As a victim of ‘Babes in the Wood’ killer Russell Bishop describes how the monster has cast a dark shadow over her life, we speak to the Detective Inspector responsible for putting him behind bars
Malcolm Bacon’s first major inquiry as a Detective Inspector was more than 30 years ago but he can remember the details as if it were yesterday. Rachael Watts was just seven years old when she was kidnapped in broad daylight before being sexually assaulted and strangled.
The schoolgirl survived against the odds and helped to convict evil Russell Bishop, who had been wrongfully acquitted of murdering Nicola Fellows and Karen Hadaway a few years before in the infamous ‘Babes in the Wood‘ case. Now 42, Rachael is the subject of a new Sky documentary about the impact of the monster’s attack on her life.
Retired police officer Malcolm appears in the two-part programme and is convinced Bishop would have struck again if he hadn’t been caught. “He was a psychopath, a really dangerous person who would absolutely have killed again,” he told The Mirror. “I’m fully convinced he thought he had killed Rachael. He thought he could get away with it but she turned into an incredible witness.”
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Rachael became a victim of predator Bishop in 1990, soon after moving to the Brighton area of East Sussex with her family. She had planned to roller skate to a friend’s house but bumped her head, returned home and was given a pound by her father to buy sweets from the local shop.
The schoolgirl took a wrong turn on her way home and asked a man for directions. It was Bishop, who was tinkering with his red Ford Cortina. Without saying a word in reply to her, he threw her in the boot of his car and drove his victim to a well-known beauty spot in the South Downs.
“When the information came in that a girl had been discovered at Devil’s Dyke, the main thing was to preserve the scenes,” said Malcolm. “The first ‘scene’ was Rachael herself and the second was the Dyke, which was a huge area. There were only a few roads in and out, so once we sealed them off, we were fairly happy we had a sterile area.”
When the predator reached Devil’s Dyke, he put Rachael on the back seat of his car and removed her clothing before sexually assaulting and strangling her. He then discarded her underneath some gorse bushes.
“He disposed of me like he was flytipping,” said the survivor, fighting back tears in the documentary. “Just like I was an old mattress or something, just thrown into a bush somewhere. He left me thinking I was dead.”
The terrified schoolgirl came around in the dark, and as she stumbled out of the bushes, a nearby couple who had been enjoying the sunset wrapped her in a blanket and sought help. Heartbreakingly, she asked them: “You two aren’t kidnappers, are you?”.
The former DI is convinced Bishop thought he had killed his victim, saying: “She was strangled and suffocated to the point what’s known as petechial haemorrhages took place (tiny pinpoint spots of bleeding under the skin caused by straining for a long time) which are quite indicative of a strangle injury. Usually, they only come out at the point of death, really. That’s how close to death she was.”
The young girl’s memory of her ordeal until she was strangled unconscious would prove vital. “Rachael was a fabulous witness,” said the retired cop. “She was able to explain everything she saw, the man in the red car with a moustache. In the boot of the car, she saw a can of WD40, the same that her dad used. She found a hammer too and started banging on the boot lid.”
Incredibly, Rachael had the presence of mind to take off her roller skates in the boot of the car, to aid any chance of escape once the boot was opened. “She formulated an escape plan,” said Malcolm. “She offered Bishop the pound she had been given if he would let her go.”
Four years earlier, a double child murder had taken place in Brighton’s Wild Park, which became known as the ‘Babes in the Wood’ murders in the press after the children’s tale of the same name. Nicola and Karen were nine-year-old schoolgirls when they went out to play and never came home.
Their bodies were found in the park close to their homes the next day. They had known Rachael’s future attacker, Bishop, then 20 and a local labourer and petty criminal, and he was charged with killing them.
But the monster’s then-girlfriend, Jennifer Johnston, changed her story in the witness box after previously saying a blue sweatshirt found close to the scene had been his. And to the horror of police and psychologists involved in the case, Bishop was found not guilty by a jury at Lewes Crown Court in December 1987.
With the predator free to roam the streets once more, the experts’ worst fears came true. Rachael was his next victim, with retired DI Malcolm describing her as an “articulate, intelligent seven-year-old girl who met a monster”. This time, Bishop wouldn’t be able to evade justice thanks in large part to the bravery of his victim, who picked him out of an identity parade and testified against him in court.
“Her first account got us all going,” said Malcolm. “The red car was mentioned in a first briefing, and an intelligence report had come through days before saying Bishop had been seen in a red car.
“He went on to admit to driving it and put himself at the point of the abduction at the relevant time. I arrested him on suspicion of kidnapping and indecent assault, and we got his car, opened up the boot and in there was WD40 and a hammer with chip marks on the boot, corresponding to what Rachael had said.”
“He tried to become chatty with us,” added the former police officer. “‘What’s going on? You trying to fit me up? Of course, it’s not me. He was a psychopath; his whole entity was to look after himself. He would try and manipulate things, but he wasn’t very bright.”
Bishop was later jailed for life and ordered to serve a minimum of 14 years for attempted murder, kidnapping and indecent assault.
“He was prowling, we suspect he had been following other little girls around,” said Malcolm. “We did get another report from another girl who was followed by a man in a red car. If the circumstances were correct, she might have been another victim.”
Dubbed ‘Britain’s bravest girl’ for stopping a paedophile killer from striking again, Rachael’s life was irreparably blighted by Bishop, suffering from crippling depression, agoraphobia and complex post-traumatic stress along the way.
As a teenager, she had frequent nightmares where the predator would climb through her window and kill her. The survivor had four children and, in the course of her adult life, moved around a lot and changed her name a couple of times in a bid to remain anonymous.
But in 2022, Rachael told her children the secret she was “going to take to my grave” after Bishop died from brain cancer. Today, she’s speaking out in public to rid herself of the “boulder” of a secret that has cast a dark shadow over her life.
As for the families of the ‘Babes in the Wood’, they finally achieved some form of justice in 2018, after the 2005 scrapping of the ‘double jeopardy’ rule combined with advances in forensic technology meant evil Bishop was able to be tried for a second time. This time, he was rightfully convicted for his abhorrent crimes, receiving two life sentences and ordered to serve a minimum of 36 years behind bars.
In April last year, Nicola and Karen’s families received apologies from Sussex Police for failures in the original investigation into their murders. And in 2022, Bishop’s ex-girlfriend, Johnson, who had changed her evidence at his original trial to devastating effect, was jailed for six years for perjury and perverting the course of justice.
Watch The Girl Who Caught a Killer on Sky and streaming service NOW
