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Scottish Sun
21-05-2025
- Scottish Sun
Babes in the Wood killer strangled me aged 7 and dumped my body like an old mattress… his ‘motive' was a final gut punch
'LEFT FOR DEAD' Babes in the Wood killer strangled me aged 7 and dumped my body like an old mattress… his 'motive' was a final gut punch Survivor of child murderer Russell Bishop reveals how he continued to haunt her even behind bars - and how she turned the tables
The Sun
21-05-2025
- The Sun
Babes in the Wood killer strangled me aged 7 and dumped my body like an old mattress… his ‘motive' was a final gut punch
RACHAEL Watts was just seven years old when she roller-skated into the path of a murderous monster. Now the brave survivor has opened up on her decades of torment after being sexually assaulted, strangled and discarded like 'an old mattress' by Babes in the Wood killer Russell Bishop, who had mistakenly believed she was dead. 15 15 In 1990, Rachael had asked a man for directions near her home in the Whitehawk area of Brighton after her father gave her a pound to get some sweets at the local shop. Reliving her ordeal for the first time on camera in Sky documentary The Girl Who Caught a Killer, Rachael, 42, says: "I saw a man, and he was fixing his car, and my dad was a mechanic. So, because he was a mechanic just like my dad, I asked him for directions. "He didn't even answer. Didn't even think about it. It was just instant. He scooped me up, roller boots and all and threw me into the boot of his car." The monster behind the wheel was Russell Bishop, a man who had already slaughtered two schoolgirls, Nicola Fellows and Karen Hadaway, in the infamous Babes in the Wood murders four years earlier. The callous killer had escaped justice after controversially being acquitted of the double murder in 1987, lapping up the publicity in TV interviews and painting himself as a traumatized scapegoat. Now, he was about to strike again - but the cowardly attack would come back to haunt him. As the car sped off, terrified Rachael spotted a can of WD40 and a hammer in the boot. She started banging with all her might and even offered her kidnapper a pound coin her dad had given her, hoping it would save her. "His only response was, 'Shut up or I'll kill you,'" Rachael recalls. "I could see the lights when he braked, and I started to untie my roller boots and slipped them off. "I thought that I might get the opportunity when he opened the boot of his car for me to jump out, and I'd stand a chance if I was running and not with the boot still on." She adds: "When we got to Devil's Dyke, he took me out of the boot of his car and he strangled me. Then he just disposed of me like he was fly-tipping. "Like I was an old mattress or something, just thrown into a bush somewhere. He left me thinking I was dead." But what Bishop had not banked on was the fact that Rachael would survive the horrendous attack. 15 15 Waking up alone in the cold, dazed and battered, Rachael stumbled naked through the undergrowth, terrified the attacker would return to finish the job. Instead, she saw headlights and took a gamble on survival. David, a man who was nearby with his girlfriend, saw her emerge from the trees. "There was blood in delicate places that I couldn't care to mention,' he says. "She said to me, 'Are you gonna kidnap me?' and I said, 'No, we are here to help you. You're gonna be okay.'" Incredibly, at the time of Rachael's attack, Bishop had already been cleared of murdering Nicola and Karen, who were both nine years old. The two girls were playing near their home at Moulsecoomb, Brighton, in October 1986 when they vanished without a trace. 15 15 After a frantic search, the girls' bodies were found at a makeshift den in the nearby Wild Park with obvious signs of sexual assault. The horrific case became known as the Babes in the Wood murders, named after a children's tale of the same title. Bishop was standing nearby with a cop when two boys said they had found the bodies. Remarkably, he even followed the policeman to the scene of the crime. Despite damning witness sightings and his infamous blue sweatshirt found near the scene, he walked free in 1987 after his partner withdrew key testimony and his lawyer pointed the finger at Nicola's own father during his trial. The acquittal led to a frenzy of suspicion and heartbreak for the girls' families. Bishop even joined a public march demanding justice for the crimes he knew he had committed. But Rachael would change all of that. 