Who Killed Rachel Nickell?

Who was the real killer in deceit

While Colin was wrongly charged with Rachel’s murder the following year and forced to stand trial at the Old Bailey in 1994, her real killer, a man named Robert Napper, walked free.

What happened to the son of Rachel Nickell

Trigger warning: This post contains references to sexual assault. In July 1992, Rachel Nickell was sexually assaulted and murdered as she walked across Wimbledon Common with her two-year-old son. The brutal attack and killing, which was witnessed by her child Alex Hanscombe, remained an unsolved crime for over a decade, with a man named Colin Stagg falsely charged at first following a highly controversial undercover investigation and, according to an Old Bailey judge, ” deceptive conduct of the grossest kind ” from the police force.

• Later, new evidence and more advanced forensic techniques led to serial killer Robert Napper being convicted in 2008.
• The case continues to grip the nation, with ITV choosing to revisit it in its new documentary, Cold Case Forensics: The Murder Of Rachel Nickell.
• Following Nickell’s death, father and son Alex and André left London, first moving to the south of France before settling in the Spanish countryside.

As of 2021, they shared a flat together in Barcelona. ” All the time, you see the headlines, you hear the whispers, everyone’s watching Alex, saying he’ll never recover,” André told The Guardian, “I just felt it was impossible for a child to grow up like that.

1. Rachel and I were always going to leave the country — again, it was being true to her values.” André added that he still sees many of Rachel’s qualities in their son.
2. Her sharpness of intelligence, her wicked sense of fun and her movements, too.
3. Rachel was tall and elegant — a dancer.
4. Alex has that same elegance, you see it in his gestures, his eyes, his presence.” Though Alex says they argued when he was growing up, mostly because of “all the pressures on my father, having to make so many decisions, being isolated,” they became closer after Alex moved to London to study music.

After Napper was finally brought to justice for his crimes, the father and son went travelling together. “It was a completely different dynamic by then, both adults, no obligation,” André said. “We closed everything down, gave away what we couldn’t sell, then spent four years on the road – India, Egypt, Thailand, Indonesia, Sri Lanka ” It was during this trip that Alex started working on his memoir Letting Go: A True Story Of Murder, Loss And Survival — and he now lives in Barcelona, where he has worked as a yoga teacher.

1. He speaks four languages.
2. You know what stays with me the most, you know that feeling that we’ve all had in our lives of being so close to someone and loving them so much and if you’ve ever gone through that to lose that, you know that feeling,” he told Lorraine in 2021.
3. Though Alex told The Mirror that he has forgiven his mother’s killer, he and his father still hold the police responsible for a number of errors which led to Napper — who was in prison by the time he was found guilty for Nickell’s murder — escaping conviction for previous murders and sexual assaults.

In 201, an Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) report found there had been a ” catalogue of bad decisions and errors ” made by the investigating team in regards to the case, but no officers faced disciplinary action as one key senior detective had passed away and the rest had retired.

Can the police stop every bad person from committing crimes and harming other people? No. We are talking about cases where reports were made and evidence collected, and the police as an organisation had a means of taking action against that person,” he said in an interview with Daily Mail, “That has not been put right.

Nobody in the police has been held to account in any kind of way.” If you or someone you know has been sexually assaulted, you can call Rape Crisis on 0808 500 2222 or visit https://rapecrisis.org.uk.

How was Robert Napper caught?

Criminal activities – In 1986, Napper first came to police attention after being convicted of an offence with an airgun. In October 1989, police had rejected information conveyed in a phone call from Napper’s mother that her son had admitted to committing a rape on Plumstead Common,

1. No case apparently matched the evidence.
2. However, it emerged at the time of Napper’s second conviction, that the rape of a 30-year-old woman, in front of her children, eight weeks earlier, had been reported to have occurred in a house which backed on to Plumstead Common.
3. At this point, Pauline Napper broke off all contact with her son.

On 15 July 1992 on Wimbledon Common, Napper stabbed the young mother Rachel Nickell 49 times in front of her son Alex, then aged two, who clung on to his mother’s body begging her to wake up. Napper was questioned about unsolved attacks on other women during the year, but was eliminated from inquiries.

1. In November 1993, in the Bisset home in Plumstead, Napper stabbed 27-year-old Samantha Bisset in her neck and chest, killing her, and then sexually assaulted and smothered her four-year-old daughter, Jazmine Jemima Bisset.
2. In her sitting room, Napper mutilated Samantha Bisset’s body, taking away body parts as a trophy.

The crime scene was reportedly so grisly that the police photographer assigned to the case was forced to take two years’ leave after witnessing it. After a fingerprint belonging to Napper was recovered from Samantha’s flat, he was arrested by DS Alan Jackaman, and charged with the murders of Samantha and Jazmine Bisset, in May 1994.

