BBC ignored warnings that true crime author possessed missing murder victim's clothes

In 1986, two nine-year-old girls were killed in a park in Brighton. Karen Hadaway and Nicola Fellows died in what became known as the Babes in the Woods murders. Forty years later, the BBC still cannot account for Karen's clothes—the garments she was wearing when she died, which vanished while in the corporation's care. What makes this worse is that the BBC was warned, twice, by people who said they knew where those clothes had gone. The corporation did nothing.

The trail of Karen's clothing begins in the late 1980s, when true crime author Christopher Berry-Dee, now the UK's most successful writer in his genre, campaigned for police to return the girl's clothes to her family. He then approached Karen's parents with an offer: let him have the clothes, he said, and he would arrange for advanced DNA testing. In his book, Berry-Dee described the Hadaways handing over the garments "with tears in their eyes." The clothes were then given to journalist Martin Bashir in August 1991. Bashir was working on a possible BBC documentary about the murders. Eileen Fairweather, a freelance journalist assisting Bashir, was present when Karen's mother placed the clothes—bloodstained, in a clear plastic evidence bag inside a bin liner—into Bashir's hands.

For thirteen years, no one at the BBC seemed to notice the clothes were missing. In 2004, a police detective asked for them back. Only then did the corporation realize it had lost them. The BBC apologized and paid a financial settlement to Karen's mother, Michelle Hadaway. But the clothes themselves remained gone, their location a mystery that would haunt the case.

Fairweather spent years trying to find out what happened. In 2021, after a BBC inquiry concluded that Bashir had forged evidence to manipulate Princess Diana into an interview, she decided to reinvestigate. Her sources told her something striking: Berry-Dee had been boasting during the 1990s and 2000s that he possessed Karen's clothes. Fairweather also discovered that Berry-Dee had been arrested twice on suspicion of child sexual abuse, and charged once, though never convicted. In 2022, she contacted the BBC's whistleblowing unit to report what she had learned. She believed Berry-Dee was the last person known to have the clothes.

A second warning reached the BBC's leadership independently. Ian Heffron, the uncle of Nicola Fellows, emailed the office of then-director general Tim Davie after Davie had publicly apologized to Parliament for the lost clothing. "Could you please have urgent enquiries made," Heffron wrote, asking whether the BBC had ever employed or been associated with Berry-Dee and noting that he understood Berry-Dee had claimed to possess Karen's clothes. Davie's office acknowledged receipt of the email. Nothing else happened.

When Fairweather followed up with the BBC's whistleblowing unit, she was told that senior leadership was reviewing the allegations. Three years later, in 2025, the corporation informed her it was closing the case with no further action. The BBC declined to explain what, if anything, it had investigated. A spokesperson said only that the corporation had apologized in 2023 and reached a settlement with Michelle Hadaway, and that "we believe this matter has been investigated as thoroughly as possible."

Berry-Dee told The Guardian it was "100% correct" that he had obtained the clothes. He claimed to have burned them. He did not explain the timeline or answer whether he had obtained them a second time after the BBC received them from the Hadaways. Bashir's lawyer said Bashir had no memory of Berry-Dee and that Bashir had simply left the clothing at the BBC's offices. "That is where his actions vis-a-vis the clothing ends," the lawyer stated.

The clothes of a murdered child remain unaccounted for. Two people warned the BBC where they might be. The corporation closed the case. Karen Hadaway's mother has received an apology and money, but not answers. The question of what happened to the physical evidence of her daughter's death—and why the institution entrusted with it chose not to pursue the leads it was given—remains open.