'Outwitted by a child' 15 From her hospital bed, Rachael gave a statement that would put Bishop under scrutiny. She recalled details such as the hammer, the WD40, and the colour of the car. And while it was clear that she had been sexually assaulted, Rachael told investigators that she did not remember that part of the ordeal. However, when asked to pick her attacker from a line-up just days after the attack, she never hesitated. She says: "We went into a room and I asked if he would be able to see me, and they explained to me about the whole one-way mirror thing. "I don't think I let go of my mum's hand. I'm pretty certain I was squeezing quite tight. I remember looking at him. I don't think it took me long at all." When Rachael picked out Bishop, the cops were elated, knowing they were one step closer to putting him behind bars. Paul Smith, a community police constable, says in the documentary: "Above me, five floors, you could hear people shouting, 'Yes, yes, we've got him!' "It was like a sudden jubilation that we got him. And everyone was saying Russell Bishop had been outwitted by a seven-year-old girl." Haunted by fear Although she showed great bravery, Rachael was still tormented by the harrowing incident. She says: "After the attack, I used to have nightmares that he would climb the ladder and get up to my bedroom window and would come and finish me. "Nobody knew how much it affected me. I didn't know how much it affected me." Bishop was charged with abduction, attempted murder and sexual assault and stood trial at Lewes Crown Court in December 1990. When Bishop was asked about what he did to Rachael, he denied it all. But police had damning evidence against him - DNA that linked him to Rachael. Bishop's defence was that police were out to get him and had set him up. After the attack, I used to have nightmares that he would climb the ladder and get up to my bedroom window and would come and finish me Rachael Watts His shameless theory was that they had gone into his bedroom, taken his used condoms, and spread them all over Rachael's recovered clothing. Rachael testified against Bishop in a courtroom packed with tension. Behind a protective screen, she calmly gave her account of what had happened. The then seven-year-old said: 'He took me out of the boot and he strangled me. He thought I was dead, but I wasn't. He never strangled me long enough. He just put me in a deep sleep.' The young girl even held her nerve as Bishop's defence lawyer stepped up efforts to dismantle her account, suggesting she had only picked him from the line-up as she had seen his pictures in newspapers. Rachael's evidence helped convict Bishop of kidnapping, sexual assault, and attempted murder. He was jailed for life in 1990. But her nightmare didn't end there. Nightmare continues 15 For years, Rachael kept what happened to her locked deep inside, even from her children. In the documentary, she explains: "For God knows how many years, I lived what I would consider to be a perfectly normal life. "I just assumed there would never have to be a reason why I'd have to tell anybody and give up my right to anonymity. I never had the intention of telling my children ever." But when Bishop came up for parole, the past came crashing back. She says: "I was so scared that he was going to come and find me. I thought a life sentence was a life sentence. Then I found out life in Russell Bishop's case meant only 14 years just because he didn't actually kill me." Depression, agoraphobia (a fear of appearing in public), and a fresh fear for her family's safety followed. Desperate to keep Bishop behind bars, police reopened the Babes in the Wood case. Previously, the double jeopardy defence meant that a person acquitted of a crime could not be put on trial for the same crime again. But with the law changed in 2005, thanks to tireless campaigning by Stephen Lawrence's family, Bishop could finally be retried. New DNA tests on the sweatshirt linked him to both murdered girls. In chilling interrogation footage, he answered "no comment" to questions and says the case "had nothing to do" with him. Who are the UK's worst serial killers? THE UK's most prolific serial killer was actually a doctor. Here's a rundown of the worst offenders in the UK. British GP Harold Shipman is one of the most prolific serial killers in recorded history. He was found guilty of murdering 15 patients in 2000, but the Shipman Inquiry examined his crimes and identified 218 victims, 80 per cent of whom were elderly women. After his death Jonathan Balls was accused of poisoning at least 22 people between 1824 and 1845. Mary Ann Cotton is suspected of murdering up to 21 people, including husbands, lovers and children. She is Britain's most prolific female serial killer. Her crimes were committed between 1852 and 1872, and she was hanged in March 1873. Amelia Sach and Annie Walters became known as the Finchley Baby Farmers after killing at least 20 babies between 1900 and 1902. The pair became the first women to be hanged at Holloway Prison on February 3, 1903. William Burke and William Hare killed 16 people and sold their bodies. Yorkshire Ripper Peter Sutcliffe was found guilty in 1981 of murdering 13 women and attempting to kill seven others between 1975 and 1980. Dennis Nilsen was caged for life in 1983 after murdering up to 15 men when he picked them up from the streets. He was found guilty of six counts of murder and two counts of attempted murder and was sentenced to life in jail. Fred West was found guilty of killing 12 but it's believed he was responsible for many more deaths. During this time, Rachael says she continued to live in fear. "There was also a journalist who turned up", she explains. "This was while I was still under the right of anonymity, and my son was due home any minute, and it freaked me out. "It was almost [like] if they can find me, anybody can. It led me back to Russell Bishop. What was to stop him from finding out where I lived?" In 2018, Bishop was tried again for Nicola and Karen's murder. This time, he was found guilty. He was sentenced to life again and died in prison in 2022, aged 55. Shocking confession One of the most shocking moments of the trial came when he admitted for the first time that he had attacked Rachael. She says: "When he admitted it, he said the reason why he attacked me was to shame and belittle me because everybody was accusing him of murdering the two other girls. "He thought, 'Well, if I'm being accused of it, then I might as well do it.' I was absolutely beside myself because I was so angry. I couldn't understand why me. "It was literally as if someone had taken a sledgehammer and full-forced it into my gut." Speaking of his death, Rachael says: "I heard of Russell Bishop dying via social media. I was scrolling, and it popped up. As soon as he was dead, there was nothing to be afraid of anymore." 'Exhausting' Now, for the first time, Rachael is speaking publicly about the full horror of what was done to her, including the sexual assault she had never mentioned. In the documentary, she says: 'I don't know when I remembered the details of the attack itself, but I was conscious when he sexually assaulted me. "From the minute he grabbed me to the minute I woke up, it just plays through my head on high definition. I can see it, I can hear it, I can smell it. And it's exhausting.' She hopes speaking now will help release her from the 'mental roadblock' the trauma left her with. Rachael, who is now a mum of three, says she is proud of her children and grateful to her husband, Jay, for showing her what love and respect feel like. 'I'm hoping that I can release myself of this secret that I've held for so long, that it would help remove this mental roadblock I seem to have hit.' To help with her healing, Rachael opens photos showing her horrific injuries taken after the attack. It would mark the first time she had ever seen the images. In an emotionally charged scene, she looks at a photograph of her around the time of the attack and says: "It's like looking in the mirror and not recognising the person looking back at you. She adds: "I'm willing to do whatever it takes to be a properly functioning individual again. I'm hoping that I will end up being able to get a job and get a proper career. Something with animals. "I want to be able to go out and spend time with my family and have dates with my husband." When asked what she would say to Bishop if he were still alive, she says: "I'm still here. And I've got a fighting chance." The Girl Who Caught a Killer airs on Sky and Now on Sunday, May 25 If you are affected by any of the issues raised in this article, please call the Samaritans for free on 116123. 15 15
Telegraph
09-05-2025
- Telegraph
When I was seven, the Babes in the Wood murderer left me for dead. This is how I put him behind bars
There's a beach at Saltdean on the south coast of England where Rachael Watts would go shrimping as a child. She remembers climbing on the rocks, wading waist deep in the ocean. One day, she says, she hopes to be able to enjoy these pleasures again. She cannot imagine this day, not at the moment. A fearless, outgoing girl in her younger years, Watts does not remember much else from her childhood. Very little at all from after she was seven years old. 'I don't recollect anything after the attack,' she says. 'I have massive gaps in my memory.' She was seven when she was abducted, sexually assaulted, strangled and left for dead at a beauty spot in Brighton by a man who, it later transpired, had previously murdered two other young girls. Watts survived, miraculously, and managed to identify her abductor as local man Russell Bishop, who was imprisoned for life. But now 42, she still lives in the shadow of the day she met a killer. Today, talking to me from the garden room at her home in an undisclosed location, she gives me a raw, frank and heartbreaking account of how her past is still very much affecting her present. Wearing a white vest and heavy-framed glasses, hair pulled back from her face, she sits beside her attentive husband Justin, who gently intervenes to offer reassurance when needed. 'Some days are just OK,' she says. 