Dad?
[man] Yeah?
Are you up here?
[man] Mm-hmm.
Dadda, can you help me draw Mummy
on this piece of paper?
Alex, look at me.
When you saw the bad man,
was he in front of you like I am?
Or was he on this side,
or was he on that side?
- He was in front of me.
- He was right in front of you?
- Mm-hmm.
- Did Mummy see him?
I don't think she did.
No? Did you see him first?
Yeah, I saw him first.
Did he have a bag?
Yeah.
And did he open it,
or was it already open?
He opened it.
And what did he get out?
A knife.
- What did he do to you?
- Knocked me over!
- He knocked you over?
- Yeah.
The bad man was
sticking his things in her.
What was he sticking in her?
A knife. There's his knife.
Did you see it?
Yeah, I saw the knife.
Did you see all the times?
I saw it Yeah, I saw it all.
[ominous music playing]
[man] My son witnessed
his mother's m*rder.
But nobody could have possibly known
how long it was gonna take
to find the person who did this.
[ominous music continues]
[music fades]
[birds calling]
[gentle instrumental music playing]
[woman] Oh!
What What have you got?
- [man] I've got a camera.
- What for?
[man] Take pictures of you.
[Rachel] Cuddles.
Hmm?
[indistinct speech]
We don't like those much, do we, Alex?
- Oh! [chuckles]
- [Alex giggles]
[man] Rachel and Alex were,
you know, they were a unit.
He was the center of Rachel's attention
every day.
She wasn't at all
drawn to the sparkly things.
She just really enjoyed
the simple things of life.
Enjoying the company
of the people she really cared about.
This was someone
who could really squeeze fun
out of the simplest of things.
[character on TV] Can't wait.
[character sighs, yawns]
Sleep. Need
[Rachel] Give Molly a nice stroke.
Lie down and give her a nice stroke.
[Andr] At the time, I went to work
five days a week as a dispatch rider
and travelled all over the country.
So I was down getting my bike out,
ready for the day.
And, uh, even though
we'd already said goodbye,
they both appeared.
Came down the stairs
and, uh, waved me off.
That's my lasting memory,
yeah, of them smiling.
Standing on the steps, hand in hand.
You know, Alex completely relaxed
and Rachel looking lovely.
[birds singing]
It was their routine
to visit Wimbledon Common.
It's always had
a reputation of being a safe place.
And, uh, Alex, he needed
as much exercise as the dog did.
Otherwise,
they'd both be bouncing off the walls.
[ominous string music playing]
That day, I happened to be in London,
and I was sent to the outskirts.
It's pre-mobile phone.
So a couple of times a day, I'd phone in
to make sure everything was all right.
[ominous music intensifies]
Late in the morning, I stopped,
found a phone that was working.
- Rang the number.
- [phone rings out]
[music continues]
[phone ringing]
[music intensifies]
[phone ringing]
[music stops]
A man's voice answered the phone.
And my blood ran cold.
I just knew immediately
that something was seriously wrong.
[poignant music playing]
He said, "I'm a policeman."
So I said, "Where's Rachel?"
And he said, "There's been an accident."
I said, "Is she dead?"
He said, "I can't tell you that."
I said, "You just did."
And I asked, "Where's Alex?"
He said, "Alex is safe.
He's at the hospital."
He said, "Stay where you are.
We'll send a police car to you."
The moment I put the phone down,
I collapsed to the floor and broke down.
[Rachel laughs] Andr,
I'm right up on your stomach.
Press pause.
[Alex] Hey, I don't
I don't know what you say.
[Andr] We like that bit.
- You like that bit?
- [Andr] Yeah.
Every belief I had about, you know,
the firmness of reality disappeared.
I was in a state
which you can only describe
as bordering on the edge of insanity.
[tense music playing]
[man] 15th July '92,
I was informed that a body has been found
on the common by a a dog walker.
It it's our job, um,
to, to deal with these situations
as, as a professional.
To stand back
from what you see as a fellow human being.
I was walking through grass,
and then I sort of turned right
into a small, um, glade.
It really was the worst crime scene.
It it just looked like a frenzied attack.
The victim had been attacked, dragged,
stabbed 49 times
in and around the neck and chest area.
And she lay with her hands
sort of up in front of her face,
as if she was
still trying to protect herself.
It was monstrous.
The detectives told me
that Rachel had been attacked from behind.
She'd been [hesitates]
stabbed multiple times
and that she'd been assaulted.
That Alex had been found
clinging to his mother's body.
And that they had to
basically prize him away
to attend to him.
Alex had been taken to this hospital.
When I got there,
they said that they would like me
to speak to a psychologist before
before I saw Alex.
[Alex chatters]
[Andr] The psychologist said,
first of all, children are resilient.
They can get through the worst of things.
He said they need to know
that this is definitive,
that this person is not coming back.
[poignant music playing]
Alex came out in the arms of a nurse,
and he looked incredibly subdued.
He had cuts under his eyes.
He had bruises on his cheeks.
And, uh, he had
an intense look in his eyes, you know,
like a a very old person
in a very young body.
And I picked him up and basically recited
what the psychologist said.
There's been an accident,
that Mummy's dead,
that she's not coming back.
And he just kept staring.
He didn't ask any questions.
But it was clear that he was telling me,
"I already know that."
You know? "That's something
you really don't have to explain to me."
[Rachel] Alex, turn around and wave to me.
Wave.
He never asked again
where his mother was. Not once.
- [music fades]
- [birds singing]
[indistinct chatter on police radio]
[reporter] Police sealed off
Wimbledon Common
moments after the woman's
half-naked body was found by a passer-by.
Detectives say she'd been m*rder*d
in a frenzied attack,
which was witnessed
by her two-year-old son.
[woman] The news editor called and said,
"We've just read on the wires
there's been some sort of fatal stabbing
on Wimbledon Common."
"We need you to go with a crew now."
Wimbledon as a place,
it's very affluent, very beautiful houses.
Wimbledon Common is
something like 1,100 acres of parkland,
literally right on the edge
of Central London.
The m*rder happened in broad daylight,
and police say they're certain the k*ller
would have been heavily bloodstained.
Eve Richings, Sky News.
It was palpable how shaken
the police officers on the scene were.
A passer-by found her half-naked,
and clinging to the body was a small boy.
Superintendent Bassett,
who was, um, the lead officer
in charge of the investigation,
he was the one
that gave the first briefing.
The small boy was caked in mud and blood,
the blood possibly coming from the mother.
I was a detective sergeant
and, at the time of the inquiry,
was John Bassett's right-hand man.
When we arrived at the scene,
I could see
that she had suffered horrendously
during this attack.
When we looked closely at her body,
her body was in a not-natural position.
Her clothing had been ripped from her.
There was moistness
in and around her body.
That indicated there's possibly
a sexual connotation to this.
It was frightening to think that somebody
who could commit that sort of crime
was on the loose.
Obviously, if you've got
somebody who's gonna do this,
then that's likely to happen again,
and the pressure is on to get this man,
uh, before he does it again.
[reporter] Police teams spent a second day
combing 1,000 acres of Wimbledon Common
for clues to the savage k*lling.
[Paul] The size of Wimbledon Common,
straight away, I realized
that we had a difficult job on.
Normally when a m*rder breaks,
you probably get 10, 15 officers.
On this, I think we had about 40.
And it was quite obvious from the start
that this was gonna be a big one.
[reporter] They officially named
the m*rder*d mother as Rachel Nickell.
Her body was identified today
by the father of her small son.
[Eve] To see pictures of Rachel Nickell,
to see what she looked like,
she sort of shone with vitality.
People could project themselves
into that life.
They could remember being 23
or remember being a new parent.
We were getting a love story
in the pictures that they released.
[poignant music playing]
[Andr] It was an instant connection.
It was You know,
I'd never had that experience before,
and I've never had it since.
