Rachel Nickell

Rachel Jane Nickell (23 November 1968 – 15 July 1992) was a British woman who was stabbed to death on Wimbledon Common in south-west London on 15 July 1992.

The initial police investigation of the crime resulted in the arrest in controversial circumstances of an innocent man, who was acquitted.

On the morning of 15 July 1992, she and Alexander were walking their dog on Wimbledon Common.

Whilst passing through a secluded area of the common, Nickell was attacked.

An assailant killed her by repeatedly stabbing and slashing her with a knife, then sexually assaulted her.

The assailant fled the scene, leaving Alex physically unharmed in the vicinity.

A passer-by found him clinging to his mother's blood-soaked body, repeating the words "Wake up, Mummy", with a piece of paper stuck to her forehead as a bandage.

In a television interview on 7 September 2021 with Lorraine Kelly, discussing the documentary Death on the Common: My Mother's Murder, Alex Hanscombe said after his mother had been attacked, he said to her three times "wake up, Mummy" before realising she was "gone" and not playing.

He then walked into a clearing on the common, where people saw that he was covered in blood and therefore discovered his mother's body.

Officers of the Metropolitan Police undertook the investigation, under pressure to find the perpetrator by press coverage and public outrage at the circumstances of the murder.

Thirty-two men were questioned in connection with the killing; the investigation quickly targeted Colin Stagg, a man from Roehampton who was known to walk his dog on the Common.

As there was no forensic evidence linking him to the scene, the police asked Paul Britton, a criminal psychologist, to create an offender profile of the killer.

They decided that he fitted the profile and asked the psychologist to assist with designing a covert operation, code-named Operation Edzell, to see whether he would eliminate or implicate himself.

This operation was later criticised by the media and the trial judge as effectively a "honeytrap".

An undercover policewoman from the Metropolitan Police Special Operations Group (SO10) contacted Stagg, posing as a friend of a woman with whom he used to be in contact via a lonely hearts' column.

Over five months, she attempted to obtain information from him by feigning a romantic interest, meeting him, speaking to him on the telephone and exchanging letters containing sexual fantasies.

During a meeting in Hyde Park, they spoke about the Nickell homicide; he later claimed that he had only played along with the topic because he wanted to pursue the romance.

Profiler Paul Britton later said that he disagreed with use of the fantasy-filled letters and knew nothing of them until after they had been sent.

The undercover officer won Stagg's confidence and drew out fantasies from him that psychologist Paul Britton interpreted as "violent", but he did not admit to the killing.

Police released a taped conversation between the police officer and him in which she claimed to enjoy hurting people, to which he mumbled, "Please explain, as I live a quiet life. If I have disappointed you, please don't dump me. Nothing like this has happened to me before".

When she went on to say, "If only you had done the Wimbledon Common murder, if only you had killed her, it would be all right", he replied, "I'm terribly sorry, but I haven't".

Stagg was nevertheless arrested and charged on the basis of claims that he had described aspects of the murder scene that only the killer would have known.

Napper, who was already detained at high-security Broadmoor Hospital in Berkshire for a 1993 double murder, was ordered to be detained there indefinitely.

At the time of her death, Nickell was living near Wimbledon Common with partner André Hanscombe and their two-year-old son, Alexander Louis.

Nickell was 23 years old at the time of her death.

When the case reached the Old Bailey in September 1994, Mr Justice Ognall ruled that the police had shown "excessive zeal" and had tried to incriminate Stagg by "deceptive conduct of the grossest kind".

He excluded all the entrapment evidence on the grounds that Stagg's descriptions of the murder were not nearly as close to the reality as the police had maintained.

With no other evidence to present, the prosecution withdrew its case and Stagg was acquitted.

Keith Pedder, the case's lead detective, received heavy public criticism.

Even after Stagg was (rightfully as it later turned out) cleared of the murder of Nickell, Pedder continued over subsequent years to promote his theory that Stagg was guilty.

He told an ITV Real Crime documentary in 2001:

"Colin Stagg has been through a version of justice, albeit truncated, and he has been found not guilty. But I wonder whether he can actually say hand on heart that he believes people will meet him in the street and believe that. I do not believe the system served anybody that particular day."

After Stagg's acquittal, Pedder took early retirement from the police.

He later faced corruption charges, but the case was thrown out by the judge in a pre-trial hearing on the grounds of insufficient evidence.

Every year on the anniversary of the killing Scotland Yard came under pressure for progress.

In 2002, with more advanced forensic techniques, the case was reopened.

Her killer, Robert Napper, was identified by a later police investigation and convicted in 2008.

Nickell was walking with her two-year-old son on Wimbledon Common when she was stabbed 49 times in the neck and torso and died at the scene.

A lengthy police investigation to find the perpetrator followed, during which a suspect was wrongfully charged and later acquitted—before the case went cold.

On 18 December 2008, Robert Napper pleaded guilty to Nickell's manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility.