Babes in the Wood killer Russell Bishop’s girlfriend loses appeal against perjury conviction after her lies at his 1987 double-murder trial freed him to strike again
- Jennie Johnson was jailed for six years in 2021 for giving a murderer an alibi
- She is the former partner of Babes in the Wood killer Russell Bishop
- Johnson told Bishop’s first trial that he did not own a jumper linked to the crime
- Advances in DNA evidence later proved Bishop was the killer and Johnson lied
The former partner of Babes in the Wood killer Russell Bishop has failed in an appeal bid after being convicted of perjury.
Bishop, who died in January 2022 aged 55, was jailed in 2018 for a minimum of 36 years after being convicted of the murders of Nicola Fellows and Karen Hadaway, who were both nine when they died in 1986.
He had been cleared of their murders at an earlier trial in 1987.
Jennie Johnson was given a six-year prison sentence in May 2021 after a judge and jury heard that she had lied at Bishop’s original 1987 trial.
On Wednesday, three judges dismissed the 56-year-old’s appeal bid by after considering arguments at a recent Court of Appeal hearing in London.
Lord Justice Fulford, Mrs Justice Cutts and Mr Justice Henshaw refused to give Johnson the go-ahead to challenge her conviction and sentence.
Jennie Johnson was given a six-year prison sentence in May 2021 after a judge and jury heard that she had lied at Russell Bishop’s original 1987 trial
She lost her appeal having been convicted of perverting the course of justice by supplying Bishop with a false alibi
Russell Bishop was 20 when he sexually assaulted and strangled Karen and Nicola in a woodland den in Brighton, East Sussex, in October 1986
Nicola Fellows and her friend Karen Hadaway, both aged nine, were found murdered in Brighton’s Wild Park in 1986
Bishop was 20 when he sexually assaulted and strangled Karen and Nicola in a woodland den in Brighton, East Sussex, in October 1986, judges heard.
He was cleared of their murders in December 1987, but within three years went on to kidnap, molest and throttle a seven-year-old girl.
While serving life for attempted murder, Bishop was ordered to face a fresh trial under the double jeopardy law, following a DNA breakthrough.
Jurors convicted Bishop, following a 2018 trial at the Old Bailey, on the 31st anniversary of his acquittal.
The appeal judges heard that Johnson was jailed by Mr Justice Fraser at Lewes Crown Court in May 2021 after being convicted of perverting the course of justice and making a false statement.
Johnson said she had been ‘a vulnerable young mother’ in an ‘abusive relationship with Bishop’ in the late 1980s.
Lawyers representing her argued that a fair trial had been impossible more than 30 years after the ‘relevant events’ and said proceedings should have been ‘stayed’.
Pictured: A blue Pinto sweatshirt, allegedly worn by Bishop and said to contain vital DNA evidence, which was found beside a path behind Moulsecoomb railway station
Russell Bishop, pictured after his initial arrest for the 1986 Babes in the Wood murders
The girls were found dead in this ‘den’ in undergrowth in Wild Park, Brighton after he struck
They said the judge’s summing up had been ‘demonstrably one-sided’ – and Johnson had been ‘denied a fair trial’.
Lawyers also said Johnson’s ‘defence of duress’ failed ‘adequately to address’ the circumstances of the ‘violent, coercive and controlling relationship’ she had been in with Bishop.
The appeal judges disagreed and refused to give Johnson ‘leave to appeal’.
During Bishop’s original trial Johnson stunned police in the dock after suddenly claiming a blue jumper that linked him to the crime scene and killings was not his. She had previously told investigators it had been his garment.
Johnson’s evidence saw the jury acquit Bishop in 1987 – leaving him free to kidnap, sexually assault and try and kill another girl at Devils Dyke on the South Downs three years later, which did see him subsequently jailed.
But it was only in 2018, after double jeopardy laws were changed, that he was finally brought to justice for sexually assaulting and strangling to death Nicola and Karen after the same jumper was forensically linked to him.
Today Johnson’s lies saw her finally brought to book after 34 years of agony for Bishop’s victims.
Michelle Johnson, the mother of Karen who is not related to the defendant, said : ‘Jennifer Johnson lied on oath at the very court where she had just been convicted of perjury and perverting the course of justice. Her wicked lies about a crucial piece of evidence subsequently helped her boyfriend, the murdering, psychopathic paedophile escape justice for the double murder of two innocent little girls, my beautiful Karen and her friend, Nicky.’
She said that after the acquittal Bishop and Johnson, who had signed a £15,000 deal with a Sunday newspaper, spent two days eating fine food and drinking champagne all paid for by the paper.