'Some days are awful and I go to very dark places in my head.' For decades, Watts did not reveal her story. She was granted anonymity and lived what looked like a normal life into early adulthood, mostly keeping her secret to herself. It was only in 2022, when Bishop died in prison of brain cancer, aged 55, that she felt safe enough to waive her anonymity – even talking about her past to her own children and close friends for the first time. 'It wasn't a pleasant discussion,' she says of the conversation with her children. Her friends were 'truly lovely' about it, but she can't help wondering how much they could really grasp. 'I still have this sense that they don't fully understand,' she says. 'I don't think anybody can, unless you've been through it.' Today, speaking to me exclusively ahead of a new two-part Sky documentary about her life called The Girl Who Caught a Killer (which will be the first time Rachael will ever have been seen on screens), she explains the relief of opening up about what made her the way she is. 'It's nice… for it not to be this secret I'm holding on to,' she says. '[When] you hold on to something so long, it starts as a piece of gravel in your pocket and accumulates over time until eventually you're trying to drag around a boulder and you can't move.' It was a sunny afternoon in February 1990 and she was out and about on her white rollerboots. 'My dad was in the front garden planting pansies,' she recalls in the documentary. 'To this day I can't stand pansies.' The youngest of four daughters, she had only recently moved to the area in Brighton with her family. Her plan was to skate to see a friend, but the friend was not at home. On returning, she hit a wall and bumped her head. When she arrived back home her father, a mechanic, gave her £1 to buy sweets at the local shop, and so off she went again. But in the unfamiliar streets, she lost her way coming back and asked a man for directions. He was tinkering with his car, a red Ford Cortina. Seemed safe enough, a mechanic like her dad, she thought. Next thing she knew, she was trapped. 'It was just instant. He scooped me up, rollerboots and all, threw me into the boot of his car,' she says in the film. He drove to Devil's Dyke, five miles north of the city. It was an isolated spot, known for its panoramic views, its picturesque scenery. Watts only knew she had to escape, and in the boot of the car found a hammer and struck it against the lid. She screamed that she would give the driver the money her dad had given her. He told her, 'Shut up or I'll kill you.' With astonishing presence of mind, Watts took off her rollerboots to aid her escape once the boot was opened. But she never had a chance. When the driver reached the beauty spot, he stopped the car, removed the little girl and put her on the back seat, where he removed her clothing, raped her, strangled her, then left her unconscious in the mud underneath some gorse bushes. 'He disposed of me like he was flytipping. Just like I was an old mattress or something, just thrown into a bush somewhere. He left me thinking I was dead,' she tells the documentary-makers. When she came around, it was dark and she was alone: naked, bloody, dizzy and desperately cold. In a clearing, she saw some headlights. She did not know if it was her attacker, yet she had no choice but to head towards them, knowing she would freeze to death if she stayed where she was. Inside the car were a woman and man in their 20s called Susan and David. They saw her emerge from the bush in tears, mud down her legs, hair dishevelled, blood on her body. 'It was dreadful, it was surreal, it was something that will never come out of my head,' David recalls in the film. 'It was obvious to me what had probably happened to her.' After wrapping her in a blanket, he and Susan drove to a nearby golf club and called 999. The little girl was saved. Nicola Fellows and Karen Hadaway were two other little girls growing up in Brighton in the 1980s. Although Watts never knew them, her story is inextricably linked with theirs. The pair were nine years old when they went missing from their homes on the Moulsecoomb council estate in 1986. Nicola was a chatty girl who loved the new television soap opera EastEnders and the Sister Sledge pop song Frankie. Karen was a lively and loving child who lived a couple of doors away and had been her friend for years. When the two went out to play on 9 October that year and failed to come home, their families went looking for them. A mist began to fall, and when darkness came the families called the police. The following day their bodies were found side by side in woodland in a local area called Wild Park. They looked somehow as if they were sleeping. In fact they had been sexually assaulted and strangled, in what became known as the Babes in the Wood murders. Police arrested a local man, Russell Bishop, a 20-year-old labourer and petty criminal. He was already known to them and