• Napper was convicted at the Old Bailey in October 1995.
• He also admitted two rapes and two attempted rapes at this time.
• From the time of the first Old Bailey trial, he has been held at Broadmoor,
• In December 1995, he was questioned about Nickell’s death but denied any involvement.
• Napper is also believed to have committed most or all of the attacks attributed to the “Green Chain Rapist” (named after the Green Chain Walk – a string of leafy pathways linking large parts of south east London) who carried out at least 70 savage attacks across south-east London over a four-year period ending in 1994.

The earliest of the ‘Green Chain’ rapes have been linked to Napper, and were those he admitted to in 1995. Napper is known to have kept detailed records of the sites of potential and actual attacks on women. During the investigation into the rapes, Napper had been eliminated due to his 6′ 2″ height, as detectives had decided to exclude anyone over 6′ based on the description of a 5′ 7″ rapist.

• However, there are conflicting witness reports of the rapist’s height and Napper walked with a stoop.
• The investigation to find Nickell’s murderer resulted in the attempted prosecution of an innocent man, Colin Stagg, until, in 2004, advances in DNA profiling revealed Napper’s connection to the case.

On 18 December 2008, Napper was convicted of the manslaughter of Nickell on the grounds of diminished responsibility, He also admitted to four other attacks on women. Napper was sentenced to indefinite detention at Broadmoor Hospital, In his summing up at the Old Bailey, Mr Justice Griffiths Williams said to Napper: “You are on any view a very dangerous man”.

Was Colin Stagg innocent

Rachel Nickell | Forensic Cold Case Murder Investigation Forensic Casebook

Re-investigation revealed unknown male DNA on samples from Rachel’s body. On 15 th July 1992, while walking with her young son and their dog on Wimbledon Common in London, Rachel Nickell died after suffering no fewer than forty-nine separate stab wounds at the hands of serial rapist Robert Napper.

• Among other things, adhesive-tape samples were taken from parts of her body that had been exposed during what looked like a sexually motivated attack.
• When these were examined for DNA by scientists at the Metropolitan Police Forensic Science Laboratory (MPFSL), the hope was that they would find male DNA that didn’t match either Rachel’s husband or their two-year-old son.

The problem in this case was that not only did the scientists fail to find any of the male DNA they were looking for; they didn’t find any DNA at all. It seems that they didn’t stop to wonder why. If they had, they would have realised something was wrong, because the tape should have been covered in with Rachel’s own DNA and skin cells.

After interviewing several suspects, the attention of the Metropolitan Police focused on a local man named Colin Stagg. Convinced that Stagg was guilty, but with no real evidence to implicate him, they organised a so-called ‘honey trap’ operation. For several months an undercover policewoman feigned a romantic interest in Stagg, with the aim of getting him to confess to Rachel’s murder.

Ultimately, although Colin Stagg didn’t ever ‘confess’ to the murder, he was arrested in August 1993. A year later, at his trial at the Old Bailey, the judge excluded the entrapment evidence, the prosecution withdrew its case, and Stagg was acquitted for the crime.

In 2002, when Forensic Alliance became involved in the cold-case investigation into Rachel’s murder – which was given the code name Operation Edzell – Angela Gallop assigned Roy Green to the case, assisted by several colleagues. Mike Gorn focused on the chemistry aspects of the case, while Clare Lowrie was responsible for hairs and textile fibres.

Andy McDonald took care of, and April Robson was appointed lead forensic examiner. The first thing we did was look at the items of clothing that had been retrieved from her and from her two-year-old son, Alex. Next, we examined the body samples and the tapings taken from her body.

• Semen is traditionally a good source of DNA, but since the previous scientific team hadn’t found any semen on Rachel’s body, we anticipated that we’d be looking for smaller traces.
• Then, in phase three, we looked at various items that had been collected from the crime scene on Wimbledon Common and from some potential suspects.

Later on we added a fourth phase, which involved looking more closely at the debris the FSS had gathered from key items. To assist with the first phase of our investigation – our search for ‘foreign DNA’ that could have come from Rachel’s attacker – Roy set up a reconstruction experiment in the laboratory.

1. The aim was to try and identify the specific areas of Rachel’s clothes that were most likely to have been handled by her attacker.
2. Another scientist put on clothes (over a scene suit) that were similar to the clothes Rachel had been wearing at the time of her attack.
3. Then Roy – acting as the attacker and with black powder applied to his hands – pulled and pushed them until they resembled the distribution of Rachel’s clothing when her body was discovered.

Residues of black powder indicated where contact had been greatest, and therefore where on her clothes we should focus our attention. Then we started work on phase two – which was when we found a ‘way in’ to the case. When the previous scientific teams had tested the tapings from Rachel’s body, they’d used a DNA-profiling test called Low Copy Number (LCN).