We were inseparable. We did feel
that we just bonded completely.
This is the experience that people,
you know, they they dream of having.
You know, falling head over heels in love
and feeling so complete with someone.
So we both felt blessed to have that.
When Rachel became pregnant,
it was a shock.
I was 25, and Rachel was 19.
She was very much on the track
of, you know, getting studies finished,
getting a career, getting a good job.
But the moment
that Rachel could see I was committed,
she could see
that we could make this work.
So we just went for it.
That first time
that you pick up pick up a child
and see them breathing,
it's it's supernatural.
It's absolutely supernatural.
You can't not believe in magic
if you've seen a child being born.
Rachel was a natural mother.
She was She was, uh, breathtaking.
The two of them
were so passionate about each other.
They were so fulfilled with each other.
I think it's a human reaction.
You wish it had happened to you
rather than it happened to them.
The detective suggested
we pop back to the flat
and pick up a few things.
I was throwing Alex's favorite stuff
into a bag, you know.
His favorite teddy bear, you know,
shorts and T-shirts, his pajamas,
and the sheepskin that they slept on
since he was, uh since he was first born.
We never lived there again.
It felt like
a space that had been violated.
The boyfriend of Rachel Nickell,
the young mother m*rder*d
on Wimbledon Common
in South London yesterday,
has appealed for help
to track down her k*ller.
- [cameras clicking]
- [indistinct chatter]
[Andr] I wasn't prepared when I walked
through the door into that room.
There must have been
a hundred press present.
So it was cameras, telephoto lenses,
TV cameras all pointed towards you
like a an enemy battalion.
Everyone wanted to see
what Rachel's partner was like.
Somebody must know something,
um, from the ferocity of the attack.
They couldn't have walked down the road
and not be noticed.
And I would say to anybody
who does know this person,
no matter how they feel about them,
please come forward
before he destroys anybody else's life.
But also everyone really wanted to know
what had happened to Rachel's son.
It was just so shocking.
He hasn't said anything. Um
I don't know how he's gonna be
in the future, but he's not too bad.
He wasn't injured, thank God.
And the most fortunate thing
is that they tell me
he's small enough
that he won't remember much.
We went back to the common
to leave the rose for Rachel
to say our farewell,
and we were now front-page news.
There was a full color picture printed
of Alex in my arms,
completely identifiable.
They were identifying
the only witness to his mother's m*rder,
and there was a possibility
that some deranged person may come back
to try and dispose of
the only witness to his crime.
I knew from now on,
if we weren't in danger before,
now we were in the gravest of danger.
Two-year-old Alex Nickell
is said to be bearing up,
but in a state of deep shock
after his ordeal.
[woman] I think a two-year-old would have
no concept of death at all.
[man] How long could this trauma last?
Well, it could last a lifetime.
[Rachel] Down came the rain
And washed the spider out
[Andr] We were able to find
some sanctuary at my mother's home.
Alex, he's had nightmares,
terrible nightmares.
If he could sleep soundly
through the night, for the last hour,
he'd be you know,
he'd be in a difficult place.
So whatever I was feeling,
I had to swallow it, put it away.
You deal with it later.
You can't deal with it now.
No matter how, you know,
how terrible my circumstances were
in that particular moment,
our child's needs came first.
[siren wailing]
[reporter] The police effort to hunt down
the m*rder*r involves 54 detectives.
What name is that, then?
[reporter] This is one
of three special incident rooms.
There have already been
1,500 calls from the public.
Every one has to be assessed and acted on.
It was a very complex case
to to put together.
[phone ringing]
Morning, incident room.
We had to go through this chaos of
getting as much information as possible.
The telephones are ringing.
[officer] You've seen
the photographs of Rachel.
- [man] Yeah.
- Yeah?
- Had you seen her before up here?
- [man] No.
[Paul] On the common,
we were taking statements.
Surely somebody must have seen the person
coming towards the m*rder scene
or going away from the m*rder scene.
[indistinct speech]
Lots of pressure was on to find a witness.
That's the Rachel Nickell m*rder squad
at Wimbledon. You've already been stopped?
[John] We are responding
as quickly as we can.
We do have a backlog.
I will not deny that.
But we eventually
will get round to see everyone.
It's left to me and it's left
to the officers I have working for me.
We will catch him.
[Ron] Samples were taken
from the crime scene
and submitted to the lab for DNA analysis.
And I just kept hitting a wall.
The biologist was saying,
"We're getting nothing."
And I thought, "What do you mean nothing?
What about her DNA?"
"No, we're getting nothing."
And I'd never encountered that before.
That was kind of strange.
And so the scientist was saying,
"Well, we'll look at it again
from a different aspect."
But still nothing.
There's a feeling of hopelessness
because this person had to be traced ASAP.
And here we were
two or three weeks down the road
and no nearer that
than we had been on the day.
There we had a m*rder scene
with no witnesses,
with no forensic evidence.
And that was it.
Where do you go from there?
[pensive music playing]
[Andr] The situation
being as dire as it was,
the police then wanted to talk to Alex
about what he'd seen.
Because our greatest concern
is that we find this person,
but more than anything,
that we stop it from happening
to anybody else if we possibly could.
We had to be very careful
how we dealt with young Alex
because this was obviously
a traumatic incident that he witnessed.
Therefore, we were obviously
taking advice as to how to do that.
[indistinct chatter]
[man] How's it going?
[Paul] The advice was
that we should deal with that
through a child psychologist.
[Andr] Will you show Jean
your dinosaur book?
[indistinct speech]
[man] I like the pterodactyls.
[Alex] Yeah.
[woman] I was a child
and adolescent psychiatrist.
And this was unique in our experience.
This is the only case
I've ever worked with
where the child was the only witness
to a crime of violence.
[Alex] Look, my dinosaur book.
[man] Yes, I like these ones,
the flying ones.
[Alex] But I like all of them.
[man] You like all of them, yeah.
[Jean] I said we could use my home.
And, uh, the first interview,
there was a policeman there,
Andr and myself and the little boy.
The police were intensely hopeful
that this child, young as he was,
could give them more information.
I had no experience
of how this piece of very intensive work
could affect a small child.
And yet the rational part of my brain
fully agreed that it was important
to try and prevent further killings.
So there was a dilemma there.
It was a very, very hard call to make.
So I was just trying to be
as vigilant as possible.
If I felt we'd crossed a line,
we just had to stop.
[Andr] There was a scary bit yesterday,
wasn't there?
[Alex] Mmm.
[Andr] What was that like?
[Alex] The dinosaur was that big one.
[Andr] There was
this huge dinosaur on the ground.
The three little ones
were eating it, weren't they?
- [Alex] Yeah.
- They were covered in blood, weren't they?
[Jean] Covered in blood?
That must have been difficult.
[indistinct speech]
[Alex] They're not going to see that.
The decision was made
that it would be best
if her questions came through me
to get Alex to respond
as naturally as possible.
[Jean] Alex had blood on him, didn't you?
You had blood on you.
[Andr] All your clothes were
covered in blood, weren't they?
[Alex] Yeah.
[Andr] When you were with Mummy that day.
Hmm?
[Jean] Mostly, I was just trying to focus
only on Alex and to observe him.
He'd had few words at this point.
He was reluctant to look at people.
But I think he was he was showing stress
after a very, very extreme trauma.
His whole body language,
every movement he made showed that.
I think you know now
that terrible things suddenly happen.
I think you're very frightened.
From Jean's point of view,
she thought it was better to push.
So when you saw the man standing there,
was he looking at you,
or was he looking at Mummy?
[Alex] Mummy.
- [Andr] So he didn't say anything to you?
- [Alex] No.
[Andr] He didn't shout at you?
- Did he shout at you or not, Alex?
- [Alex] No.
[Andr] As my questions
led more towards the incident,
you could see there was a change in him.
He was tensing up.
- Alex, did he hit you?
