Russell Bishop (sex offender)

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Russell Bishop (born 1966 in Brighton, Sussex, England) is a convicted child sex offender and abductor. He is serving life imprisonment for the abduction, molestation and attempted murder of a seven-year-old girl in the Whitehawk area of Brighton. The crime was committed on 4 February 1990 and Bishop was sentenced on 13 December 1990. Now in his 18th year of imprisonment, Bishop is one of the longest serving prisoners in Britain not to be serving a sentence for murder, despite the trial judge recommending a minimum term of 14 years which could have seen him out of prison in 2004.

Bishop first became the centre of media attention and public vilification in October 1986 when he was arrested on suspicion of the murders of two nine-year-old girls whose bodies were found in Wild Park, Brighton. The murders became known as the Babes in the Wood murders after the children's tale.^[1] He was cleared on both murder charges at his trial in December 1987, and the case remains open.^[2] The double jeopardy law seemed to eliminate any possibility that Bishop might one day face a new trial for the murders, but new legislation in 2005 meant that a criminal could face a new trial for a crime if substantial new evidence came to light. In September 2006, the High Court decided that there was not enough for Bishop to face a second trial for the murders.^[2]