LCN is a variation on the standard DNA (STR) profiling used at the time that works by multiplying (or amplifying) relevant parts in small amounts of DNA until there is enough present to analyse. With LCN, thirty-four cycles of amplification were used, as opposed to the twenty-eight with the standard test.

Our team took a different approach. We always began with the standard (twenty-eight-cycle at that time) test, so that we had a baseline of what our extracts contained in the way of DNA. We only progressed to the LCN test if we felt it was appropriate. When we looked at the tapings extract from the previous tests, what we found using the standard method of twenty-eight cycles was a mixed profile.

The major component appeared to be from Rachel herself, while some minor components were from a male. When we then tested the same extract using a thirty-four-cycle LCN technique – the equivalent of the previous test – it was clear that our reaction was over-amplified, leading to an excess of DNA and no result.

Intrigued by the tiny amount of male DNA, we went back to the original intimate tapings and re-sampled them, creating our own extracts. We then repeated the same testing as before. With some of the tapings we got a full profile from Rachel, and although there was something else there, it wasn’t confirmed by the duplicate test.

• With other tapings, however, even at twenty-eight cycles we were getting a major result from Rachel and a minor result from male DNA, but not enough to identify who it might have originated from.
• We decided this was the ideal opportunity to take a different approach.
• It involved cleaning up and concentrating our sample extracts: trying to eliminate as much extraneous material such as salts and impurities as possible, because they can inhibit DNA analysis.

We then tweaked the running conditions on our machines to optimize the process. Our colleagues at Orchid Cellmark undertook the bulk of this work, with Roy making sure it was done as quickly as possible because we needed to continue to make progress with this case.

• In the end, it took the better part of two years.
• Andy McDonald then carried out some other DNA tests on our extracts from the intimate tapings, in an effort to obtain as much information from them as possible.
• By the end of it all, we had plenty of information with which to mount a search of the National DNA Database.

Roy Green had noticed at quite an early stage of the investigation that there were similarities between the modus operandi (MO) – that is, a criminal’s pattern of behaviour or his/her way of committing a crime, and that of a man called Robert Napper.

• Napper had been incarcerated in Broadmoor Hospital since 1995 for the murder of another young woman and her four-year-old daughter.
• When the DNA extracted from the samples in our investigation was put on the National DNA Database, he came up as a match.
• We then began to search for more links.
• One of the places we looked was on some of Napper’s possessions that had remained untouched at Broadmoor since they’d been returned to him by police a few years earlier.

Police investigators had apparently been particularly interested in a red-painted toolbox, about which Napper was very protective. It was of further interest to us after we found a tiny flake of red paint in some hair combings from Rachel’s son. And when Mike Gorn compared the paint flake with the paint on the toolbox, he got a match.

• Additionally, a layer of metal on one side of the flake was shown to be steel – which was what the toolbox was made of.
• We were still thinking about the crime scene and whether there was anything there that might conceivably provide a link to Napper.
• One of the things we considered was a couple of that had been found in mud on a bridle path close to where Rachel had been attacked.

Casts had been made out of the marks at the time, one of which was the heel of a shoe that was similar in style to the heel of a pair of Napper’s shoes, but slightly smaller in size. Since the mark was different from the suspected source, we had to find out if there was a good reason, and the only way to do this was to return to the scene and conduct an experiment.

Shortly afterwards, Mike and Roy found themselves on Wimbledon Common looking at what happened when a similar pair of shoes was used to walk over the same area of muddy ground. What they found was that as the wearer of the shoes lifted his foot to take another step, a partial vacuum was created that sucked in the muddy soil around the edges of the shoe.

And when they took the plaster-type casts of the marks and compared them with the shoes themselves, they showed that what was left in the mud was a slightly smaller footprint than would normally have been made by a shoe of that size. In the face of what had turned out to be overwhelming evidence – including the DNA, the paint and the footwear mark – Robert Napper pleaded guilty when the case went to trial.

In December 2008, he was convicted of the manslaughter of Rachel Nickell on the grounds of diminished responsibility and sentenced to indefinite incarceration at Broadmoor hospital. Professor Angela Gallop and the team are currently working on a number of high profile cold case investigations. To find out more about our services visit our page or call 01235 774870.

: Rachel Nickell | Forensic Cold Case Murder Investigation

Was Colin Stagg jailed

Colin Stagg is now homeless after blowing £700,000 payout: Man wrongly jailed over Rachel Nickell murder is living in a shelter having been dumped by his girlfriend of 17 years –

Colin Stagg, 60, spent his most recent birthday living in an emergency shelter Mr Stagg was falsely charged with murdering Rachel Nickell, 23, in July 1992

Published: 00:53 BST, 4 June 2023 | Updated: 09:02 BST, 5 June 2023 The man who was wrongly jailed over the murder of Rachel Nickell is now living in a homeless shelter after he blew his £700,000 compensation. Colin Stagg, 60, had been handed the payout by the Home Office in 2008 to help ‘rebuild his life’ after he was the victim of a Met Police honey-trap operation.