The long road to justice
October 10, 1986 – Victims found in woods in Wild Park, Brighton.
December 3, 1986 – Bishop charged with the murders.
December 10, 1987 – After a four week trial, Bishop is acquitted of both murders and released.
February 4, 1990 – Bishop arrested for kidnap, indecent assault and attempted murder of a seven-year-old girl at Devil’s Dyke, East Sussex.
January 19, 1991 – Bishop convicted of kidnap, indecent assault and attempted murder and sentenced to life with a minimum of 14 years.
July 2002 – Babes in the Wood case subject to review and DNA profiling, but was not a success.
April 2005 – Double jeopardy laws – on people being able to be tried twice for same offence twice – are changed.
January 2006 – Forensic tests link Bishop and the Pinto sweatshirt.
Autumn 2006 – Families of both victims informed there was insufficient evidence to proceed with a fresh case against Bishop.
2011-2012 – Cold case review of the murders.
November 3, 2013 – Full reinvestigation of forensics.
May 10, 2016 – Russell Bishop rearrested.
December 2017 – His acquittal was quashed.
December 2018 – He is finally convicted of the murders.
‘Not only had we lost our daughter but the evil monster who had done it walked free. The evil lies this woman told had very serious consequences because three years later, on the anniversary of Karen and Nicola’s funeral that evil man struck again. This time it was a seven year old little girl who was attacked,’ she added.
She said Johnson was a ‘pathological liar’ who could have prevented the 1990 attack if she hadn’t told her lies ‘But she was besotted with Bishop.’
Lorna Heffron said: ‘Jennifer Johnson perverted the course of justice for our beautiful girls Nicola and Karen, as well as for the seven year old little girl who suffered immensely in the wake of Bishop’s wrongful acquittals.
‘The wheels of justice and they turn incredibly slowly. Justice has finally been served on someone who thought she was untouchable.’
She said: ‘Johnson was infatuated with her lover, the paedophile, double child murderer Russell. She helped him walk free in 1987 with her lies under oath. Had she not lied, Bishop may have been found guilty. He may not have been free to attack again, which of course he did less than three years after he had been acquitted.’
Johnson had admitted lying, but had pleaded not guilty to perjury and perverting the course of justice, on the basis that she was acting under duress.
But the jury at Lewes Crown Court decided she was lying again and had been ‘part of Team Bishop’, desperate to get him cleared of murder.
Love letters sent from Johnson to him during the Devils Dyke case and shown to these jurors, had laid bare the lengths she would go to for him.
They trilled: ‘I’m not going to leave you so don’t worry because I won’t. cos I love you very much and I will write every day because you’re special to me and you mean all the world too.
‘Don’t get worried when I’m not up with your mum as I can’t get a babysitter all the time but I’m still thinking of you love.
‘Can we get married quite soon and I will book the church OK? It is wonderful that you want to marry me. It’s not prison talk is it love? I haven’t got a lot to say so bye for now.’
Outside court Lorna Heffron, Nicola’s cousin, branded Bishop ‘an evil paedophile’ whose actions had ‘devastated and destroyed’ two families.
She said he was only freed due to a huge miscarriage of justice in which Johnson played a key part.
Miss Heffron said: ‘She helped blur the lines. She blatantly perverted the course of justice for Nicky and Karen.
‘She had plenty of opportunity to tell the truth back then and in past three decades. She lied at every opportunity.’
She said her demeanour at the 1987 was ‘smug and self-assured’.
‘She must pay her price in the part she played in the miscarriage of justice. Her devious lies have impacted on us all. The past has caught up with someone who hid in plain sight believing she was untouchable.’
New DNA techniques linked the killer to the double murders through a blue sweatshirt.
The top, discarded along Bishop’s route home, contained crucial evidence which linked it to Bishop, the two girls and Johnson.
Johnson’s trial had heard her deny perjury and perverting the course of justice because she was terrified into lying by the killer and his family.
But prosecutor Alison Morgan QC told jurors that Johnson was ‘part of Team Bishop, not a victim of it’, and added: ‘Nobody has a gun to her head.’
The lies meant the families of Nicola and Karen were denied justice for more than 30 years.
Karen’s parents Michelle and Lee Hadaway moved to Surrey and divorced six years later, blaming the tragedy.
The letter from Johnson to Bishop showed she only cared for him, not his victims
Lee moved back in Brighton where he was homeless and addicted to tranquillisers.
He died from a heart attack in 1998 without seeing Bishop convicted of killing his daughter.
Nicola’s dad Barrie Fellows was dogged for years by entirely false claims by Johnson and Bishop implicating him in the murder of his own daughter.
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