had been spotted in and around Wild Park when the girls disappeared. He was also known to both girls' families and had even joined in the search. When two teenagers found the bodies, Bishop had been close by. A blue sweatshirt was found near the scene, bearing the word Pinto. Bishop's girlfriend, Jennifer Johnson, confirmed to police it was his. He offered police contradictory stories and in December they charged him with the murders, which he denied. In 1987, amid a frenzy of national interest, Bishop stood trial at Lewes Crown Court. But the prosecution's case all but collapsed when Johnson went back on her earlier claim that the blue sweatshirt was Bishop's. A crucial piece of evidence was lost to them, just like that. A jury found Bishop not guilty and he walked free. Three years went by before Watts was abducted in the same city. The first her mother knew of the attack was when police informed her that her daughter had been taken to hospital. They asked her not to show her distress when she rushed to her bedside, in case this stopped the child from speaking freely about her ordeal. Watts, covered in scratches, was sitting in her hospital bed with a colouring book. Her mother sat beside her as she coloured in a picture of Rupert Bear. Sussex Police meanwhile began the hunt for her attacker. With the details she provided, the articulate, intelligent child was able to help them. She told them the colour of the car, that her assailant was a man with a moustache, and that she had used a hammer to strike the door of the boot from the inside. She didn't tell the police or her parents what the man had done to her on the back seat. She felt ashamed. The police search covered an area six miles wide. About 10 yards from its perimeter, an officer eventually spotted a ball of clothing under a tree. It turned out to be the items Watts had been wearing. Information came through to detectives that Russell Bishop – a man with a moustache – had been seen driving a car in the area. Tyre tracks matching those of his car were found, as were the hammer marks on the inside of the door of Bishop's boot. Watts was able to pick him out of a line-up. He was duly charged with the attack, and Watts gave evidence against him in court, helping secure his conviction for attempted murder, kidnapping and indecent assault. In the press she was dubbed 'Britain's bravest girl'. Does she feel brave? 'I don't,' she says bluntly, even though her actions stopped a paedophile killer from harming more children. She has never managed to take pride in what she did, at such a young age, to send her attacker to prison. While Watts is visibly anxious, her husband Justin is cheery and upbeat. He takes an opposing view of her role in putting Bishop behind bars. 'Without you,' he interjects warmly, 'that broken individual undoubtedly would have racked up more killings, so you stopped it becoming a serial killer [case]. If you're not proud of it, I am.' Watts feels something more painful. 'I definitely have survivor's guilt, I know that much,' she says. Under the 800-year-old 'double jeopardy' principle, Bishop could not be retried for the murders of Nicola and Karen, despite his conviction for attacking Watts. In 2005, that changed when double jeopardy was scrapped. It meant an acquittal could be quashed and a retrial ordered if new and compelling evidence came to light. Bishop didn't reckon on having to face justice again for the killings. But advances in DNA testing enabled a forensic scientist to find evidence linking the crucial blue sweatshirt to Bishop's home and to the murdered girls. In October 2018, Bishop was retried at the Old Bailey and this time convicted. It had taken 32 years for justice to be done. But justice has never meant closure or recovery for his surviving victim. Watts was in her teens when she first discovered, to her horror, that 'life' did not mean life when it came to a jail term. She had nightmares that Bishop would climb through her bedroom window and kill her. After the attack, she had stopped going out to play, didn't want to have sleepovers with friends and generally preferred to stay closer to trusted adults. Otherwise, life carried on. She left school at 16 and spent a few months at college, then dropped out and took a full-time job instead, working in a branch of Thorntons. She moved on to a role in a bank and then to a hospital pathology laboratory. She moved around a lot, changed her name a couple of times, clung to her anonymity and stayed silent about the attack. She became a mother – her four children are now 20, 17, 15 and 12, but until 2022 she didn't share the truth with any of them. 'I swore I was never going to tell them,' she says. 'I felt it was something I was going to take to my grave.' This became harder when her mental health began to spiral downwards. She can pinpoint one triggering moment she thinks happened around 15 years ago, when, despite her efforts to stay under the radar, she received a phone call from the Victim Support charity to inform her that Bishop was up for parole. 