- [Alex] No.
- [Andr] With his hand?
- [Alex] No.
My concern wasn't how much information
we could get out of a small child.
It was, you know, what sessions like this,
what distress they were gonna cause
and what damage
they were gonna do to his recovery.
[Alex] Well, I can't tell you that bit.
[Andr] No, it's really painful
to remember it, isn't it?
[Jean] You're saying,
"I can't tell you that bit"?
- [Alex] I can't tell you that bit.
- [Andr] No?
There was a mystery
about just how much he might have seen.
I wish that he hadn't seen any of it,
you know?
That was a hope,
that he'd been pushed away
and all this had taken place out of,
you know, out of his, uh,
recognition and understanding.
You know when Mummy was lying
on the ground and the man had gone?
- Did you say anything to her?
- [Alex] No.
- [Andr] Did you talk to her at all?
- [Alex] No.
[Andr] Were you scared?
[Alex] Mmm.
- [Andr] Did you think she was asleep?
- [Alex] Mmm.
- [Andr] Did you?
- [Alex] Mmm.
[Andr] Did you want her to wake up?
Did you want her to wake up?
[Alex] Mmm.
[Andr] Did she wake up?
[Alex] No.
[Andr] It was pretty intense.
Every few days, there was another session.
This was going on over several weeks.
Alex was able to again show
the incredible recall,
you know, of a small child.
The events, how they unfolded,
where, you know,
the bad man came out from,
you know, from behind them
and, uh how afterwards, he moved away,
washed his hands in a stream,
and then disappeared.
[man] Alex, the man who hurt your mummy,
what type of trousers did he have?
- [Alex] This one.
- [man] That one?
[Andr] And then
Alex started to describe this person.
- [man] What color were they?
- [Alex] Blue.
[man] What color were his shoes?
[Alex] That color.
We got a description from him
of a younger white man,
white shirt over blue trousers,
brown shoes.
But the most significant item of all
was Alex remembering he was wearing
a belt over his white shirt,
almost like a butcher's apron.
[Paul] Alex's description
was similar to one from a woman
who'd seen a man
walking towards the m*rder scene
ten minutes before the m*rder,
wearing a white top, dark trousers,
carrying a sort of bag.
So we we came to the conclusion
that of all the people on the common,
that was most likely to be the suspect.
Now we just had to find him.
Superintendent, would it be fair to say
you've made very little progress
in reality so far?
Yes, uh, that is a fair assessment.
Uh, I'd have hoped by now
that we'd have had the man in custody,
uh, but when you see the enormity
of my problem here on the common,
you'll understand why.
[reporter 1] In the absence of evidence,
police turned to criminal psychologists
to help build up
a profile of the attacker.
At the time, we're seeing films
such as Silence of the Lambs
We're interviewing
all the serial K*llers now in custody
for a psycho-behavioral profile.
where criminal psychologists work out
who their suspect was
through offender profiling.
I'm interested in it.
Uh, as I say,
the Americans have a lot of success.
[reporter 2] One expert they've consulted
is Robert Ressler, a retired FBI agent.
Ressler has interviewed many
of America's most notorious sex K*llers,
like Jeffrey Dahmer.
He says the man who m*rder*d
Rachel Nickell is disorganized.
The first thing people think about
is this is a serial k*ller.
Are we gonna see this again,
uh, within days or weeks?
We're dealing with
a disorganized, uh, frenzied,
possibly mentally disordered individual.
[Paul] Although John Bassett
had met Bob Ressler,
that was basically a flying visit.
But it was thought that we probably should
progress the offender profiling idea.
And so
the most important offender profiler,
who'd worked with the police before,
became involved in this inquiry
as an advisor.
When the police ask me to come and help,
it's usually because things have stuck
in some way.
And I'm quite sure this was true
with the m*rder of Rachel Nickell.
[reporter 3]
Leicester University's Paul Britton
has worked on some of the country's
most notorious crime cases.
[Paul Britton] In each case,
the police, they say,
"What I want from you
is something that will help me
to identify a perpetrator."
[reporter 4] Dennis Nilsen, interviewed
in prison by psychologist Paul Britton,
preyed on homeless young men.
"Something that will take me closer
to preventing this person doing it again."
[reporter 5] Paul Britton,
a forensic psychologist,
says the Wests aren't as unique
as people might believe.
He's certain
there are other mass murderers at large.
I was asked to come along
and look at this case
between three and four weeks
after Rachel had been k*lled.
And what they wanted from me
was my opinion,
a psychological analysis
of who might have done this.
[ominous music playing]
I have the crime scene materials.
I have the video.
I have the maps of the common.
But what I need to do
is to actually make a visit
to the scene itself.
There's a car park by a windmill
on Wimbledon Common.
We parked there,
and we walked across to the crime scene.
[ominous music continues]
What the offender would be looking at
is a place where he can find
a victim of opportunity.
It's somewhere
where he would be able to observe,
to monitor.
He waits to find whoever it is
that's closest to his preference,
and it happens to be poor Rachel Nickell.
He was able to look and watch
because he's a watcher. He's a surveiller.
[music intensifies, ends]
And so very often,
and I speak plainly, if you don't mind,
you would have this
"That b*tch
would look down her nose at me."
"I'm not having that."
"I'm gonna have her."
What you have is a very focused intention
to obliterate this young woman.
[poignant music playing]
But Rachel Nickell, she would not likely
just give herself up to death
without there being some response.
But if someone is basically saying,
"You do what I want now
or I'll hurt the child,"
that changes everything.
The child is there as a hostage.
The child is there
as a bargaining counter.
She knows that she's giving up her life
for her child's.
[poignant music continues]
I was able to be absolutely clear.
He will k*ll other people.
This is just not a static picture.
This is just a frame
in a film that's carrying on.
[soft, sorrowful music playing]
When you got back to Mummy,
was she standing, or was she lying down?
[Alex] Huh. I can't remember that bit.
Don't keep asking me
these questions, Daddy.
[Andr] You're doing very well, Alex.
You're doing very well.
The days are turning into weeks.
Weeks are turning into months.
And we reached a point
where it was just becoming
heavy and repetitive.
And that was a point
where I felt, "This is"
"We're playing for diminishing returns.
What more can he possibly give?"
- When you got back to Mummy
- [Alex] I'm fed up.
- You're fed up?
- [Alex] Yes.
- One last question, Alex.
- [Alex] No. No more.
Okay, all right, that's fine. Come here.
[man] You've done well.
You've done really well.
[Andr mutters reassuringly]
Talk another time about the rest, huh?
[Alex] No.
No, I I would be still fed up.
- [Andr] You'll still be fed up?
- Yes.
[Andr] We won't talk anymore.
[Jean] The police wanted to try
one last throw of the dice.
Came up with
this still more desperate idea
that perhaps we could go
to Wimbledon Common and relive that.
They hoped, I think,
that seeing the actual site of the k*lling
would trigger yet more memories.
I thought it was a very long shot,
but I didn't feel
I could forbid them to do it.
[man] All right.
[Andr] So now, okay,
it's not another repetitive session
in the same in the same environment.
Maybe there is some value in it.
And when we got there, he was
actually reluctant to get out of the car.
The thing that was bothering him was
the presence of all these unknown adults,
because the police had turned up.
It wasn't just the detectives
he was used to.
There were several other officers.
We eventually got out of the car,
and we started walking.
Once we started walking, he was happy.
We were walking down that path.
We just started running,
Alex and I, for the fun of it.
He was having a good time. But we had
a bunch of coppers running behind us
and a psychologist running behind us.
[Jean] The police were taking us,
but I could see that the little boy knew
where we were going
and was remembering things.
We were getting nearer and nearer
to the site of the crime.
I was aware
the child was stiffening and stiffening,
and I'm pretty sure he was remembering.
[Andr] Alex?
The man who k*lled Mummy, where was he?
Was it here?
