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Netflix's The Witness has shone a spotlight again on the Rachel Nickell murder case. Consisting of three episodes, the series dramatizes the sensational murder case that occurred thirty-four years ago in 1992. British screenwriter Rob Williams, known for his work on The Victim, Suspicion, and Chasing Shadows, created the three-part miniseries.
All three episodes of the miniseries dropped on Netflix this Thursday, with Jordan Bolger appearing as Rachel's romantic partner, André Hanscombe, Max Fincham playing Rachel Nickell's son, Alex, and Jahsaiah Williams playing the young Alex. Variety revealed the official logline of the Netflix series, which reads:
“When Rachel Nickell was murdered on Wimbledon Common in 1992, André became a single parent overnight. Putting his own grief to one side, he made his son Alex – the only eyewitness to the attack – the centre of his world."
The synopsis continues:
"Navigating the unscrupulous media furore and the urgency of an increasingly desperate police investigation, his sole concern became the welfare of his traumatised son. This is the story of how a father and son moved through the aftermath of unimaginable tragedy, from darkness into light.”
Trigger Warning: This portion of the article mentions s*xual and physical violence. Reader discretion is advised.
The Witness: Rachel Nickell murder case explained:
On July 15 1992, Rachel Nickell and her young son Alex were walking their dog on Wimbledon Common in the morning. Suddenly, out of nowhere, an assailant stabbed Rachel after assaulting her. However, he did not physically harm Alex. A passerby had found the young Alex trying to wake his mother.
This incident caused a huge outcry, and there was tremendous pressure on the police to solve this sensational case. The investigators initially targeted Colin Stagg, who also frequently walked his dog in Wimbledon Common. Due to a lack of forensic evidence, the police asked criminal psychologist Paul Britton to create a profile of the killer. After deciding that Stagg fit Britton's description, the police investigated him.
At one point, the police also trapped Stagg using a policewoman feigning romantic interest in him. She pretended to be into violence and got Stagg to write letters describing his fantasies. Paul Britton interpreted the letters as "violent" but insisted that they did not indicate that Colin Stagg was involved in Rachel's death. They even taped a conversation in which the policewoman tried to get him to accept that he killed Rachel, only to deny it.
That did not stop the police from arresting and charging him for Nickell's murder. They justified this by saying that Stagg described some aspects of the murder that only the assailant could have known. However, he was acquitted in September 1994 as Sir Harry Henry Ognall, the judge, criticized the police for deception and excluded the entrapment evidence.
Lead detective Keith Pedder continued to insist that Stagg was guilty for a long time. He said this in a segment of ITV Real Crime 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."
Colin Stagg wasn't acquitted until 2008:
Stagg's name was repeatedly dragged through the mud for years despite being acquitted by the court. It wasn't until 2008 that he was truly exonerated, as Robert Napper pleaded guilty to Rachel Nickell's manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility. The government offered Stagg £706,000 for compensation in August 2008.
Alex Tribick, Colin's solicitor, revealed what his client wanted at the time:
"Of course what he really wanted was an apology from the Metropolitan police and I think he has accepted that is something he will never get."
However, in December of the same year, Stagg got justice when Robert Napper pleaded guilty. Stagg said this after getting the apology:
"It has been a long time coming. It would have been nicer if the Met could have looked me in the eye while they did it, but I'll take what's on offer."
Who is Robert Napper? Where is he today?
Robert Napper was one of the initial suspects back in 1995, but he denied his involvement. However, Scotland Yard interrogated Napper in July 2006, when he was institutionalized in Broadmoor psychiatric hospital. He was being treated for Asperger syndrome and paranoid schizophrenia at Broadmoor after his conviction for murdering Samantha Bisset and her four-year-old daughter, Jazmine.
Napper had committed the murders of Samantha and Jazmine in November 1993, a year after Rachel Nickell's murder. He was ultimately charged with Nickell's murder in November 2007. A year later, in December, Justice Griffith Williams ordered that Napper should be indefinitely institutionalized in Broadmoor after describing him as a "dangerous man". It is highly unlikely that Napper would ever be released from the psychiatric hospital.
The Witness dramatizes these events. But this scripted series is not the only project dealing with this case. The Murder of Rachel Nickell, a one-and-a-half-hour documentary, is also dropping on Netflix the same day.
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