The BBC was warned by two whistleblowers that a British true crime author was claiming to have obtained the missing clothes of a child murder victim that the broadcaster had lost.
The Guardian has established that the office of the former head of the BBC and the corporation’s whistleblowing unit were both informed that Christopher Berry-Dee, the UK’s most successful true crime author, had told people he had obtained the clothes of Karen Hadaway, who was murdered in 1986.
Sources have told the Guardian that Berry-Dee was boasting of having had Karen’s clothes during the 1990s and 2000s. In an investigation published today, multiple women have accused Berry-Dee of sexual and violent offences, which he denies.
Karen was killed alongside her best friend, nine-year-old Nicola Fellows, in Brighton’s Wild Park in what came to be known as the Babes in the Woods murders. The clothes she was wearing were obtained in 1991 by the journalist Martin Bashir, who was working on a possible BBC documentary about the case, but were subsequently lost.
The mystery of what happened to Karen’s clothes has dogged the corporation since 2004, when a police detective asked for them to be returned, only for the BBC to realise it could not find them. The corporation later apologised and paid a financial settlement to Karen’s mother.
In the late 1980s Berry-Dee campaigned for police to return Karen’s clothes to the Hadaways. He then sought to persuade the parents to give them to him in turn by offering to arrange for cutting-edge DNA testing. He described the Hadaways handing him the clothes “with tears in their eyes” in his book A Question of Evidence.
The clothes then appear to have been returned before being given to Bashir in August 1991. Eileen Fairweather, a freelance journalist working with Bashir on an investigation into the murders, was present when Karen’s mother handed her daughter’s clothes over. They “were in a bin liner … inside was a clear plastic evidence bag”, she said. “You could see the bloodstains.”
Fairweather, who had tried for years to find out what became of the missing clothes, began reinvestigating in 2021 after a BBC inquiry concluded Bashir had forged evidence to trick Diana, Princess of Wales into giving him an interview in 1995.
Fairweather’s sources told her Berry-Dee had boasted about having the clothes during the 1990s and 2000s. She also discovered he had twice been arrested, and once charged, for alleged child sexual abuse, though never convicted.
The whereabouts of the clothes remains unclear. Berry-Dee told the Guardian it was “100% correct” he had obtained them and claimed to have since burned them, but did not respond when asked to explain the timeline or clarify whether he had obtained them a second time after Michelle Hadaway gave them to the BBC.
A lawyer for Bashir said he had no recollection of Berry-Dee. “[He] left the clothing at the BBC’s Public Eye offices. That is where his actions vis-a-vis the clothing ends,” the lawyer said.
Fairweather contacted the BBC’s whistleblowing unit in 2022 to tell them she believed Berry-Dee was the last person known to be in possession of Karen’s clothes. The corporation said its senior leadership was reviewing the allegations, only to inform her three years later it was closing the case with no further action.
A second warning was emailed to the office of the then BBC director general, Tim Davie, by Ian Heffron, an uncle of Nicola Fellows, after Davie apologised to a parliamentary committee on the corporation’s behalf for having lost the clothes.
“Could you please have urgent enquiries made into the following,” Heffron wrote. “Have the BBC ever employed or been associated with the author Christopher Berry-Dee in any way?” He added: “My reason for asking is because I am given [to] understand that this man has stated that he had possession of Karen’s clothes.”
Heffron received a response from Davie’s office confirming receipt of his email but never heard anything further.
The BBC declined to comment on whether it took any action in response to the emails from Fairweather and Heffron. A spokesperson said: “In 2023 we apologised for falling short in our duty of care to Michelle Hadaway and reached a settlement with her regarding the loss of her daughter Karen’s clothes. We believe this matter has been investigated as thoroughly as possible.”
