[Stewart Meadows]

‘We are appalled’: BBC apologises for losing murder victim's clothes loaned to network by schoolgirl's mother


19 Sep, 2021 15:52

The BBC apologised on Sunday after one of its former editor’s allegedly lost a murdered schoolgirl’s clothes, which had been lent to the network to be DNA tested as part of a show on the tragic crime.

Michelle Hadaway – the mother of 9-year-old Karen Hadaway, who was found strangled to death in Brighton in 1986 – loaned her daughter’s clothes to former BBC presenter and editor Martin Bashir in 1991 after he said the network could do further DNA testing on the items in an effort to find evidence against Hadaway’s murderer.

According to the Daily Mail, which investigated the incident, the victim’s mother gave Bashir “a bag containing Karen's school sweatshirt, T-shirt, knickers and vest” and Bashir “even left her a signed receipt.”

The planned show was never aired, however, and the clothes were never given back to the Hadaway family. Hadaway protested in May that Bashir “has never apologised to me, never contacted me” and that the clothes were “the last thing that I had to do with my daughter.”

“To not give them to me back, or to not have them DNA tested, is a bit shameful,” she declared.

https://www.rt.com/uk/535267-bbc-apo...ictim-clothes/