View
comments
Karen Hadaway, pictured, and her friend Nicola Fellows, were murdered by Russell Bishop in Brighton in 1986
BBC boss Tim Davie has told the mother of a murdered schoolgirl that the Corporation has failed to find her daughter’s bloodied clothes after they were lost by rogue reporter Martin Bashir.
In a letter to Michelle Hadaway, seen by The Mail on Sunday, Mr Davie said the BBC is unable to ‘shed any further light’ on what happened to her daughter Karen’s clothes and that ‘little more can be done’ to find them.
He apologised on behalf of the Corporation and said it will urge Bashir to make a personal apology.
Karen Hadaway and her friend Nicola Fellows, both aged nine, were murdered by Russell Bishop in Brighton in 1986 in what became known as the Babes In The Wood killings.
Five years later, Bashir persuaded Michelle to hand over Karen’s clothes after promising to subject them to DNA tests but they went missing and have never been returned.
In 2004, the BBC launched an inquiry but the MoS revealed in September that it had failed to speak to Bashir. Journalists who worked alongside him – and his agent – also said they were not contacted.
Amid mounting questions about Bashir’s conduct, Mr Davie, the BBC’s Director General, asked Paul Smith, a former head of editorial standards at BBC Radio, to launch a review into what happened during the 2004 investigation.
But the BBC has revealed the review was ‘hampered by the passage of time because some of those people spoken to could not recall being approached in 2004 and others cannot
