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Dad?

4
00:00:10,800 --> 00:00:11,680
[man] Yeah?

5
00:00:12,640 --> 00:00:14,240
Are you up here?

6
00:00:14,320 --> 00:00:15,320
[man] Mm-hmm.

7
00:00:23,480 --> 00:00:29,320
Dadda, can you help me draw Mummy
on this piece of paper?

8
00:00:30,800 --> 00:00:32,800
Alex, look at me.

9
00:00:32,880 --> 00:00:35,600
When you saw the bad man,
was he in front of you like I am?

10
00:00:35,680 --> 00:00:38,320
Or was he on this side,
or was he on that side?

11
00:00:38,400 --> 00:00:41,040
-He was in front of me.
-He was right in front of you?

12
00:00:41,120 --> 00:00:43,280
-Mm-hmm.
-Did Mummy see him?

13
00:00:44,640 --> 00:00:46,360
I don't think she did.

14
00:00:46,440 --> 00:00:48,320
No? Did you see him first?

15
00:00:49,520 --> 00:00:51,440
Yeah, I saw him first.

16
00:00:52,560 --> 00:00:54,440
Did he have a bag?

17
00:00:55,240 --> 00:00:56,080
Yeah.

18
00:00:56,160 --> 00:00:58,320
And did he open it,
or was it already open?

19
00:00:58,400 --> 00:00:59,400
He opened it.

20
00:00:59,480 --> 00:01:00,800
And what did he get out?

21
00:01:00,880 --> 00:01:02,000
A knife.

22
00:01:02,080 --> 00:01:04,200
-What did he do to you?
-Knocked me over!

23
00:01:04,280 --> 00:01:06,240
-He knocked you over?
-Yeah.

24
00:01:06,320 --> 00:01:09,240
The bad man was
sticking his things in her.

25
00:01:09,320 --> 00:01:10,760
What was he sticking in her?

26
00:01:10,840 --> 00:01:12,880
A knife. There's his knife.

27
00:01:13,400 --> 00:01:14,480
Did you see it?

28
00:01:15,280 --> 00:01:16,600
Yeah, I saw the knife.

29
00:01:16,680 --> 00:01:18,120
Did you see all the times?

30
00:01:19,400 --> 00:01:21,840
I saw it… Yeah, I saw it all.

31
00:01:21,920 --> 00:01:23,920
[ominous music playing]

32
00:01:25,080 --> 00:01:27,640
[man] My son witnessed
his mother's murder.

33
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But nobody could have possibly known

34
00:01:30,760 --> 00:01:34,160
how long it was gonna take
to find the person who did this.

35
00:01:34,240 --> 00:01:35,920
[ominous music continues]

36
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[music fades]

37
00:01:52,000 --> 00:01:54,000
[birds calling]

38
00:01:55,240 --> 00:01:57,240
[gentle instrumental music playing]

39
00:02:08,840 --> 00:02:09,840
[woman] Oh!

40
00:02:10,800 --> 00:02:13,680
What… What have you got?

41
00:02:13,760 --> 00:02:16,080
-[man] I've got a camera.
-What for?

42
00:02:16,600 --> 00:02:18,000
[man] Take pictures of you.

43
00:02:19,560 --> 00:02:20,600
[Rachel] Cuddles.

44
00:02:21,160 --> 00:02:22,080
Hmm?

45
00:02:22,600 --> 00:02:24,360
[indistinct speech]

46
00:02:24,440 --> 00:02:26,200
We don't like those much, do we, Alex?

47
00:02:26,720 --> 00:02:28,560
-Oh! [chuckles]
-[Alex giggles]

48
00:02:29,080 --> 00:02:31,920
[man] Rachel and Alex were,
you know, they were a unit.

49
00:02:32,560 --> 00:02:35,320
He was the center of Rachel's attention
every day.

50
00:02:37,400 --> 00:02:39,920
She wasn't at all
drawn to the sparkly things.

