A mother broke down in court as she described the moment her nine-year-old daughter and her friend were found dead in woods 32 years ago.
Schoolgirls Karen Hadaway and Nicola Fellows went missing while out playing in Wild Park near Brighton on October 9 1986.
They were found dead the next day after a desperate search by their mothers, police and locals, including the accused Russell Bishop.
The girls had been sexually assaulted and strangled in a woodland den in the park near their homes.
Giving evidence, Karen’s mother Michelle Hadaway said she had been gripped with terror moments before the grim discovery.
Wiping away tears, she said: “I was exhausted. I sat on the seat on grass down on the other side of the pavilion. And then I was just sitting there when a man came up with a dog and asked me if I was all right.
“I was all upset, confused and did not know where I was. I was just terrified about my little girl. Worried about both them children.”
Police then began swarming into the park and a helicopter hovered overhead, signalling the girls had been found.
Hadaway said she knew what had happened when she saw police tape going up. Afterwards, she saw Bishop standing in the park. She told the court: “I saw Russell and I shouted at him.
“I shouted at him because I wanted to know what was happening. He looked at me and put his hand over his face.”
Earlier, Hadaway had told how she refused to go home and wait for news from police after the girls failed to return home for their tea. She said: “They were telling me to go indoors. I were having none of it. Not at all. I was back and forth.”
Bishop had joined the search and asked her for an item of Karen’s clothes for his dog to pick up a scent, the court heard.
Hadaway told jurors her daughter was “frightened” of the dark and would not have stayed out on her own after dusk.
She described Karen as a “very sensible girl” who could be cheeky but knew right from wrong. Hadaway said: “She was a pretty good girl, really.”
Karen knew Bishop and his then girlfriend Marion Stevenson, she said.
At the time there was friction in the community because Bishop was in a relationship with another woman with whom he had a child, jurors were told.
The defendant, now aged 52, is on trial over the killings for the second time after he was acquitted in 1987.
Within three years of the deaths, he was convicted of the kidnap, sexual assault and attempted murder of a seven-year-old girl.
He has denied murdering Karen and Nicola and the Old Bailey trial continues.