However Mr Stagg revealed that receiving the cash felt ‘a bit like winning the lottery’ – as he spent the money on cars and holidays to make the most of his life. After his girlfriend kicked him out in April, Mr Stagg spent last month living in a council emergency shelter, according to The Mirror, ‘It’s a terrible shock being homeless at my age,’ he said.

Colin Stagg, 60, (pictured) was wrongly jailed over the murder of Rachel Nickell and is now living in a homeless shelter after blowing his £700,000 compensation Rachel Nickell, 23, (pictured) was stabbed 49 times in front of her young son Alex on Wimbledon Common in July 1992 ‘I never had big ambitions but I certainly didn’t see myself spending my 60th birthday in a homeless hostel.’ Rachel Nickell, 23, was stabbed 49 times in front of her young son Alex on Wimbledon Common in July 1992.

• She had been walking her dog when the horrific tragedy took place.
• There was no worthwhile evidence against Mr Stagg but police still charged him with her murder.
• Mr Stagg spent a year in custody awaiting trial before an Old Bailey judge eventually threw out the case, branding the undercover operation ‘reprehensible’.

After double killer Robert Napper, locked up in Broadmoor, emerged as Miss Nickell’s real murderer, Mr Stagg received £706,000 in compensation from the Home Office for the ‘stigma’ of still being wrongly considered the prime suspect in the case and therefore unemployable.

Mr Stagg (pictured in 1994) was still charged with Ms Nickell’s murder even though there was no worthwhile evidence against him Mr Stagg was seen entering his local Tesco in 2021 for the start of his shift on the checkouts after blowing his compensation In 2008 Napper – who at the time of the case bore a striking resemblance to Mr Stagg – was convicted of the manslaughter of Miss Nickell after a DNA breakthrough.

The news of Mr Stagg’s homelessness comes after it was reported he was working in his local Tesco in 2021 after blowing his compensation. It was also revealed Mr Stagg had plans to wed his long-term partner who was ‘sick’ of the lies told about him. A photograph showed him entering Tesco Express for the start of his shift on the checkouts.

Where is Colin Stagg now

How much compensation did Colin Stagg get? – Colin Stagg says he’s now spent all of the compensation money ( Image: ITV) For 16 years Colin Stagg’s life had been torn apart by the false murder allegations against him, and police only admitted that they’d got the wrong man when Nickell’s real killer was convicted in 2007.

1. Stagg was awarded £706,000 in compensation by the Home Office for police blunders and the Met Police issued a full apology to him.
2. Assistant Commissioner John Yates said: “In August 1993, he was wrongly accused of Miss Nickell’s murder.
3. It is clear he is completely innocent of any involvement in this case and I today apologise to him for the mistakes that were made in the early 1990s.

“We also recognise the huge and lasting impact this had on his life and, on behalf of the Metropolitan Police, I have today sent him a full written apology.” Stagg is now reportedly working at Tesco after he spent all of the compensation money that he was awarded.

What happened to Lizzie James Colin Stagg

Channel 4’s new true crime drama Deceit is based on the true story of a police officer known only by her undercover name ‘Lizzie James’. She worked on the investigation into Colin Stagg – the man they wrongfully believed to be involved in Rachel Nickell’s murder – in the 1990s.

The real killer, Robert Napper, has since been found through forensic evidence and a confession. Played by Niamh Algar ( Raised by Wolves, The Virtues ) in the dramatisation, Lizzie James’ real name and pseudonym have been replaced with a fictional one – Sadie Byrne – and certain details have been altered to protect her identity.

James was recruited as part of a police operation that was designed to garner a confession from then-suspect Colin Stagg. Under the direction of criminal psychologist Paul Britton and lead investigators, James was to gain Stagg’s trust and form a relationship with him. Niamh Algar as Lizzie James in Channel 4 KEVIN BAKER // Channel 4 Her undercover persona included a backstory that was designed to appeal to the mindset of Nickell’s killer. It was thought that once close enough to James, he would reveal his involvement in the crime.

• Given that Nickell was so brutally murdered in a public space and in broad daylight, there was a lot of public fear surrounding the crime.
• What’s more, the story spurred a high level of media attention and so, the police were under huge pressure to solve the murder.
• It was said that they interviewed around 500 suspects, but they focused on Colin Stagg – a local man who would often walk his dog around the common.

After Paul Britton provided a criminal profile, it was decided that Stagg was a fit. There was no forensic evidence linking him to the crime, so the covert operation was designed in order for the culprit to implicate himself. James and Stagg met a number of times in person, and he responded to her letters (which were sexual in nature) with fantasies that were deemed to be violent.