51
00:02:40,000 --> 00:02:42,480
She just really enjoyed
the simple things of life.

52
00:02:42,560 --> 00:02:45,120
Enjoying the company
of the people she really cared about.

53
00:02:46,720 --> 00:02:49,440
This was someone
who could really squeeze fun

54
00:02:49,520 --> 00:02:51,480
out of the simplest of things.

55
00:02:52,640 --> 00:02:54,240
[character on TV] Can't wait.

56
00:02:54,320 --> 00:02:55,960
[character sighs, yawns]

57
00:02:56,040 --> 00:02:57,240
Sleep. Need…

58
00:02:57,320 --> 00:03:00,840
[Rachel] Give Molly a nice stroke.
Lie down and give her a nice stroke.

59
00:03:02,760 --> 00:03:06,800
[André] At the time, I went to work
five days a week as a dispatch rider

60
00:03:07,320 --> 00:03:09,520
and travelled all over the country.

61
00:03:12,320 --> 00:03:15,560
So I was down getting my bike out,
ready for the day.

62
00:03:17,480 --> 00:03:19,800
And, uh, even though
we'd already said goodbye,

63
00:03:19,880 --> 00:03:20,960
they both appeared.

64
00:03:24,440 --> 00:03:28,600
Came down the stairs
and, uh, waved me off.

65
00:03:30,080 --> 00:03:32,840
That's my lasting memory,
yeah, of them smiling.

66
00:03:32,920 --> 00:03:35,240
Standing on the steps, hand in hand.

67
00:03:35,320 --> 00:03:38,920
You know, Alex completely relaxed
and Rachel looking lovely.

68
00:03:39,840 --> 00:03:41,840
[birds singing]

69
00:03:43,600 --> 00:03:47,360
It was their routine
to visit Wimbledon Common.

70
00:03:49,400 --> 00:03:52,200
It's always had
a reputation of being a safe place.

71
00:03:52,840 --> 00:03:56,680
And, uh, Alex, he needed
as much exercise as the dog did.

72
00:03:56,760 --> 00:03:59,160
Otherwise,
they'd both be bouncing off the walls.

73
00:03:59,240 --> 00:04:01,240
[ominous string music playing]

74
00:04:04,800 --> 00:04:06,680
That day, I happened to be in London,

75
00:04:07,440 --> 00:04:09,520
and I was sent to the outskirts.

76
00:04:16,320 --> 00:04:18,120
It's pre-mobile phone.

77
00:04:18,200 --> 00:04:22,680
So a couple of times a day, I'd phone in
to make sure everything was all right.

78
00:04:22,760 --> 00:04:24,760
[ominous music intensifies]

79
00:04:26,640 --> 00:04:28,520
Late in the morning, I stopped,

80
00:04:28,600 --> 00:04:30,640
found a phone that was working.

81
00:04:31,400 --> 00:04:33,680
-Rang the number.
-[phone rings out]

82
00:04:33,760 --> 00:04:35,800
[music continues]

83
00:04:35,880 --> 00:04:37,280
[phone ringing]

84
00:04:37,360 --> 00:04:39,360
[music intensifies]

85
00:04:39,440 --> 00:04:41,120
[phone ringing]

86
00:04:41,200 --> 00:04:42,640
[music stops]

87
00:04:42,720 --> 00:04:44,480
A man's voice answered the phone.

88
00:04:45,120 --> 00:04:47,080
And my blood ran cold.

89
00:04:47,800 --> 00:04:50,840
I just knew immediately
that something was seriously wrong.

90
00:04:50,920 --> 00:04:52,920
[poignant music playing]

91
00:04:53,680 --> 00:04:55,400
He said, "I'm a policeman."

92
00:04:55,920 --> 00:04:57,360
So I said, "Where's Rachel?"

93
00:04:58,040 --> 00:05:00,000
And he said, "There's been an accident."

