Rachel Nickell: Case Closed
- Episode aired Jun 22, 2009
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Laurence Alison
- Self - Author: 'Killer in the Shadows'
- (as Prof. Laurence Alison)
Samantha Bisset
- Self
- (archive footage)
Rachel Nickell
- Self
- (archive footage)
Mick Wickerson
- Self - Rachel Nickell Investigation
- (as Det. Chief Insp. Mike Wickerson)
Andrew Nickell
- Self
- (archive footage)
- (uncredited)
Storyline
Featured review
Rachel Nickell: Case Closed
This is the story of two men: one a psychopathic killer; the other whom the police believed to be a psychopathic killer. In July 1992, young mother Rachel Nickell was walking on London's Wimbledon Common with her young son when she was attacked and brutally murdered. The man responsible was serial rapist Robert Napper; the following year he would go on to murder another young woman, and this time he would kill her daughter as well.
If the police had not been so obsessed with pinning the Nickell murder on local man Colin Stagg, they might have arrested Napper before he had a chance to kill again. Indeed, if they had followed up properly on a claim that he had raped a woman years earlier, all this horror might have been avoided; the informant was Napper's own mother, who said he had confessed to her. Like her, they must have been aware that he was not playing with a full deck.
The police employed a bizarre entrapment operation against Stagg, but instead of standing trial for the Nickell murder, he walked free after the judge, Mr Justice Ognall, eviscerated the so-called case against him. After his release, they continued to both spy on him and leak lies about him to the press.
Eventually Stagg would receive both a sincere apology from the Metropolitan Police and (not mentioned here) compensation of £700,000, not a penny too much. A major player in this fiasco was Paul Britton, who appears on camera here with all the expected apologetics. The only thing that can be said in mitigation for the police is that Stagg bore a striking facial resemblance to Napper, and although Napper is considerably taller, it is easy to understand how Stagg could have been mistaken for him, especially when the identification was made by a boy not yet three years old.
Napper was finally brought to book for the Nickell murder by advances in DNA profiling, but by this time he had already been behind bars for a decade and a half, although he had been questioned about it in 1995.
This documentary covers a lot of ground, speaks to all the major players including Stagg but not Napper,nor to any members of the original investigation team, who are said to have declined to take part. There is also archive footage, including of Samantha Bisset and her four year old daughter Jazmine, who were murdered by Napper in November 1993.
If the police had not been so obsessed with pinning the Nickell murder on local man Colin Stagg, they might have arrested Napper before he had a chance to kill again. Indeed, if they had followed up properly on a claim that he had raped a woman years earlier, all this horror might have been avoided; the informant was Napper's own mother, who said he had confessed to her. Like her, they must have been aware that he was not playing with a full deck.
The police employed a bizarre entrapment operation against Stagg, but instead of standing trial for the Nickell murder, he walked free after the judge, Mr Justice Ognall, eviscerated the so-called case against him. After his release, they continued to both spy on him and leak lies about him to the press.
Eventually Stagg would receive both a sincere apology from the Metropolitan Police and (not mentioned here) compensation of £700,000, not a penny too much. A major player in this fiasco was Paul Britton, who appears on camera here with all the expected apologetics. The only thing that can be said in mitigation for the police is that Stagg bore a striking facial resemblance to Napper, and although Napper is considerably taller, it is easy to understand how Stagg could have been mistaken for him, especially when the identification was made by a boy not yet three years old.
Napper was finally brought to book for the Nickell murder by advances in DNA profiling, but by this time he had already been behind bars for a decade and a half, although he had been questioned about it in 1995.
This documentary covers a lot of ground, speaks to all the major players including Stagg but not Napper,nor to any members of the original investigation team, who are said to have declined to take part. There is also archive footage, including of Samantha Bisset and her four year old daughter Jazmine, who were murdered by Napper in November 1993.
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- a_baron
- Dec 21, 2015
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