When did he start talking to Mummy?
Do you remember?
You said to me once
that he was talking to Mummy
before he k*lled Mummy.
Do you remember
where he was talking to Mummy?
Hmm? Down by the pond?
[Alex cries]
And then there came a point
when he stumbled and fell forwards.
[Alex sobs]
[Jean] And he howled and sobbed.
[Alex wails]
[Jean] And that's the point
when Andr had had enough.
[Andr] This is f*cking stupid.
[Alex cries]
He was crying, and, uh, I snapped.
That was enough for me. I had enough.
This was This was, uh,
taking too heavy a toll on on on him
and too heavy a toll on me as well.
[Andr shouts] Go! Let's f*cking go!
So I picked him up
and just headed back to the car.
[Alex cries loudly]
We, you know, we drove off at full speed,
left them in our dust, basically.
But, uh, I was in no fit state,
so I pulled up as soon as I could,
found a quiet spot.
And, uh, I really burst into tears,
and I just I just couldn't stop.
I just couldn't, uh prevent myself.
I couldn't be strong at that point.
And I knew he was watching me.
He was calm by then.
But, uh, I just had to let it out.
And then, you know,
once I got myself together,
I said that I said that I was sorry,
and, uh, we head back to Grandma's house.
So we pulled away.
[Jean] That was
the last time I ever saw them.
I'd done what I could.
I wasn't very happy with what I'd done,
but I'd tried and, um
Sadness. And
just awareness that it was an attempt
that hadn't worked.
First, a notorious crime
that, two months ago,
made headlines all over Britain.
On Wimbledon Common in Southwest London,
a young mother, Rachel Nickell,
was waylaid and repeatedly stabbed.
It appears to be a random k*lling,
which, of course,
makes it extremely hard to solve.
Tonight, detectives are putting
all their cards on the table,
and they're appealing
for the nation's help to name the k*ller.
We came to a stage in the inquiry
when we were quite satisfied
that the description we had,
there's a good chance he was the m*rder*r.
So that was time now to go to the media
to see if anybody
could come up with any names
as to who that person might be.
[host] The man
was in his twenties or thirties.
He was tall, more than five feet ten,
and had short brown hair.
He had a white shirt with buttons
and dark trousers, possibly blue,
and was carrying a small, dark bag.
Curiously, his belt was over his shirt
rather than round his trousers.
Now, from this point,
let's add some informed conjecture.
A consultant clinical psychologist is
drawing up a likely profile of the k*ller.
[Paul Britton] What they got from me
was a point-by-point
psychological analysis of the k*ller,
in my view.
[host] The k*ller is under the age of 30.
He lives locally.
He has few friends
and has solitary hobbies.
He may have an interest in martial arts.
He likes p*rn*graphy.
He doesn't have a steady girlfriend.
If he's had previous girlfriends,
they'll have found him unsatisfying,
sexually inexperienced
[Britton] I told them this is an offender
who wouldn't live very far away.
This is someone who knew the common,
who knew his way around.
He would have been travelling on foot.
The telephone number to ring
[Paul Penrose] After Crimewatch,
a lot of telephone calls came in.
As far as the Rachel Nickell m*rder
is concerned,
90 calls here to the studio
the last time I spoke to the team.
Ten of them are very interesting.
One man has gone straight to the top
of their priority list.
[Penrose] We were getting phone calls
from two or more local people,
saying that the artist's impression
looked like a man called Colin Stagg.
[tense music playing]
And they indicated that they thought
he was the type of individual
that could have carried out this k*lling.
And he admitted having been on the common
around about the same time
as Rachel was found.
The lady who saw
a man walking towards the m*rder scene
then later picked Stagg out
of an identification parade
as that person.
[reporter] Police say the man was arrested
around midday yesterday.
He's still being questioned.
[Penrose] Stagg lived near to the common,
so when he was arrested,
his flat was searched.
It was a very strange set-up in that flat.
I remember when we arrived,
there was something on the front door.
It said, "Christians beware,"
or words to that effect.
And there was one room
where the sort of signs of the Zodiac
were painted on the floor,
and there was gothic images
all around the place.
It was just a bizarre place.
One of the officers found a cupboard,
and in the cupboard,
there was some survivalist equipment.
There were knives.
There was also a club
with a ball on the end of it.
And it certainly indicated that this just
wasn't a normal member of the public,
that there was something odd about him.
Plus, of course,
he fitted to a tee the offender profile.
But there was a problem.
Despite the fact
that he fitted the offender profile,
we just didn't have enough evidence
to link him with the m*rder.
He admitted that he would sunbathe naked
on the common,
and he was charged with indecent exposure.
But then he was released.
[music fades]
It was obviously disappointing,
because not only was he a good suspect,
but he was the only suspect
from the whole inquiry.
So we needed to work out, "Is he our man?"
And without forensic evidence,
we didn't know.
[soft, sorrowful music playing]
[Andr] After they released Colin Stagg,
the press were on our doorstep.
Alex was the only witness
to his mother's m*rder,
and whoever had perpetrated that
was still on the loose.
So he was in danger.
That's when I knew
we really weren't safe here,
and I had to take him away.
[tense music playing]
We didn't have a lot of trust in anybody.
So we just took every precaution possible
not to be followed, not to be tracked
and head off into the dark.
And we, you know, headed to the coast
to put as much distance between us and
and a k*ller on the loose
and a press pack
that was willing to stop at nothing.
And we left friends and family.
We left everything material behind.
We left the home that we'd shared.
It was only what we could literally carry
with us that we took forward.
We crossed the frontier
and, uh, entered a new world.
[music softens]
[birds singing]
[music fades]
[Alex babbles]
[gentle music playing]
Rachel and I had always talked
about moving to France.
I'd spent a lot of time in France
when I was a teenager.
Played a lot of tennis
and, uh, hitchhiked around,
so I knew the country pretty well.
We were in a small village,
just a few miles from the coast.
Pulled up outside the front door
for the first time
with the keys in our hand,
opened the door,
just had a wonderful feeling
of something new starting.
[indistinct speech]
I've only got two.
You've got about 50 over there.
Look under
It was absolutely idyllic.
A lovely little house.
A view out of the courtyard.
There were chickens in the run.
There were puppies running around.
And, uh, we really could finally stop
and and take stock
and feel some peace and quiet around us.
Alex, calm down.
- Calm down.
- [Alex giggles]
You're gonna get a tummy ache
if you eat like that.
What it felt like is that we'd left
a great deal of the evil behind us.
You know, it felt like
we were in a place of peace.
[indistinct speech]
Finally, it seemed like things were
things were going in our direction.
It was, uh, absolute bliss.
You know?
Just to have that anonymity again.
Good evening. The detective leading
the hunt for the k*ller of Rachel Nickell,
the young woman m*rder*d
on Wimbledon Common a year ago,
says the inquiry may be
scaled down within weeks,
unless there's a major development.
I would think if nothing crucial
comes to light within the next two months,
then I would say that will be
the end of the investigation.
John Bassett was telling the press
that there were no new leads,
that the inquiry,
we'd gone as far as you could,
and it was winding down,
whereas all the time
there was something going on.
[intriguing music playing]
[woman] It said, um,
"I've enclosed a fancy letter,
and if you don't want to read it,
then you don't have to."
Um, but curiosity got the better of me,
and I had to read the letter.
[Paul Penrose] We received a phone call
from a woman
who'd seen Colin Stagg on the television,
and she said, "That man
is a man who I've had
a lonely hearts club exchange of letters."
"And they're very strange letters."
[woman] Every word,
he uses the most filthiest,
vulgar words you can use.
He asked if I liked the letter
that he'd written to me.
Um, I said
I wasn't impressed by it, basically,
and that he said
he'd written me another one
and would I like him to send it to me,
and I said no.
If I did get another letter from him,
I was gonna give them to the police.
[Penrose] She sent those letters to us,
which gave us some insight into the way
that Colin Stagg was thinking.
Then John Bassett asked me
to go upstairs to his office,
and I was introduced to
this female police officer.
Bassett said,
"This is my detective sergeant,
and I want him to know what's happening."
And then it was explained to me
that there was gonna be
an undercover operation
to discover
if Colin Stagg's sexual fantasies
would reveal some information
about the m*rder
that only the m*rder*r would know.
The police came to me
and asked if I could help them
with an undercover operation.
The way that it would work
is that the undercover police officer
would write a letter to Colin Stagg
with the fake name Lizzie James.
She's trying to get him to write to her
about his sexual fantasies
so that if he wrote back
in a way that was similar
to the way that the k*ller
of Rachel Nickell might write back,
then you had the basis
for further investigation.
And Colin Stagg did write back.
[Colin] Dear Lizzie,
I'm so glad you like my letters
and that you are as broad-minded
and uninhibited as me.
I want to dominate you.
The things I'm going to do to you
will literally make your eyes water.
You will be left humiliated and dirty.
[Britton] The police were very excited
at the first sexual elements
that came back from Colin Stagg.
They're now feeling justified
in their operation,
that there was more to know,
and that they hadn't wasted their time.
[church bells ring]
[Andr] One day,
after we'd been there for maybe a year,
Alex and I were doing
pretend sword fighting.
[indistinct chatter]
And, uh, he said,
"This is like when the bad man came."
And I tried
I caught myself,
and I tried to carry on
as naturally as possible.
So, um, one morning,
I just sat down at the little red table,
put the put the
put the camera up, and, uh.
and, uh, just attempted
to talk about what happened.
Alex wanted to draw,
and he wanted me to help him
with the drawing.
Dadda, can you help me draw Mummy
on this piece of paper?
[Andr] As we continued with the drawing,
Alex came up with information
which made it absolutely clear
what he'd seen.
Did Mummy see him?
I don't think she did.
No? Did you see him first?
Yeah, I saw him first.
Did he have a bag?
Yeah.
And did he open it,
or was it already open?
He opened it.
And what did he get out?
A knife.
There's Mummy. There's the bad man.
[Andr] Where's the knife?
- What did he do to you?
- Knocked me over!
- He knocked you over?
- Yeah.
The bad man
was sticking his things in her.
- What was he sticking in her?
- A knife. There's his knife.
Did you see it?
Yeah, I saw the knife.
Did you see all the times?
I saw it Yeah, I saw it all.
All of it.
[Andr] He'd been there,
seen it all, had had
assimilated all of this, you know,
survived nearly a year,
basically withholding this in his head
on his own.
- Did you see everything pretty much?
- Yeah, I saw everything.
Did you look the other way?
Yeah, I looked that way.
I looked that way to see
if anything else was happening.
- Did you?
- Yeah.
Was it really horrible?
Yes, it was really horrible.
[Andr] It was very hard to hear.
You know, this is your child.
This is your baby.
He was there.
Rachel was there. I wasn't there.
I tried to imagine that
all the way through that year,
over and over, night after night.
I wanted to know what they'd been through,
because I wanted to be able
to do something about it
or share in some way.
And here, you know,
I was getting confirmation
of exactly what, you know,
what took place, what Alex had seen,
and, uh it put me right back
in a state of imagining
what that must have been like
for for for both of them.
And then a couple of weeks later,
well, the news came
that they were gonna charge Colin Stagg
for Rachel's m*rder.
Scotland Yard says Colin Francis Stagg
was arrested at 5:30 this morning
at his home in Roehampton
in Southwest London.
[reporter 1] The address
where the arrest was made
is within a mile or so of the spot
on Wimbledon Common
where Rachel was k*lled
just over a year ago.
[reporter 2] Police spent the day
digging up his garden
and scanning the ground
with metal detectors.
Colin Stagg was arrested, uh,
and brought to Wimbledon Police Station,
uh, as a suspect for m*rder.
[reporter 3] His detention followed
an undercover operation
involving a woman police constable.
She struck up
a close relationship with Stagg.
[man 1] Would you like
to introduce yourself formally?
[woman] Yes, I'm a serving police officer.
For the purpose of this interview,
I'm known as Lizzie James.
[man 2] If I were to show you
some 30 or 40 letters
that you've exchanged with Lizzie James,
would you have anything to say
concerning your desire
to have sexual intercourse
and sexual practices
on Wimbledon Common and in open woodland
involving the use of knives
No comment.
where blood is caused to flow?
No comment.
[Paul Britton]
During the undercover operation,
Colin Stagg met
with the undercover policewoman,
and what he did was hand her a letter
which introduced the notion of knives
and all sorts of other things
that were present
in the fantasies of the k*ller.
[Lizzie] Do you remember
this letter now, Colin?
No comment.
[Lizzie] "The man then goes over
to his pile of clothes
and produces some string and a knife."
What the k*ller of Rachel Nickell had
was a series
of very specific elements in their fantasy
that are not that common.
And now Colin Stagg seems to have
exactly that same set of fantasies.
[man 2] We have to look at the fantasies
as they've progressed
as you've written to Lizzie James.
The increasing deviance,
the increasing domination,
the increasing violence.
The need to humiliate and dominate.
There was just so much pointing
towards him as being the m*rder*r.
[man 2] I think what happened
is you walked off down the windmill path,
and you sat down
on a little patch of grass.
I think you actually described it
in one of your letters to Lizzie James.
The fact that you see
this gorgeous blonde woman
approaching from a distance.
- Is that what happened to Rachel?
- No comment.
[man 2] You looked down
from your vantage point and spied her.
And you rushed down, and you ambushed her.
And you pushed the little boy face down.
Pushed the little boy face down
into the mud.
- No comment.
- [man 2] Then you stabbed Rachel 49 times.
No comment.
On 15th July 1992, on Wimbledon Common,
you m*rder*d Rachel Nickell,
causing her death by multiple stab wounds.
No comment.
[indistinct chatter]
[reporter] After being held overnight
at a police station nearby,
Colin Stagg was driven quickly
into Wimbledon Magistrates Court,
charged with the m*rder of Rachel Nickell.
Magistrates remanded him in custody
until next week.
[Penrose] The Crown Prosecution Service
were consulted
with all the evidence relating
to the letters and the interview,
and it was decided
that there was enough evidence
to charge him with the m*rder.
With Colin Stagg off the streets,
as far as I was concerned,
this was all finished.
So I decided that it was a good time
to go for something else.
So I left the investigation.
The fact
that Colin Stagg was now in custody,
it gave a certain
certain feeling of relief.
But we'd learned really early on,
I knew that if you'd been through
a situation as we'd had,
you're constantly protecting yourself,
and you have a wait-and-see mentality.
[crickets chirping]
[quiet, tense music playing]
Police in South London hunting the k*ller
of a four-year-old girl and her mother
say it's one of the most shocking cases
they've ever had to investigate.
I'm Mummy. [laughs]
[reporter] Close friends of Samantha
and Jazmine Bisset
are still trying to take in what happened.
What has shocked police
is the ferocity of the murders.
A senior officer said
Sam Bisset's injuries were horrific.
[man] I mean,
I consider myself fairly hard,
uh, not affected much,
but [sighs]
even now, it makes me think,
"Christ, what on earth went on there?"
I mean, it was horrendous, you know?
Micky Banks was
my detective superintendent.
He was the senior investigating officer,
and he actually
I remember he put his arm around me
and said, "Rog," you know,
"just brace yourself, son."
"This is the worst one I've ever seen."
I remember that to this day.
And then we went in together
with the forensic team
and went through the flat.
It was a small flat. It was one-bedroomed,
and we understood
that Samantha Bisset lived there
with her four-year-old daughter,
but they had to share a bedroom.
She was a single mum,
probably didn't have much money.
There were lots of toys in the bedroom,
lots of Jazmine's paintings on the walls.
