The press seats cleared almost immediately. Within minutes headlines such as ‘Alleged killer’s lawyer accuses father of dead schoolgirl’, ‘Russell Bishop accuses Barrie Fellows of killing daughter Nicola’, and ‘Murder accused points finger at girl’s dad’ flashed across screens up and down the country, together with photos, old and new, of the man who had yet to put his side of the story.
The decision to allow this alleged bad character evidence of Barrie Fellows based on the Marion Stevenson allegations was lawful but the media explosion devastated both Jeff and Barrie. The jury had been told to ignore any media coverage of the trial but how could you ignore this? It changed the whole focus of the coverage. For several days it was nothing to do with the forensics, Bishop’s selective memory or his strikingly similar attack on Claire. It was all about Barrie Fellows. Bennathan had played a blinder.
As any good fighter will tell you, the best thing to do once knocked down is to get back up again. That was exactly what Brian Altman did in calling his first witness.
By now, one male juror had been replaced by a woman, making an equal gender split and the remaining back-up jury member had been stood down. To protect her dignity, the court was cleared as Michelle was helped into the witness box. Her disabilities, leaving her wheelchair-bound, had not weakened her resolve however, and once she was seated the court filled once more and she gave her dignified evidence.
Dressed all in black, her tattoos in homage to her family worn proudly on her arms, Michelle looked ready for this. She was clear and confident as, like in 1987, she affectionately described for the jury Karen’s playful loving ways, her homely and sweet nature and her love of life. She said how she had regarded Bishop and Stevenson to be a bad influence so she forbade Karen from seeing them. She took the jury through the events of 9 October 1986. How she last saw Karen when she ran out to play and the horror of searching for the girls throughout the night. She described her awful realization that the girls’ bodies had been found when she saw the intense activity beneath Jacob’s Ladder the following day.
Wisely, Bennathan was gentle with Michelle. He tried to persuade her Karen had been closer to Bishop than she had maintained, but Michelle remained resolute. In a brief lighter moment, she called the barrister out for referring to his client as Russell Brand, instead of Bishop.
He then started to introduce the idea that Barrie might be the killer to Michelle. Nothing too damning, just asking her to reflect on what he saw as odd behaviour: not going straight out to search, mentioning when he came back from the mortuary that Karen had not been beaten. All very gentle but paving the way for the onslaught to come.
Next came Susan Fellows – now Eismann. Smartly dressed in a mustard top, she was clearly nervous but projected her heart-breaking evidence lucidly to the jurors opposite. Altman’s questions took the same form as those he had asked Michelle; helping the court get to know Nicola, describing that awful last day and covering how well she knew Bishop.
Her pain when she had to confirm to the court that her and Barrie’s son, Jonathan, had died just weeks before the trial was palpable. Throughout her evidence, however, she remained breath-takingly composed until she had to describe what Nicola had been wearing. Weeping quietly, she quickly collected herself and continued.
Bennathan’s cross-examination was more pointed. Predictably he homed in on Barrie’s use of corporal punishment, how he once broke his grandmother-in-law’s nose and how he would tell Nicola off if she overstepped the line or used bad language. Susan countered by emphatically describing how Nicola was dotty about her father and how much of a daddy’s girl she was. She denied Barrie meant to hurt her grandmother and, despite them being divorced for decades, Susan’s defence of him was genuine.