94
00:05:00,080 --> 00:05:03,080
I said, "Is she dead?"
He said, "I can't tell you that."

95
00:05:03,600 --> 00:05:04,680
I said, "You just did."

96
00:05:11,440 --> 00:05:13,600
And I asked, "Where's Alex?"

97
00:05:15,520 --> 00:05:18,160
He said, "Alex is safe.
He's at the hospital."

98
00:05:20,600 --> 00:05:23,600
He said, "Stay where you are.
We'll send a police car to you."

99
00:05:23,680 --> 00:05:26,960
The moment I put the phone down,
I collapsed to the floor and broke down.

100
00:05:30,040 --> 00:05:32,760
[Rachel laughs] André,
I'm right up on your stomach.

101
00:05:32,840 --> 00:05:33,960
Press pause.

102
00:05:34,680 --> 00:05:36,680
[Alex] Hey, I don't…

103
00:05:38,360 --> 00:05:41,200
I don't know what you say.

104
00:05:41,280 --> 00:05:42,720
[André] We like that bit.

105
00:05:42,800 --> 00:05:44,120
-You like that bit?
-[André] Yeah.

106
00:05:45,280 --> 00:05:49,720
Every belief I had about, you know,
the firmness of reality disappeared.

107
00:05:50,240 --> 00:05:51,240
I was in a state

108
00:05:51,320 --> 00:05:54,960
which you can only describe
as bordering on the edge of insanity.

109
00:05:59,440 --> 00:06:01,440
[tense music playing]

110
00:06:07,080 --> 00:06:09,080
[man] 15th July '92,

111
00:06:09,160 --> 00:06:14,320
I was informed that a body has been found
on the common by a… a dog walker.

112
00:06:17,960 --> 00:06:19,920
It… it's our job, um,

113
00:06:20,000 --> 00:06:23,360
to, to deal with these situations
as, as a professional.

114
00:06:24,800 --> 00:06:28,560
To stand back
from what you see as a fellow human being.

115
00:06:30,240 --> 00:06:32,040
I was walking through grass,

116
00:06:32,120 --> 00:06:37,560
and then I sort of turned right
into a small, um, glade.

117
00:06:39,480 --> 00:06:42,160
It really was the worst crime scene.

118
00:06:43,320 --> 00:06:45,560
It… it just looked like a frenzied attack.

119
00:06:47,440 --> 00:06:50,640
The victim had been attacked, dragged,

120
00:06:51,880 --> 00:06:56,400
stabbed 49 times
in and around the neck and chest area.

121
00:06:57,400 --> 00:07:01,000
And she lay with her hands
sort of up in front of her face,

122
00:07:01,080 --> 00:07:03,480
as if she was
still trying to protect herself.

123
00:07:04,880 --> 00:07:06,560
It was monstrous.

124
00:07:09,120 --> 00:07:13,320
The detectives told me
that Rachel had been attacked from behind.

125
00:07:13,400 --> 00:07:16,520
She'd been… [hesitates]
…stabbed multiple times

126
00:07:16,600 --> 00:07:18,120
and that she'd been assaulted.

127
00:07:22,600 --> 00:07:25,520
That Alex had been found
clinging to his mother's body.

128
00:07:26,640 --> 00:07:29,640
And that they had to
basically prize him away

129
00:07:29,720 --> 00:07:31,280
to attend to him.

130
00:07:36,680 --> 00:07:39,360
Alex had been taken to this hospital.

131
00:07:40,720 --> 00:07:41,880
When I got there,

132
00:07:41,960 --> 00:07:46,120
they said that they would like me
to speak to a psychologist before…

133
00:07:46,200 --> 00:07:47,200
before I saw Alex.

134
00:07:47,280 --> 00:07:49,280
[Alex chatters]

135
00:07:50,960 --> 00:07:53,840
[André] The psychologist said,
first of all, children are resilient.

