Martin Bashir admits to taking clothes of murdered girl

infamous former BBC reporter martin bashiro She has admitted that she took the clothes of a murdered nine-year-old girl that was then lost – claiming she can’t remember doing so for nearly 20 years.

In a handwritten letter to the girl’s mother, Michelle Hadaway, seen by The Mail on Sunday, Bashir admitted for the first time that he worked on a BBC program about the murder of his daughter Karen and was handed her clothes.

He said he was “extremely sorry” that the clothesline with which Karen was murdered – which he revealed to have taken to the “BBC” – disappeared.

Karen Hadaway and her friend Nicola Fellowes were murdered Brighton In 1986 which became known as Babes in the Wood Killings. It wasn’t until 2018 that Rufer Russell Bishop was convicted of his death. He was acquitted in an earlier trial in 1987.

Bashir initially refused to take clothes while he was researching a BBC program on the 1986 murders of Karen Haddaway and her friend Nicola Fellowes in Brighton.

Pictured Karen Hadaway was murdered with her friend Nicola Fellows, by Ruffer Russell Bishop

In 1991, Bashir, who was then working for the BBC program Public Eye, persuaded Karen’s grieving mother to hand over the clothes after promising her a DNA test in hopes of identifying the killer.

The family asked them to be returned in 2004 so that they could be given to Sussex Police, who were reviewing the case, only to be told they had gone missing.

Despite Bashir leaving Mitchell with a signed receipt, his agent John Miles said in 2004 that the reporter ‘really doesn’t remember anything about the case’.

Asked about the clothes in May this year, Bashir said, “I may have lost it, but I can’t remember.”

In November, The Mail revealed on Sunday that the BBC’s Director General Tim Davey had offered the corporation a ‘sincere apology’ to Ms Hadaway after a new investigation had failed to track down the clothing, including Karen’s school. Sweatshirts, T-shirts, shorts and vests were included. , He also asked Bashir to apologize directly to him. The MoS can reveal that two weeks later, Mr Dewey’s chief of staff Phil Harold sent Ms Hadaway a sealed envelope containing Bashir’s 242-word handwritten letter.

‘Martin Bashir has sent us the enclosed envelope for you to deliver,’ said Mr. Harold. ‘We haven’t opened it… nor do we know about its contents.’

In the letter, Bashir confirmed that Ms Hadaway had met her ‘graciously’ and provided Karen’s clothes in the hope that it would help with research for an ‘important event’. He acknowledged that the loss of clothing would have added to Ms Hadaway’s pain and suffering – which she described as ‘deeply regretful’.

Ms Hadaway called Bashir’s apology “absolute nonsense” and “too lit, too late” last night. She continued: ‘When I met him, my husband had taken a toll and stayed in the hospital for seven weeks – completely broken because he couldn’t do anything about his little girl’s killer. The BBC was our last hope.

‘We were all disappointed. Bashir spent hours with me, we met twice – how could he forget me? When he pretended he’d never met me, I felt more powerless than ever. My husband passed away shortly after of a heart attack. His heart was really broken.’

He is also angry that Bashir used his letter to highlight how Sussex Police had obtained the necessary forensic evidence from him before the clothes went missing.

‘The original forensics was a disaster,’ she said. ‘That’s why the BBC was planning a program.’

Bill Warner, a former detective inspector who reviewed the case, told the MoS in September that it would undoubtedly be useful for police to fabric for forensic testing in 2004.

Ms Hadaway is now seeking legal advice and is considering contacting the BBC for compensation.

Bashir, the BBC’s former religion editor, left the corporation in May ahead of the publication of a damaging report by former Supreme Court judge Lord Dyson into the deception he had leveled to ground his 1995 interview with Princess Diana.