Few of the UK’s most notable post-trial press statements are given without the famous stone-fronted Central Criminal Court facade as a backdrop. The City of London police have well-rehearsed plans to shut off Old Bailey, the road that gives its name to London’s most famous court. Thankfully the crowds that gather today pale against the one hundred thousand or so who turned out to watch the country’s first railway murderer, Franz Müller, being hanged there in November 1864.
The families emerged, not jubilantly, but with a look of satisfaction and relief that their fight for justice was finally over. Nicola’s cousin, Dr Lorna Clary, would later say to me that they had made a pact that if they failed now, the fight would be handed down through the generations. She was relieved her children would not face the struggles that had defined her and many of her relatives’ lives.
The cameras clicked, the flashes strobed but silence fell as the people these dreadful crimes had affected the most spoke.
Lorna, for the Fellows family, said: ‘Nicola and Karen. Our beautiful girls. We will never forget their smiles that would light up a room. Their laughter. Their cheekiness. During the past eight weeks, we have endured reliving the horrific details of their murders and we have learned an awful lot about the true meaning of heartbreak all over again.
‘We stand here as two families united in our grief. United in our fight for justice. And now united in our elation at today’s guilty verdict. We are extremely relieved and grateful that our thirty-two years’ hard-fought battle has been a success, finally getting the rightful long-awaited justice for both of our girls.
‘We want to thank our police teams and counsel, who have been fantastic during the past couple of decades. If it wasn’t for their efforts and dedication working with us, we wouldn’t be stood here today. Together we have changed history with this double jeopardy ruling and we finally have the correct outcome – Russell Bishop remains behind bars where he belongs.
‘The guilty verdict doesn’t bring Nicola and Karen back, but we know that other children are now safe from the hands of Russell Bishop. He is a monster. A predatory paedophile. Russell Bishop truly is evil personified.’
Next came Michelle, who had endured every moment of every day of the trial. ‘After thirty-two years of fighting, we finally have justice for Karen and Nicola. Time stood still for us in 1986. To us them beautiful girls will always be nine-year-olds. They will never grow up. We’ve been deprived of a happy life to watch them grow into adults. What people like Bishop inflict on the families of their victims is a living death. They take the lives of children but they also take the lives of the families left behind.
‘Kaz and Nicky, as they were affectionately known, friends playing out together only to have their lives wiped out by a sexual deviant, a monster. What’s been hard, horrendous and heart-breaking is to hear that they were murdered by a disgusting paedophile, who we actually knew and the two girls liked and trusted. He abused that trust.
‘Bishop doesn’t deserve to breathe the same clean air as we do. After all, he decided that day to strangle the life out of our two angels, leaving them no air to breathe. What makes a man want to squeeze the life out of two innocent children with his bare hands? Unbelievable when he had a child himself and another on the way.
‘He’s a coward, without a conscience. I don’t believe you can rehabilitate evil. I think Bishop was just born that way. People talk to me of forgiveness but I can never forgive or forget what the evil monster did to my beautiful Kaz and Nicky. I’m trying so hard to get my head around this but I will cos I’m a fighter and I’ll never stop being strong for my family.’ With a steely air, she stepped aside.
There was one final chapter. It was not whether Bishop would be jailed, it was for how long. Would he be there to hear it?