THE ex-girlfriend of the Babes in the Wood killer believes she could have saved them, saying: “I will never forgive myself for not spotting the signs.”

Predatory paedophile Russell Bishop, 52, was last week found guilty of murdering nine-year-olds Nicola Fellows and Karen Hadaway in 1986.

And his former lover Marion Stevenson, now 48, broke down as she spoke for the first time of the guilt that has dogged her over the murders of the girls who she “adored”.

She revealed that just weeks before he molested and strangled them, she heard them “giggling” as they hid in his car’s rear footwell when he picked her up for a date.

The girls grew up yards away from her Brighton home and Bishop, then 20, was a pal of Nicola’s dad Barrie.

Marion, just 16 at the time, said: “I am just so, so sorry that I didn’t see him for the predator he is and I couldn’t keep those little girls safe.

“I should have seen the signs. He was always jealous of me playing with the girls and of how much I loved them. I pray that wasn’t a reason he targeted them.”

Marion said she and Bishop were on their way to have sex at Devil’s Dyke beauty spot — where he tried to kill a girl of seven in 1990 — when she saw Nicola and Karen in his car.

He passed it off as an innocent game but she said: “I have no idea why they were there or what his plan was. I told them to get out of the car and I screamed at Bishop and asked what he was playing at.

“He didn’t explain himself very satisfactorily. I have no idea if the girls were playing a joke or if he had somehow tempted them into the car. It haunts me now.”

Bishop, who went on trial for the Babes murders in 1987 but was acquitted following a blunder over the time of deaths, was finally convicted after DNA advances.

Already jailed for life for attempting to murder the girl in 1990, he last week got at least 36 years more.