136
00:07:54,720 --> 00:07:56,960
They can get through the worst of things.

137
00:07:59,800 --> 00:08:01,200
He said they need to know

138
00:08:01,280 --> 00:08:04,800
that this is definitive,
that this person is not coming back.

139
00:08:04,880 --> 00:08:06,880
[poignant music playing]

140
00:08:10,120 --> 00:08:14,280
Alex came out in the arms of a nurse,
and he looked incredibly subdued.

141
00:08:16,280 --> 00:08:19,480
He had cuts under his eyes.
He had bruises on his cheeks.

142
00:08:19,560 --> 00:08:23,920
And, uh, he had
an intense look in his eyes, you know,

143
00:08:24,000 --> 00:08:26,600
like a… a very old person
in a very young body.

144
00:08:28,720 --> 00:08:33,120
And I picked him up and basically recited
what the psychologist said.

145
00:08:33,200 --> 00:08:34,360
There's been an accident,

146
00:08:34,440 --> 00:08:37,080
that Mummy's dead,
that she's not coming back.

147
00:08:37,160 --> 00:08:40,240
And he just kept staring.
He didn't ask any questions.

148
00:08:40,320 --> 00:08:43,760
But it was clear that he was telling me,
"I already know that."

149
00:08:43,840 --> 00:08:48,840
You know? "That's something
you really don't have to explain to me."

150
00:08:50,760 --> 00:08:53,200
[Rachel] Alex, turn around and wave to me.

151
00:08:54,360 --> 00:08:55,480
Wave.

152
00:09:00,160 --> 00:09:03,520
He never asked again
where his mother was. Not once.

153
00:09:05,840 --> 00:09:07,520
-[music fades]
-[birds singing]

154
00:09:07,600 --> 00:09:09,600
[indistinct chatter on police radio]

155
00:09:11,560 --> 00:09:13,280
[reporter] Police sealed off
Wimbledon Common

156
00:09:13,360 --> 00:09:17,280
moments after the woman's
half-naked body was found by a passer-by.

157
00:09:17,360 --> 00:09:20,160
Detectives say she'd been murdered
in a frenzied attack,

158
00:09:20,240 --> 00:09:23,080
which was witnessed
by her two-year-old son.

159
00:09:25,000 --> 00:09:26,760
[woman] The news editor called and said,

160
00:09:26,840 --> 00:09:28,160
"We've just read on the wires

161
00:09:28,240 --> 00:09:31,920
there's been some sort of fatal stabbing
on Wimbledon Common."

162
00:09:32,000 --> 00:09:33,960
"We need you to go with a crew now."

163
00:09:36,160 --> 00:09:37,880
Wimbledon as a place,

164
00:09:37,960 --> 00:09:41,200
it's very affluent, very beautiful houses.

165
00:09:41,280 --> 00:09:47,400
Wimbledon Common is
something like 1,100 acres of parkland,

166
00:09:47,480 --> 00:09:51,400
literally right on the edge
of Central London.

167
00:09:54,200 --> 00:09:56,200
The murder happened in broad daylight,

168
00:09:56,280 --> 00:09:59,960
and police say they're certain the killer
would have been heavily bloodstained.

169
00:10:00,040 --> 00:10:02,520
Eve Richings, Sky News.

170
00:10:03,280 --> 00:10:07,680
It was palpable how shaken
the police officers on the scene were.

171
00:10:09,440 --> 00:10:13,520
A passer-by found her half-naked,

172
00:10:14,040 --> 00:10:17,920
and clinging to the body was a small boy.

173
00:10:18,000 --> 00:10:19,160
Superintendent Bassett,

174
00:10:19,240 --> 00:10:22,840
who was, um, the lead officer
in charge of the investigation,

175
00:10:22,920 --> 00:10:25,680
he was the one
that gave the first briefing.

176
00:10:25,760 --> 00:10:29,920
The small boy was caked in mud and blood,

177
00:10:30,000 --> 00:10:32,480
the blood possibly coming from the mother.