1. Stagg’s lawyers later argued that he had been encouraged to do so by James – in other words, by the investigation.
2. Crucially though, Stagg never once admitted any involvement in Nickell’s murder – in fact, he actively denied it.
3. Stagg was charged with the murder, but the case fell apart at trial with the judge condemning the police investigation and branding it “deceptive conduct of the grossest kind”.

The evidence from the undercover operation and the case against Stagg was thrown out in 1994. James suffered post-traumatic stress disorder (via BBC News ), taking 18 months leave from work and eventually walking away from the force by opting for early retirement. Niamh Algar as Lizzie James in Channel 4’s deceit KEVIN BAKER // Channel 4 The legal action was said to have the backing of the Metropolitan Police Federation. A spokesman at the time said: “She has taken early retirement due to the trauma she suffered as a result of the role she played in the Nickell investigation.

1. We are pursuing a civil claim against the Metropolitan Police Commissioner on the grounds that she was not offered sufficient support in dealing with the difficult experiences she went through.” James was eventually paid £125,000 as compensation when the Metropolitan Police settled out of court.
2. There is a lifetime anonymity order protecting James’ identity.

Deceit is airing weekly at 9pm on Channel 4, and all episodes are available on All 4. In the latest edition of Digital Spy Magazine, we reflect on the 50 most groundbreaking soap characters of all time. Read every issue now with a 1-month free trial, only on Apple News+, TV Editor, Digital Spy Laura has been watching television for over 30 years and professionally writing about entertainment for almost 10 of those. Previously at LOOK and now heading up the TV desk at the UK’s biggest TV and movies site Digital Spy, Laura has helped steer conversations around some of the most popular shows on the box.

1. Laura has appeared on Channel 5 News and radio to talk viewing habits and TV recommendations.
2. As well as putting her nerd-level Buffy knowledge to good use during an IRL meet with Sarah Michelle Gellar, Laura also once had afternoon tea with One Direction, has sat around the fire pit of the Love Island villa, spoken to Sir David Attenborough about the world’s oceans and even interviewed Rylan from inside the Big Brother house (housemate status, forever pending).

Read full bio

Is Colin Stagg married?

Today, Colin is 57 years old and now leads a relatively normal life. According to The Daily Mail, he works at a supermarket and has been married for a number of years to a woman who began writing to him while he was awaiting trial. They share four children.

What is the drama about Rachel Nickell?

Deceit review – Rachel Nickell drama probes the ethics of entrapment I t is an indicator of almost everything that was wrong with the murder investigation that I could not, on hearing of a drama being made about the case, remember if anyone had ever been found guilty.

1. But I remembered the name and face of Colin Stagg as clearly as I remembered that of Nickell.
2. He was the lonely oddball drawn up by forensic psychologist Paul Britton, and whom the police relentlessly pursued as their prime suspect.
3. An undercover female officer, codenamed “Lizzie James”, was sent to befriend Stagg (or entrap him, as was the view of the judge who threw out the case when it reached trial).

Despite the absence of evidence against him, he was found guilty in the court of public opinion and treated accordingly for the next 16 years, until a cold case review led to being convicted of the manslaughter of Nickell. Deceit (Channel 4), written by Emilia di Girolamo, and based on extensive research and interviews, tells the story of the honeytrap operation and the officer at the centre of it.

• Gives a phenomenal performance as Lizzie James/Sadie Byrne (not the officer’s real name, as her identity is still protected by court order), a performance layered with certainty and doubt as the officer’s aptitude is stretched to its limit on the most daunting of assignments.
• Algar shows Byrne’s desire to prove herself in a casually and systemically sexist workplace, which both complements and complicates her desire for justice.

You believe and understand her character entirely as, following a plan designed by Britton (Eddie Marsan), Byrne befriends Stagg and inches along the line between encouragement and entrapment. Sion Daniel Young as Stagg does an equally remarkable job – letting all of the man’s unsettling unsavouriness show but never losing touch with his humanity.

Our sympathies – or at least enough of them – stay with him to the end. The problem the drama struggles to overcome is that it is dealing with events that are stranger than fiction. Put simply, it beggars belief that the police relied so unhesitatingly and unquestioningly on a ridiculously vague psychological profile (white man, considered strange by neighbours, probably lives alone or with his mother), and a profiler who believed the odds of two men being on Wimbledon Common at the same time, who both had the kind of sexual fantasies that could have been slaked in such a way, were incalculable.

I know the internet was in its infancy back then and we’ve all learned a lot since, but did professors of psychology really exist in quite such a state of prelapsarian innocence in 1992? The only doubt cast on the operation at any point is in a throwaway line or two from Byrne’s colleague Lucy (a woefully underused Rochenda Sandall).

