Russell Bishop (born 1966 in Brighton, Sussex, England) is a convicted child molester and abductor.
Bishop has now served more than 23 years in prison and is believed to be Britain’s longest serving offender for sexual offences where no “conviction” for murder was involved.
He is serving life imprisonment for the abduction, molestation and attempted murder of a seven-year-old girl in the Whitehawk area of Brighton. He committed the crime on 4 February 1990, and was sentenced on 13 December 1990. By 2007, Bishop was still in prison and 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 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. The then teenager Russell Bishop, who knew both girls and once lodged at Nicola’s home in Brighton, was acquitted in 1987 of the double killing which remains one of the country’s most notorious unsolved crimes
He was cleared on both murder charges at his trial in December 1987, and the case remains open. Double jeopardy 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
Bishop is currently serving the remainder of his sentence at open prison and is due parole within the next 12 months (2012).