It seemed to me that they were very close.
Uh, and when we walked in,
it became apparent that Samantha had been
possibly stabbed to death in the hallway,
dragged through to the living room,
and placed on a large cushion
in, like, a star formation.
And she'd been mutilated.
Uh, an attempt had been made
to remove her legs,
and the body had been opened up.
When we walked back down the hallway,
the bedroom was at the right-hand side
near to the front door.
And we went into the bedroom,
and there was a little girl's head
peeping out of a underneath a duvet.
You could just see
these tousled, um, hair,
and it turned out
that she'd been suffocated
and sexually assaulted.
So she was dead,
but she looked like she was asleep.
[sorrowful music playing]
[Micky] First thoughts was,
"We've gotta get whoever done this,
because this is a maniac."
Everybody wanted to catch this b*stard
that had done this crime, you know?
Uh, it was
it was a thing that we all agreed on,
because if you don't,
there'll be another m*rder.
Because once these people start this,
you know, it's quite obvious
they would become a serial k*ller.
There was hundreds of fingerprints
in the flat,
and, of course, it had to go through
the fingerprint department,
each one looked at individually.
The fingerprint officers would
look through a magnifying glass
at a fingerprint and identify it
through the swirls and the marks,
which is an art.
But within maybe two months,
we'd managed to eliminate
all of those finger marks,
which in itself is quite unusual
because there's normally one or two marks
which remain unidentified,
and they're often the suspect's.
There was no no DNA. There was no clues.
Nothing at all
that would help the investigation.
We found absolutely nothing,
which is most unusual.
[reporter] There was no sign
of a break-in at the flat,
and detectives admit
they have few clues in this case.
As for the motive for this m*rder
of a mother and her young daughter,
it appears only the k*ller knows that.
I was approached
by my then-detective chief superintendent
that, uh, I should get Paul Britton in
because he was an expert.
He'd done a lot of work
on the Rachel Nickell inquiry.
[Paul Britton] I was then taken
to the scene of the murders itself.
The flat that Samantha
and Jazmine Bisset lived in
is really quite important in its location.
Immediately behind the flat,
there is a garden area.
And then beyond that,
you have a tree-banked area,
where he sits,
he watches, he fulfils his fantasies,
and gets these sort of thoughts.
"You're not going to tease me."
"You're not going to ridicule me."
"Let's see how you get on
when I've finished with you."
Paul Britton's a clinical psychologist.
How much do you think you know him?
I think we know quite well
what was going through his mind
at the time of the offense,
but I would like him to tell me
how he got started on the pathway
that led him eventually to k*ll,
to harm Samantha.
You'd like him to tell you?
He's not very likely to ring up and say,
"Can I speak to Paul Britton, please?"
and here are his answers.
I think that there is a possibility
that he might want to do that.
[Roger] It's extremely rare that
strangers attack members of the public.
Children being present is even rarer.
He's probably done
something similar before.
He's not gone out and just done this.
You work up to that level of violence.
And we couldn't fathom out how,
within a gap of 16 months
between the Wimbledon Common m*rder
and the Plumstead m*rder,
how two different people could commit
such ferocious, audacious crimes.
So was it possible
that the same person committed both?
The victims were
very similar in age and looks.
Both had a child present
during the attacks.
And the number of stab wounds
on Rachel Nickell and Samantha Bisset
were in the region of 50.
So at our request,
the senior detectives
investigating the Nickell investigation
came over to our incident room
to discuss the similarities
between both scenes.
And they basically dismissed
our suggestion
that the two crimes could have
been committed by the same person.
Because, of course,
Colin Stagg was in custody
when the Bissets were m*rder*d.
And we tried to impress upon them
that they may have got the wrong person.
[woman] And how was that met?
Uh, with hostility and just absolutely
"There's no way
we haven't got the right person."
[Micky] They had their suspect,
and, uh, they just
they weren't interested in discussing it.
They were convinced
that they had the right chap.
[sing-song] Opening the presents!
[giggles]
[Andr] It had been a year and a half,
and Alex was, you know, in a good place.
There are not much presents
under the tree now.
[Andr] There's loads of presents
under the tree.
He was settled in at school,
happy with his friends.
So, you know, he was really thriving.
It's a big crane.
[Andr] Around that time,
the word got to me that, uh
that the police needed Alex
to give evidence at Colin Stagg's trial.
They were hoping he could provide
physical descriptions of the assailant
and also descriptions of his movements
before and after the attack.
So once again, we're caught
between a rock and a hard place.
What do we do?
If this is the person
and, uh, we don't turn up,
he's back on the street.
But what is the price
that Alex is gonna pay
in coming face-to-face
with the person who did this?
[TV playing in background]
[suspenseful music playing]
[Micky] I think it was just a feeling,
you know.
Just a feeling
that there was something so wrong here.
Because it was one of the first crimes
I've ever been to
where every print
that was there was eliminated.
[Roger] Micky Banks spoke to me,
and he wanted
the finger marks to be searched again,
especially those
belonging to Samantha Bisset.
Micky really, really pushed hard
for that to be done,
and the fingerprint branch
eventually gave in
and agreed to re-examine
some of the more suspicious marks
which were found at the Bisset flat.
Sometime afterwards, he called me
and said, "We've had a result."
Some of the fingerprints
that had initially been identified
as belonging to Samantha Bisset
did, in fact,
belong to a man called
Robert Napper.
[Micky] And that was a eureka moment,
I'll tell you.
I'll never forget it, you know.
God Jesus, I was over the moon.
They found about three or four prints
of Napper in the flat.
Uh, one was on the ledge
outside the patio door,
and some on the inside,
where he'd obviously got in
through the French windows.
He lived locally.
He had a very, very short criminal history
and had, in fact,
spent, uh, two months in custody.
[reporter] Napper was arrested
at his home on Friday.
He was living in Plumstead High Street,
half a mile
from where the killings took place.
After he was arrested and assessed,
it was apparent
he was suffering
from some sort of mental illness.
And when he was interviewed,
um, he did give very, very strange answers
in the third person,
as if he was talking about someone else.
He was the sort of bloke who thought
that he was different to the rest of us.
He was aloof. Weird, weird chap.
Everybody said the same,
anybody who met him.
He just He was weird.
[Roger] We went to his flat
at Plumstead High Street,
a very, very small bedsit.
Uh, he didn't have a bed or a mattress,
which I thought was strange.
He slept on the floor, apparently.
And then we began to search the property.
And very quickly we found the red toolbox,
which was on the floor.
Uh, it was padlocked,
and obviously we were desperate
to find out what was inside.
When we opened it,
there were knives.
There was a book.
And in the book, there were methods
of, I think, strangulation
and vulnerable points on the body,
which were used to attack people
and either immobilize them or k*ll them.
There was an A to Z.
And in his A to Z, there were
all sorts of markings and doodles.
At the time,
we couldn't work out what they were.
And we thought they were
obviously gonna be very important
in the possible identification
of, uh, of scenes of his crimes.
And on one of the doodles,
there was a set of steps
which looked like it could have
possibly been Heathfield Terrace.
And in that doodle,
he wrote the words "potential area."
He'd identified it
as a possible target for him.
A 28-year-old man has been charged
with the murders
of a single mother, Samantha Bisset,
and her four-year-old daughter
last November.
[reporter] Today,
Robert Napper denied m*rder
but admitted their manslaughter.
Samantha's k*ller is expected
to be sentenced later today.
The really sad thing about this case
is that Samantha was an only child,
and her mother, Margaret,
never recovered from the loss
of her only grandchild
and her only daughter.
[Micky] I mean, it's bad enough
losing your daughter,
but your granddaughter as well?
The family's wiped out.
You know, tragedy. Awful.
And to add to the distress of this case,
her mother died
the very day before Napper was
due to stand trial at the Old Bailey.