Was Britton’s profile really so universally accepted? Surely more of the story lies there? Deceit is magnificently and stylishly directed by Niall MacCormick, whether in the claustrophobic exchanges between Byrne and Stagg, the profoundly moving moments of revelation or the horror. But another obstacle for the drama is that the professor is at least as creepy as the two murderers we meet.

Whether this was a character choice by Marsan or a simple reflection of real events, the effect is the same: another layer of disbelief. Perhaps it is just that he was a man. Deceit is a study of the wrongs done to women. This ranges from harassment in pubs to professional harms and the greatest outrage of them all.

1. It touches at the end on Napper’s murder of Samantha Bisset and her four-year-old daughter Jazmine, 18 months after he killed Nickell, when the police were still focused on Stagg, and notes the estimated 100 rapes and assaults Napper committed on women in the years before that.
2. The litany of errors by the police that left him free to do so is another story that would defy belief.

And that, I suppose, is why they must be told. : Deceit review – Rachel Nickell drama probes the ethics of entrapment

Who was Colin Stagg accused of?

Who is Colin Stagg? –

• Unemployed Stagg became the most hated man in Britain when he was accused of,
• The former model had been walking on Wimbledon Common with her dog Molly and two-year-old son Alexander when she was stabbed 49 times and sexually assaulted.
• Her son was later found clinging to his mum’s blood-soaked body pleading for her to,
• Criminal psychologist Dr Paul Britton had been asked by police to create an offender profile of the killer.
• Stagg was a loner who did not mix much outside his Roehampton home and police made him their prime suspect.

What did Maudsley do to David Francis?

Britain’s most dangerous prisoner once asked for a pet and promised he wouldn’t eat it Robert Maudsley, one of the UK’s most notorious killers, asked to have a pet brought into his prison cell for him and even promised that he wouldn’t eat it. Maudsley has been described as the ‘Cannibal Killer’ in the press, although the allegations of turned out to be false. Robert Maudsley has been in jail for 49 years. Credit: Channel 5 Maudsley and another tortured and killed child molester David Francis in Broadmoor Hospital in 1977, before he then killed two inmates at HMP Wakefield after he was sent there. He was sentenced to life imprisonment with the recommendation that he never be released.

• Maudsley remains in Wakefield, kept in for 23-hours of every day in a specially built cell.
• In 2000, he appealed to the UK’s Prison Service to be allowed to keep a pet, which he also promised not to eat.
• Maudsley also requested to have a TV so that he could learn about the world outside.
• Alternatively, he asked to be given a single cyanide pill with which to end his own life.

He wrote: “As a consequence of my current treatment and confinement, I feel that all I have to look forward to is indeed psychological breakdown, mental illness and probable suicide. “Why can’t I have a instead of flies, cockroaches and spiders which I currently have. One of the letters Maudsley sent from prison. Credit: Quest Red “Why can’t I have a television in my cell to see the world and learn? Why can’t I have any music tapes and listen to beautiful classical music? “If the Prison Service says no then I ask for a simple cyanide capsule which I shall willingly take and the problem of Robert John Maudsley can easily and swiftly be resolved.” Maudsley was the victim of horrific abuse as a child, both in a religious orphanage and at the hands of his parents.

Where did Robert Napper work?

Background – Napper was born in London on February 25, 1966. His father Brian, a driving instructor, was physically abusive to his wife, Pauline, and to all four of their children, of which Napper was the oldest. After they divorced, the children all went to foster care and underwent psychiatric treatment.

• Napper, who was nine years old at the time of the divorce, was treated for six years.
• During the examinations, he was diagnosed with Asperger Syndrome,
• He was also later diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and suffered from grandiose delusions, believing himself to be a Nobel Prize winner, a well-educated millionaire, and had a masters degree in mathematics.

When he was 12 or 13, he was sexually assaulted by a family friend during a camping trip. As a result, he became incredibly timid and introverted and started bullying his siblings and spying on his younger sister when she undressed. At 16, Napper left school for a catering course and had a bunch of menial jobs.

How long was Colin Stagg jailed?

July 15 1992: Rachel Nickell, 23, a model, of Tooting, south-west London, is stabbed 49 times in a frenzied daylight attack on Wimbledon common in front of her two-year-old son Alexander. August 12 1992: Police arrest 14 men in connection with Nickell’s murder, but all of them are released.

The police continue to appeal for information. September 21 1992: Colin Stagg, 29, a newspaper delivery man, of Roehampton, south London, is fined £200 after he pleaded guilty to indecent exposure on Wimbledon common. Stagg’s solicitor said the offence had nothing to do with Nickell’s murder. February 1993: An inquest reveals that Nickell suffered 49 stab wounds to her chest, neck, and back and was also sexually assaulted.