'It came as a bit of a shock,' she says. 'It was definitely a case of, 'How did you find me?'' After all, if they could find her, couldn't anyone? Bishop was denied parole, but there began an unsettling cycle whereby she was kept abreast each time he was up for parole again. 'It was on this continuous loop,' she says. 'I did take a bit of a knock.' On a couple of occasions when leaving the house, she suffered panic attacks, and so slowly started to pull back from normal life. She struggles to remember exactly when this started, but says it was within the last decade. 'I was already on antidepressants and had started gaining significant weight because I was using food as a crutch,' she says. 'Whereas before that, we used to take the kids to the beach, to the park, to soft play, and I used to walk them to school, after 2018 the panic attacks got too much.' Bishop and everything concerning him seemed to keep returning to haunt her, not least with the second attempt to convict him of the Babes in the Wood murders. 'You had the Hadaways and the Fellows rightfully looking for their justice as well, so between the parole and [that] it just never went away… it was just constant,' she says. Increasingly, she found it a challenge even to leave the house. Her last job was as a dinner lady at the school up the road, but she hasn't been able to work for about six years. Having stopped going out to see friends, she grew distant from them. 'It does get very, very lonely,' she admits. She could keep the past from overshadowing the present no longer. Depression, agoraphobia and complex post-traumatic stress disorder have crowded in on her, and she remains in the grip of her darkest memory, although it can feel almost like a dream. 'I've felt ashamed of what happened to me and felt talking about it was a taboo. [I feel] like a prisoner of my past as I can't seem to break free of what he did to me,' she says. 'I just want people to understand that I'm not some weirdo who can't go out.' Twice divorced, Watts met Justin, the father of her youngest child, through friends of friends around 15 years ago. They got to know each other through their shared love of online gaming. It has otherwise been hard to trust others; hard to avoid trying to wrap her children in cotton wool and protect them from every harm. On one occasion, when her eldest was late coming home, she was on the verge of calling the police. 'And at that time [my children] had no clue and just thought I was being some overprotective, annoying parent,' she says. 'Since I've told them all, the oldest especially was like, 'Oh right, now I get it.'' In April last year, Sussex Police apologised to Nicola and Karen's families for mistakes made in its original investigation into their murders. Lessons, they said, had been learnt. At the request of the families, details of the failings were not released. But what of Watts, who would never have encountered Bishop had he been convicted at his first trial? She says she received a private apology, but that police have never publicly acknowledged the impact any failings of theirs had on her. 'Sussex needs to know what those failings were and they need to tell everybody that they've acknowledged these things, and what they've done to make sure it never happens again,' she says, her tone turning angry. 'I don't understand why that should be a private topic. I think that's something the whole community deserves to know.' Her parents, she says, agree. They have told her that 'if [police] hadn't made those errors, then you would not have had 30-plus years of misery'. Sussex Police say they have publicly accepted failings in the 1987 case of Russell Bishop that may have affected the outcome of the trial. 'While policing practices have significantly improved over the last 38 years, we do not underestimate the devastating and lifelong impact Bishop's attack has had on Ms Watts,' says assistant chief constable Tanya Jones. 'We have committed to issuing a formal apology to Ms Watts in our correspondence with her.' Today, Watts describes herself as broken. 'I haven't been able to control my mental health so far since it hit me like a 10-ton truck,' she says. She doesn't know when she might feel better but she does know what Justin tells her: to take each day one by one. 'Yeah,' he agrees. 'Just be happy with little steps. At the moment we're happy you're sitting down in the garden, not in the house.' The next step after that will be to go to the shops. For now, she takes solace in watching everything grow in her garden, in taking care of the plants. She hopes in future to have a career, perhaps working with animals. To go out and spend time with her family and sit in a pub beer garden. To go shrimping in the sea again. To live a normal life.
