now reassured Councillor Bodfish dropped his demand, noting the Chief Constable’s genuine concern that the case remained unsolved.
The last weeks of the 1980s brought no more hope for the families or for the police. The relevance of the new lines of enquiry fizzled out and justice was as distant as two years previously when Bishop walked out of the dock a free man. Gordon Wingate’s tenure as a Moulsecoomb councillor was overshadowed by the murders and their aftermath. He had been elected just five months before and was masterful in keeping the case on the front pages and in the minds of the police and his fellow councillors.
The accusations that he was playing politics were unfair, but predictable given the partisan council; there was no love lost between the Conservatives and the more extreme left-wing elements of the Labour group. Brighton has always been fiercely political and entrenched battles have raged there for years.
In my time as Divisional Commander, I had to stand firm against one council who demanded that we ban all protests, evict all travellers and clamp down on the World Naked Bike Ride. We had no powers to do any of these but it was down to me to tread a fine line between acquiescence and dissent.
Then, after an election, the new leadership argued the polar opposite. I again needed to explain the political independence of the police and that sometimes our interventions would be unpopular, but necessary. My job was to face up to criticism when justified but defend our approach when it was operationally essential. I held our ground and somehow managed to avoid falling out with leaders or their parties
While waging his constitutional battles, Councillor Wingate fought tooth and nail against any obstruction to his resolve to deliver answers to the Fellowses, Hadaways and the rest of his community. But in January 1990 he announced that he would not be standing for re-election that May.
He had not run out of steam, far from it, as he pointed out in announcing his difficult decision. ‘There is nothing political about this, but the leading politicians in the town have ignored Nicola and Karen. I can in no way be part of the council as long as the girls continue to be ignored. The best thing I can do is to devote all of my energies to the campaign. I will not rest until natural justice has been done. My position in the Labour Party is to defend the working class, and I shall continue to do that. But Karen and Nicola must come first.’
On 1 February that year, author Christopher Berry-Dee announced that he had written to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and the Leader of the Opposition Neil Kinnock in frustration at what he perceived to be a lack of police action. Along with copies of his research, in a curious – arguably repugnant – gesture, he enclosed colour photographs of Karen’s and Nicola’s bodies. He threatened to send the same package to every MP if no action was taken. It is unclear whether the imminent publication of his book dictated the timing of this announcement.
The following day, having received advice from the Crown Prosecution Service, Sussex Police invited the Hadaway and Fellows families to a meeting at Brighton Police Station. There, over a tense ninety minutes, the police broke the news that there would be no new investigation. In a statement that marked the end of the road for the campaign, the police said they had thoroughly examined the apparent new evidence. The Crown Prosecution Service, after considering this, had decided that the material did not warrant further investigation.
Denying the case was closed, Assistant Chief Constable Rodney Lind stressed the police were very sensitive to the public concern, and would continue to investigate any fresh evidence that might arise.
Michelle Hadaway was furious. She would not rest until the investigation was reopened. All the family members demanded to put their questions directly to the CPS. Barrie Fellows’ brother, Nigel Heffron, recalls being thrown out of their offices and threatened with arrest when he tried to do just that.
These cases are never truly closed, but in light of no new statements being taken, no fresh scenes being examined or no arrests made, the Fellowses and Hadaways could be forgiven for thinking this one was. The police were true to their word in diligently following up all new leads. Christopher Berry-Dee had provided the police with his evidence, and the name of the person he thought he was the killer. All this had been carefully considered but did not take the case any further forward.
It seemed relations with the families were deteriorating, and rather than working with them to seek an achievable solution, the police became entrenched in the merits or otherwise of relaunching an investigation which, all knew, would reach the same conclusions as the first. All the evidence still pointed to the one person on earth who could never be charged with these killings. The one person who had put himself front and centre of the campaign to reopen the enquiry was safe in the knowledge that the prohibition of double jeopardy made him untouchable.
But that person had just over forty-eight hours of free air left to breathe. Little did we know that his secret, sickening and brutal appetite would rise up again, and this would be momentous in the pursuit of the Babes in the Woods killer.