Police tell the coroner that despite six and a half months of extensive inquiries they were no nearer to catching their man. August 1993: Stagg is charged with Nickell’s murder at Wimbledon magistrates and remanded in custody. More than 500 suspects were interviewed by police, of whom 32 were arrested but released.

February 1994: Wimbledon magistrates commit Stag for trial at the Old Bailey accused of murdering Nickell. Stagg refuses to eat for six days. September 1994: The trial collapses after the judge, Mr Justice Ognall, condemned a police undercover operation in which a woman officer exchanged a series of pornographic letters with Stagg.

After being formally cleared of Nickell’s murder, Stagg announces his intention to sue the police and the psychologist who masterminded the undercover operation to trap him. October 1994: Scotland Yard reopens the Nickell murder investigation, appointing a new team to re-interview witnesses and look in detail at the case.

April 1995: Stagg is granted legal aid to sue the Metropolitan police for malicious prosecution and wrongful arrest. He says his life was ruined after he was imprisoned for 13 months. May 1995: Stagg is given 12 months’ probation for threatening a man with an axe on Wimbledon common. He pleaded guilty to threatening behaviour and possessing an offensive weapon.

August 1995: Stagg marries a 26-year-old care worker Diane Beddoes. who wrote to him while he was in jail awaiting trial. July 1997: Scotland Yard say the hunt for Nickell’s murderer is being wound down. April 1999: Stagg demands up to £100,000 for the rights to publish “fresh evidence” which he says clears his name.

1. The claims are contained in his book, Who Really Killed Rachel? October 2002: Paul Britton, the criminal psychologist who advised police over the Nickell murder, criticises his professional body after a disciplinary case against him collapses.
2. November 2007: Robert Napper, 41, is charged with Nickell’s murder after an extensive re-investigation of the case by Scotland Yard.

December 2007: Stagg explains in an email why he never wants to talk to the media again and hoped to return to the anonymous life he led before he was arrested. January 2008: Napper, previously of south London, pleads not guilty to Nickell’s murder in a hearing at the Old Bailey.

Is Robert Napper still in Broadmoor?

Where is Robert Napper now? – Napper was sentenced to be incarcerated indefinitely at Broadmoor Hospital in December 2008. In his summing up at the Old Bailey, Mr Justice Griffiths Williams said to Napper: “You are on any view a very dangerous man”. It is highly unlikely that the convicted murderer and rapist will ever be released.

How much compensation did Colin Stagg get

Colin Stagg is now homeless after blowing £700,000 payout: Man wrongly jailed over Rachel Nickell murder is living in a shelter having been dumped by his girlfriend of 17 years –

Colin Stagg, 60, spent his most recent birthday living in an emergency shelter Mr Stagg was falsely charged with murdering Rachel Nickell, 23, in July 1992

Published: 00:53 BST, 4 June 2023 | Updated: 09:02 BST, 5 June 2023 The man who was wrongly jailed over the murder of Rachel Nickell is now living in a homeless shelter after he blew his £700,000 compensation. Colin Stagg, 60, had been handed the payout by the Home Office in 2008 to help ‘rebuild his life’ after he was the victim of a Met Police honey-trap operation.

• However Mr Stagg revealed that receiving the cash felt ‘a bit like winning the lottery’ – as he spent the money on cars and holidays to make the most of his life.
• After his girlfriend kicked him out in April, Mr Stagg spent last month living in a council emergency shelter, according to The Mirror,
• ‘It’s a terrible shock being homeless at my age,’ he said.

Colin Stagg, 60, (pictured) was wrongly jailed over the murder of Rachel Nickell and is now living in a homeless shelter after blowing his £700,000 compensation Rachel Nickell, 23, (pictured) was stabbed 49 times in front of her young son Alex on Wimbledon Common in July 1992 ‘I never had big ambitions but I certainly didn’t see myself spending my 60th birthday in a homeless hostel.’ Rachel Nickell, 23, was stabbed 49 times in front of her young son Alex on Wimbledon Common in July 1992.

She had been walking her dog when the horrific tragedy took place. There was no worthwhile evidence against Mr Stagg but police still charged him with her murder. Mr Stagg spent a year in custody awaiting trial before an Old Bailey judge eventually threw out the case, branding the undercover operation ‘reprehensible’.

After double killer Robert Napper, locked up in Broadmoor, emerged as Miss Nickell’s real murderer, Mr Stagg received £706,000 in compensation from the Home Office for the ‘stigma’ of still being wrongly considered the prime suspect in the case and therefore unemployable.

Mr Stagg (pictured in 1994) was still charged with Ms Nickell’s murder even though there was no worthwhile evidence against him Mr Stagg was seen entering his local Tesco in 2021 for the start of his shift on the checkouts after blowing his compensation In 2008 Napper – who at the time of the case bore a striking resemblance to Mr Stagg – was convicted of the manslaughter of Miss Nickell after a DNA breakthrough.

