Russell Bishop trial: Police asked murder suspect's girlfriend to sleep with him to extract confession, court hears
Marion Stevenson also tells Old Bailey convicted sex offender Russell Bishop had been 'my first love'
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Police asked the teenage girlfriend of a murder suspect to sleep with him so she could extract a bugged confession he had killed nine-year-olds Karen Hadaway and Nicola Fellows, a court heard.
Marion Stevenson told the Old Bailey that in 1986 when she was 16, a detective investigating the killing of the two girls asked her to sleep with Russell Bishop so they could record a confession via a bug that had been planted in his home.
The court heard, however, that the plan fell apart because Bishop discovered the bug.
Bishop, 52, denies sexually assaulting and murdering Karen and Nicola in an ivy-covered “den” in Wild Park, Brighton, on 9 October 1986.
He was acquitted of two counts of murder after a trial in 1987, but is now being tried again after new DNA evidence came to light. He denies murder.
Ms Stevenson, who told the Old Bailey that Bishop had been “my first love” and she had been “besotted” with him, said on Wednesday that she stood by accounts she had given after his acquittal to News of the World reporters in December 1987 and to police officers in January 1988.
The Old Bailey heard that in her January 1988 statement to police she had maintained she was “adamant she had been asked to sleep with the defendant to extract a confession”.
In her 1988 statement, the court heard, Ms Stevenson explained that a detective had “asked me to ask Russell if he had committed the murder.
“They wanted me to gain his confidence. They believed he would confess to someone he was close to.
“The detective said if anything happened, they would be in there straight away. By that I gathered they would be listening in. At the same time, they said Russell Bishop’s place was bugged.”
The court heard that in her 1988 account, Ms Stevenson said that when she went to Bishop’s flat, “he didn’t look happy. He told me he had found a bug in the sitting room, behind a wall socket.”
Challenging her account, Brian Altman QC, prosecuting, said she might have taken the time when her parents allowed a recording device to be fitted to their home phone to capture conversations between her and Bishop, and misremembered this as the defendant’s flat being bugged.
He told Ms Stevenson: “I am suggesting the flat was never bugged. There was no bug, and if there was no bug, then Russell could never have discovered one.”
Ms Stevenson burst into tears in the witness box, as she replied: “You are just trying to make me out to be a liar.”
Appealing for a break, which was granted, she added: “I can’t do this, I can’t do this.”
Ms Stevenson was also challenged over her accounts of seeing Nicola’s father Barrie Fellows watching a video of his daughter being abused by lodger Dougie Judd.
She told the Old Bailey this incident had happened when she visited the Fellows family home to smoke dope with Mr Judd, Bishop and another man about two months before the murders.
Mr Altman highlighted inconsistencies in statements she had given in 1988 and 2007 and asked whether they were “because none of this happened”.
Ms Stevenson told the court: “It did happen.”
She said she might have given different details in 2007 because “I wasn’t high on drugs [then]. In 1988 I was. I was always high on drugs at that time.”
She rejected Mr Altman’s suggestion that the drugs had made her hallucinate and imagine seeing the video being played in 1986.
And she told Mr Altman that giving up cannabis meant her memory of the 1986 incident was clearer in 2007 than it had been in 1988.
“You probably never smoked it,” she said to the barrister, “So you probably can’t say how it affects you. I wasn’t clear about things in 1988 because I was smoking and I was drinking.”
She added: “It did affect my memory when I was smoking pot.”
In her 2007 statement, the court heard, Ms Stevenson said that on the afternoon in 1986 when she saw the video being played, “we smoked joint after joint that day”.
Ms Stevenson also confirmed that in her 2007 statement, she had said that she, Bishop, Mr Judd and the other man “had shared a bottle of Pernod between us. I was mixing it with blackcurrant.”
Mr Altman asked her: “You were high and drinking?”
Giving evidence from behind a screen, Ms Stevenson replied: “Yes.”
“But despite that,” Mr Altman asked, “you knew exactly what you were doing?”
“Yes,” Ms Stevenson replied.
Mr Altman also asked her why she had not immediately confronted Mr Judd about sexually abusing Nicola.
Mr Altman asked: “Why didn’t you say to Dougie Judd: ‘You are a disgusting animal, I have just seen you having sex with Nicola’?”
Ms Stevenson replied: “I was in a house full of people I was scared of. Barrie Fellows didn’t like me. I was scared of him. All I wanted to do was get home safe.”
She added: “I wouldn’t lie about Dougie. I loved him like a brother.”
Mr Altman asked why she had not spoken out before the murders, in order to protect Nicola, “this little girl of whom you were fond”.
“Even at the age of 16,” Mr Altman said, “if you had wanted to, you could have reported what you told the jury you saw at any day, or in any of the weeks or any of the months leading up to the girls’ murders.”
Ms Stevenson replied: “I could have done and maybe if I had they might be alive.”
But she explained: “I was scared. I was only young myself.”
Mr Altman told Ms Stevenson she had given statements or interviews to the police on 11 occasions between the murders and the 1987 trial, but she had never mentioned the video incident, even when detectives wrongly suspected her of having aided Bishop.
“Can you explain why there is not one mention of this allegation?” Mr Altman asked.
“I was young. I was scared. A lot of things scared me,” Ms Stevenson replied.
Ms Stevenson said she only went to the News of the World because she was made to do so by Sylvia Bishop, whom she described as the “domineering mother” of the defendant.
She burst into tears as she said: “They all used me. Everyone used me: Russell’s family, the police, everyone.”
During their evidence at the Old Bailey, Mr Fellows and Mr Judd both issued emphatic denials from the witness box, saying there had been no video and they had never sexually abused Nicola.
The court has heard that after walking free from court in 1987, Bishop went on to kidnap, strangle and sexually abuse a seven-year-old girl in 1990.
He is serving a life sentence for the abduction, indecent assault and attempted murder of the seven-year-old and Ms Stevenson has long ago ceased to have anything to do with Bishop.
But she told the Old Bailey that in 1986, as a 16-year-old, “I was besotted with him. He could do no wrong in my eyes. I worshipped the ground he walked on. He was my first love.”
The trial continues.