So it's just a very very, very sad case.
[suspenseful music playing]
Sometime later,
looking at his maps again,
although most of the markings
were within Southeast London
there was a particular mark
way away from Plumstead
in Richmond Park, Southwest London.
It's called Isabella Plantation,
which was a plot of open land
very, very close to Wimbledon Common,
the scene of the Rachel Nickell m*rder.
[reporter] Stagg was first questioned
by detectives last September.
He's due to appear here at court
charged with murdering Rachel Nickell
this morning.
I was informed before the trial
that, uh, Alex wouldn't be needed,
that his testimony wasn't necessary.
A part of me was very grateful
he wouldn't have to go through the ordeal.
Another part of me was concerned
that we weren't putting
everything into this we possibly could.
And then a few days later,
the shock news came.
A friend called to see how I was,
to see if I was holding up with the news.
And I said, "With what news?"
And he said, "You don't know?"
He said, "It's been
It's been thrown out."
The man accused of the brutal m*rder
of Rachel Nickell
on Wimbledon Common two years ago
today walked free from court
before the trial proper had even begun.
It was an absolute shock.
An Old Bailey judge
launched a stinging attack
on police methods today
after throwing out the case
against the man
accused of k*lling Rachel Nickell.
[reporter 1] Colin Stagg walked free,
having spent more than a year in custody
after being entrapped
by an undercover police operation
that was strongly criticized by the judge
and ruled to be inadmissible.
I was angry because whoever decided
that this evidence was good
and would stand up to challenge
had obviously made a big mistake.
And I was angry that maybe
the person who decided to kick it all out
was going to an extreme, because there was
strong circumstantial evidence.
There was probably a feeling
that if there was a decision to be made
as to whether
Colin Stagg committed a m*rder,
that decision should be made by a jury.
But we didn't get that far.
[reporter 2] William Clegg QC, defending,
argued WPC James had lied,
offered inducements of sex
and a relationship.
[reporter 3] Mr. Justice Ognall said
the police behavior betrayed
not merely an excess of zeal
but a blatant attempt
to incriminate a suspect
by positive and deceptive conduct
of the grossest kind.
We failed.
And, um, that is not a good feeling.
"My life has been ruined by a mixture
of half-baked psychological theories
and some stories written
to satisfy the strange sexual requests
of an undercover police officer."
"The judge recognized
there was never any evidence against me,
no forensic evidence,
no confession evidence, nothing."
[reporter 4] Asked if Stagg should receive
an apology from the police,
Sir Paul Condon said
the police had already apologized
to those it thought necessary.
I I make no apologies at all
for the Metropolitan Police inquiry
in this case.
I fully support the action of my officers,
and I take full responsibility
for police action in this case.
[poignant music playing]
[Andr] It felt like
we were back at day one,
you know, with the k*ller on the loose
and no protection.
And what really underlined that
was Paul Condon, the head of the Met,
making a statement
that they weren't looking for
anybody else.
At the moment,
there is no new information,
no new leads for us to explore.
[Andr] They made it clear that
they thought Stagg got away with m*rder
and was now on the loose.
I was left feeling like
I couldn't trust anybody,
and we always wondered whether or not
we were treated in a different way
because, uh, I was a young man of color.
You lose all faith in in the system.
So now any closure that we
that was gonna be truly meaningful was
something we'd have to find for ourselves,
and we couldn't rely on
outside circumstances
to provide us with that.
[gentle music playing]
[man] For many, many years,
there was no real real progress.
Nothing had really changed
in terms of, you know, what we knew.
From day one, it was the three of us.
You know, my father and me
and our dog, Molly.
That was who we were as a family.
My father knew
that I understood what had happened.
That my mother loved me,
and, um, that
she wouldn't have wanted to leave me.
So, my father and me,
we didn't talk about about my mother.
You know? We didn't talk about the past.
But I still I felt an anger
that this had happened,
and, you know, that no matter what I did,
I couldn't stop it from happening.
I think if you witness
that degree of evil,
you know, as a small child,
the illusion that you have,
you know, that your parents,
no matter how good a job they do,
can really protect you from harm,
I think that that
you know, that collapses.
[Andr] Alex was absolutely
a really sweet little boy.
There was a joy that was there.
But then in the preteen years,
there was an anger, you know,
and the anger was, you know,
quite rightly directed towards me.
I was very angry about a lot of the things
we'd lived through.
The sessions that went on
for weeks and months.
The thing that was most distressing for me
was to be taken back,
you know, to that day repeatedly
and suggestions given
about how I should feel about it.
And, you know,
I guess I carried that with me somewhat.
[Andr] He did get into trouble
with the authorities.
Just small stuff, but the police
were on the doorstep on occasions.
[Alex] I don't think that I had the same
the same respect,
the same trust for my father
as I once had.
And the fundamental point was that he was
the protector of the family as the father
and, you know, unfortunately
had allowed this to happen to us.
So in my teenage years,
you know, we had a lot of conflict.
[Andr] I had a huge sense of guilt
that that I hadn't protected my family.
And you do feel stupid.
You feel like a fool,
because we're told to put our security
in the hands of other agencies.
Once upon a time, it was the Wild West,
and you took the law into your own hands,
and you protected, you know,
your loved ones with whatever it took.
And that's what hit me at the time.
I didn't do that.
And I wish I had.
[music fades]
[Alex] With every week that goes by,
with every month that goes by,
with every year that goes by,
you've kind of come to terms with,
on some level,
that this may never be resolved.
[suspenseful music playing]
[carousel clicks]
[woman] By 2002, the Rachel Nickell case
did become a cold case.
The police came and asked
if I and my team would have a look at it.
I knew from reading the newspapers
that this had been a very violent attack.
But I was aware
Colin Stagg had been accused
and then acquitted.
But I think he was still a suspect
as far as the police were concerned.
And so they wanted us
just to cast a fresh pair of eyes over it
and see whether or not,
out of the things
that they'd collected at the time,
whether there was anything in that
that could possibly be used, um,
to identify Rachel's attacker.
There were some tapings,
these sticky tape lifts,
um, taken from Rachel's body
and particularly
the intimate parts of her body.
And we noticed
that the original scientists
hadn't found any DNA on these tapings.
And so we knew immediately
that something was wrong,
because there should've been
an enormous amount
of Rachel's own DNA on these tapings.
I think what probably happened is,
if you have too much DNA in a sample,
it can swamp the technique
so that you don't see anything.
And so one of the first things we did
was, of course, to repeat it,
but doing it in a slightly different way.
[suspenseful music continues]
Just as expected,
we got lots of Rachel's DNA.
But we also got a tiny trace of male DNA.
When we got this hint of male DNA,
we really didn't know
whether we'd be able to develop it enough,
get enough information out of it
to identify one particular individual.
And so we developed a whole new technique,
a new sensitive technique,
um, and this involved taking
a tiny amount of DNA from a sample
and then multiplying up the DNA,
or we call it amplifying.
So you've got
several times your original amount,
so you've got enough to actually analyze.
It took about two years
to develop this technique
to the point where we could use it.
Before we ran the
uh, the information that we had,
this DNA profile we had,
through the database,
we checked it against Colin Stagg,
and it definitely didn't match him.
[keyboard keys clacking]
And so we put it through
the National DNA Database.
And when we did that,
that's when it came up as a match.
[Andr] The phone rang one day,
out of the blue, and it was the police,
and they had news.
And the news was
there was a positive identification.
And they said
that the person that had been identified
was a completely new name.
[Angela] The DNA database produced a match
for someone called Robert Napper.
And then we discovered
that Napper was in Broadmoor
because he'd also committed
a m*rder of a mother and a young daughter.
[poignant music playing]
It had been somebody else all the time.
So that moment in time
was when our worst possible scenario
had proved to be played out,
that somebody else had been m*rder*d
by the same person
in the same circumstances.
Another family's been destroyed.