The news of Mr Stagg’s homelessness comes after it was reported he was working in his local Tesco in 2021 after blowing his compensation. It was also revealed Mr Stagg had plans to wed his long-term partner who was ‘sick’ of the lies told about him. A photograph showed him entering Tesco Express for the start of his shift on the checkouts.

What happened to Lizzie James

Channel 4’s new true crime drama Deceit is based on the true story of a police officer known only by her undercover name ‘Lizzie James’. She worked on the investigation into Colin Stagg – the man they wrongfully believed to be involved in Rachel Nickell’s murder – in the 1990s.

• The real killer, Robert Napper, has since been found through forensic evidence and a confession.
• Played by Niamh Algar ( Raised by Wolves, The Virtues ) in the dramatisation, Lizzie James’ real name and pseudonym have been replaced with a fictional one – Sadie Byrne – and certain details have been altered to protect her identity.

James was recruited as part of a police operation that was designed to garner a confession from then-suspect Colin Stagg. Under the direction of criminal psychologist Paul Britton and lead investigators, James was to gain Stagg’s trust and form a relationship with him. Niamh Algar as Lizzie James in Channel 4 KEVIN BAKER // Channel 4 Her undercover persona included a backstory that was designed to appeal to the mindset of Nickell’s killer. It was thought that once close enough to James, he would reveal his involvement in the crime.

1. Given that Nickell was so brutally murdered in a public space and in broad daylight, there was a lot of public fear surrounding the crime.
2. What’s more, the story spurred a high level of media attention and so, the police were under huge pressure to solve the murder.
3. It was said that they interviewed around 500 suspects, but they focused on Colin Stagg – a local man who would often walk his dog around the common.

After Paul Britton provided a criminal profile, it was decided that Stagg was a fit. There was no forensic evidence linking him to the crime, so the covert operation was designed in order for the culprit to implicate himself. James and Stagg met a number of times in person, and he responded to her letters (which were sexual in nature) with fantasies that were deemed to be violent.

Stagg’s lawyers later argued that he had been encouraged to do so by James – in other words, by the investigation. Crucially though, Stagg never once admitted any involvement in Nickell’s murder – in fact, he actively denied it. Stagg was charged with the murder, but the case fell apart at trial with the judge condemning the police investigation and branding it “deceptive conduct of the grossest kind”.

The evidence from the undercover operation and the case against Stagg was thrown out in 1994. James suffered post-traumatic stress disorder (via BBC News ), taking 18 months leave from work and eventually walking away from the force by opting for early retirement. Niamh Algar as Lizzie James in Channel 4’s deceit KEVIN BAKER // Channel 4 The legal action was said to have the backing of the Metropolitan Police Federation. A spokesman at the time said: “She has taken early retirement due to the trauma she suffered as a result of the role she played in the Nickell investigation.

“We are pursuing a civil claim against the Metropolitan Police Commissioner on the grounds that she was not offered sufficient support in dealing with the difficult experiences she went through.” James was eventually paid £125,000 as compensation when the Metropolitan Police settled out of court. There is a lifetime anonymity order protecting James’ identity.

Deceit is airing weekly at 9pm on Channel 4, and all episodes are available on All 4. In the latest edition of Digital Spy Magazine, we reflect on the 50 most groundbreaking soap characters of all time. Read every issue now with a 1-month free trial, only on Apple News+, TV Editor, Digital Spy Laura has been watching television for over 30 years and professionally writing about entertainment for almost 10 of those. Previously at LOOK and now heading up the TV desk at the UK’s biggest TV and movies site Digital Spy, Laura has helped steer conversations around some of the most popular shows on the box.

Laura has appeared on Channel 5 News and radio to talk viewing habits and TV recommendations. As well as putting her nerd-level Buffy knowledge to good use during an IRL meet with Sarah Michelle Gellar, Laura also once had afternoon tea with One Direction, has sat around the fire pit of the Love Island villa, spoken to Sir David Attenborough about the world’s oceans and even interviewed Rylan from inside the Big Brother house (housemate status, forever pending).

Read full bio

Who was Colin Stagg

Who is Colin Stagg? –

• Unemployed Stagg became the most hated man in Britain when he was accused of,
• The former model had been walking on Wimbledon Common with her dog Molly and two-year-old son Alexander when she was stabbed 49 times and sexually assaulted.
• Her son was later found clinging to his mum’s blood-soaked body pleading for her to,
• Criminal psychologist Dr Paul Britton had been asked by police to create an offender profile of the killer.
• Stagg was a loner who did not mix much outside his Roehampton home and police made him their prime suspect.

Is Colin Stagg married?

Today, Colin is 57 years old and now leads a relatively normal life. According to The Daily Mail, he works at a supermarket and has been married for a number of years to a woman who began writing to him while he was awaiting trial. They share four children.