So if I didn't know
how blessed I'd been that Alex survived,
when we found out
what happened to Samantha and Jazmine,
I thank God every day.
Because it's only by the grace of God
that that we've survived together,
and it's only by the grace of God
that he survived physically.
[poignant music continues]
[music fades]
[crowd cheering, whistling on TV]
[man] I was watching a football match
on TV one evening.
There was a knock on my door,
and I was a bit annoyed
'cause I was missing the match.
There was two journalists standing there.
And they said, um um,
"Did you know
that the police have arrested another man
in relation to the Nickell m*rder,
and they got DNA evidence
to prove he was guilty?"
I was like, "Can you come back
in about an hour's time?"
"I'm watching the match."
They were like, "No problem,"
and they walked off.
I was sick of the whole thing, you know?
It dragged on for about 15 years.
[reporter 1] Colin Stagg had
police protection today
as the Rachel Nickell case
continued to haunt him.
[Colin] From when I was arrested,
there were articles in the newspapers
stirring people's emotions up against me.
People shouting out stuff like,
"Guilty," "Hang him,"
stuff like that, you know.
[reporter 2] Mr. Stagg remained
uncomfortably in the media spotlight
even after his release.
[woman] Don't!
[Colin] Instilling in people's minds
that, "We know we had the right man,
but he got off on a technicality."
You know? So I had to live with that.
[man] Many people thought he was guilty,
but nobody actually heard the evidence
either for him or against him.
That meant that he was
in a kind of limbo for all these years.
Now, 15 years on, a man has been charged.
He's 41-year-old Robert Napper.
The last man to be charged,
Colin Stagg, was cleared
because a policewoman
had tried to entrap him.
[Colin] I'd never had a proper girlfriend
up to the point of 29.
So when I received a letter
from Lizzie James,
I just felt really, um happy
that, um, a woman had shown
some interest in me.
It is clear that he is completely innocent
of any involvement in that case.
And I today apologize to him
for the mistakes that were made
in the early 1990s.
[Colin] I had very low self-esteem anyway
before this started.
This knocked me back even further,
so even deeper and deeper.
It did make me feel very paranoid.
If I would accidentally sort of look at
a woman crossing the road and that,
I used to immediately think,
like, "No, look away,"
because somebody could be watching me
thinking, "Hang on,
he's stalking that woman."
And I just thought,
"Well, you know, this is your life now."
"You've just got to get on with it.
You know, don't trust anybody."
[Andr] On the build-up to the trial,
one of the lead detectives said, uh,
"After you fly in," he said, "we'll meet."
There was something I needed to know
before we got to the courtroom itself.
Seven o'clock in the evening,
we met at Hendon Police Station.
He showed me into a back room.
We're just the two of us present,
and he pushed a dossier across the table.
[tense music playing]
What I saw in the dossier of documents
was just
what an utter chaotic catalog of errors
this whole investigation had been.
It was absolutely devastating.
It took me
all the way back to the very first day.
The very first call,
the very first news
that Rachel had been taken from us,
and that Alex had been through
such an ordeal.
We'd been trying to make sense of that
week after week,
month after month, year after year.
And all that's just exploded.
Because here it says
it was all preventable.
[sorrowful music playing]
[Roger] In the summer of 1989,
three years before
the m*rder of Rachel Nickell
and also the murders
of Samantha and Jazmine,
a serial r*pist started attacking women,
some with children present,
on the Green Chain Walk pathway,
which runs through woodland
and open common land in Southeast London,
which is also not far
from the scene of the Bisset murders.
DNA had identified one suspect
for that series of r*pes.
Two people who had seen the poster
contacted the police and said,
"That artist's impression
looks remarkably like
a guy called Robert Napper."
Two detectives investigating
the Green Chain Walk r*pes
went to his, uh, known address.
He appeared. They both spoke to him.
He was, uh, told that he had been
identified as a possible suspect.
And he then was asked to come
and voluntarily give blood,
which he agreed to do.
But he failed
to attend the police station,
so they went back to his address.
He'd packed his bags and left.
He'd gone.
Subsequently,
on the grounds that he was taller
than the descriptions
given by the r*pe victims,
the decision was made
by the senior investigating officer
and his deputy
to exclude him as a suspect
from that inquiry.
So basically nothing else was done.
Which baffles me to this day.
[music fades]
Had Napper attended the police station,
as he said he would do,
and his blood sample taken,
he would have been then arrested
for the Green Chain Walk r*pes.
That didn't happen, which
It had catastrophic consequences.
[poignant music playing]
[Andr] And then
there was something in the dossier
that was, for me, even more devastating.
In September or October of 1989,
and years before Rachel was k*lled,
Robert Napper's mother
reported to the police
that he confessed that he'd r*ped a woman
on Plumstead Common.
But the police didn't follow it up.
This was a fork in the road.
If the police had followed up
on Robert Napper's mother's call
and taken a blood sample from him,
this could have prevented
all of the attacks that followed.
The attack that Alex witnessed
was preventable.
Rachel's death was preventable.
Samantha and Jazmine's deaths
were preventable.
If they'd done their job properly,
he would have been taken off the street.
[reporter 1] We watch today
as one of the great unresolved murders
was finally resolved.
[reporter 2] Today, the k*ller
of Rachel Nickell was found guilty
of stabbing her to death
on Wimbledon Common 16 years ago.
[laughter and chatter on video]
Robert Napper was led out of the cells,
up into the dock of Court 1
here at the Old Bailey,
and there, gray-faced and balding,
with Rachel Nickell's parents looking on,
he finally confessed
to k*lling their daughter.
[Rachel laughs] Andr,
I'm right up on your
[Alex babbles]
[reporter 3] Today's confession
brings to a close
one of the most damning episodes
in Scotland Yard's history.
[reporter 4] They admitted
they could have caught Napper earlier
and stopped him k*lling.
If the police had done things differently,
Rachel Nickell
and Samantha and Jazmine Bisset
would not have lost their lives.
More could and should have been done.
Had more been done,
we would have been in a position
to have prevented this
and other very serious attacks by Napper.
[music fades]
[birds singing]
[Andr] We all grew up with fairy tales.
We all grew up with that warning
not to go into the woods.
The darkness,
the monsters, the the danger.
But it's not a fairy tale.
There is true evil in this world.
[soft, pensive music playing]
I was really forced to
to come to terms with that.
My greatest confusion was, uh
was why, you know?
You know, the anger with God that, uh
that these kind of things
can happen to good people
with absolutely no explanation.
And so I had a mission,
and, uh, that was to bring, you know,
Rachel's child through this
in the best way possible.
[Alex] I think with people
you live through difficulties together,
they either break you
and they break the relationship
or they make the relationship
that much stronger.
We were ultimately forced
to find our own closure,
which I think is actually a good thing.
And that was ultimately
the realization that,
you know, you have no choice
but to make peace.
Make peace with it.
My parents believed in
the infinity of the spirit.
That my mother would be with me always
wherever I went.
My father sacrificed everything for me
and for what he believed in,
without any guarantees
of how it would turn out.
He was brave enough to
to do what he felt was right in his heart.
I'm forever indebted to him for that.
[music fades]
[soft, sorrowful music playing]
Welcome to our World! Where we serve you cookies to ensure you get the best viewing experience on our site.
Did you know that you can remove censorship board-wide, use our advanced search functions, be notified when new content is posted, join our memberships, set episodes to show in any order you want & more if you are logged into your account?
Register or sign in here: ucp.php?mode=register
Did you know that you can remove censorship board-wide, use our advanced search functions, be notified when new content is posted, join our memberships, set episodes to show in any order you want & more if you are logged into your account?
Register or sign in here: ucp.php?mode=register
m*rder of Rachel Nickell, The (2026)
Moderators: Maskath3, GabrielAlejo2341, sidolanters, Maskath3, GabrielAlejo2341, sidolanters