178
00:10:32,560 --> 00:10:35,480
I was a detective sergeant
and, at the time of the inquiry,

179
00:10:35,560 --> 00:10:37,520
was John Bassett's right-hand man.

180
00:10:38,840 --> 00:10:41,120
When we arrived at the scene,

181
00:10:42,880 --> 00:10:46,600
I could see
that she had suffered horrendously

182
00:10:46,680 --> 00:10:47,800
during this attack.

183
00:10:48,960 --> 00:10:53,120
When we looked closely at her body,
her body was in a not-natural position.

184
00:10:54,560 --> 00:10:56,800
Her clothing had been ripped from her.

185
00:10:57,800 --> 00:11:00,880
There was moistness
in and around her body.

186
00:11:01,680 --> 00:11:05,800
That indicated there's possibly
a sexual connotation to this.

187
00:11:06,880 --> 00:11:10,440
It was frightening to think that somebody
who could commit that sort of crime

188
00:11:10,520 --> 00:11:11,400
was on the loose.

189
00:11:12,560 --> 00:11:15,040
Obviously, if you've got
somebody who's gonna do this,

190
00:11:15,120 --> 00:11:17,400
then that's likely to happen again,

191
00:11:17,480 --> 00:11:22,240
and the pressure is on to get this man,
uh, before he does it again.

192
00:11:26,040 --> 00:11:30,200
[reporter] Police teams spent a second day
combing 1,000 acres of Wimbledon Common

193
00:11:30,280 --> 00:11:32,400
for clues to the savage killing.

194
00:11:33,600 --> 00:11:35,320
[Paul] The size of Wimbledon Common,

195
00:11:35,400 --> 00:11:38,840
straight away, I realized
that we had a difficult job on.

196
00:11:40,080 --> 00:11:42,800
Normally when a murder breaks,

197
00:11:42,880 --> 00:11:45,000
you probably get 10, 15 officers.

198
00:11:45,080 --> 00:11:47,280
On this, I think we had about 40.

199
00:11:48,000 --> 00:11:51,720
And it was quite obvious from the start
that this was gonna be a big one.

200
00:11:53,200 --> 00:11:56,720
[reporter] They officially named
the murdered mother as Rachel Nickell.

201
00:11:58,440 --> 00:12:02,400
Her body was identified today
by the father of her small son.

202
00:12:04,160 --> 00:12:07,640
[Eve] To see pictures of Rachel Nickell,

203
00:12:07,720 --> 00:12:10,560
to see what she looked like,

204
00:12:11,280 --> 00:12:14,720
she sort of shone with vitality.

205
00:12:16,240 --> 00:12:21,160
People could project… themselves
into that life.

206
00:12:23,200 --> 00:12:25,800
They could remember being 23

207
00:12:25,880 --> 00:12:29,240
or remember being a new parent.

208
00:12:31,720 --> 00:12:35,480
We were getting a love story
in the pictures that they released.

209
00:12:35,560 --> 00:12:37,560
[poignant music playing]

210
00:12:38,960 --> 00:12:40,840
[André] It was an instant connection.

211
00:12:40,920 --> 00:12:43,640
It was… You know,
I'd never had that experience before,

212
00:12:43,720 --> 00:12:45,280
and I've never had it since.

213
00:12:46,760 --> 00:12:50,440
We were inseparable. We did feel
that we just bonded completely.

214
00:12:50,520 --> 00:12:55,800
This is the experience that people,
you know, they… they dream of having.

215
00:12:55,880 --> 00:12:59,480
You know, falling head over heels in love
and feeling so complete with someone.

216
00:12:59,560 --> 00:13:02,000
So we both felt blessed to have that.

217
00:13:05,120 --> 00:13:08,200
When Rachel became pregnant,
it was a shock.

218
00:13:08,800 --> 00:13:12,600
I was 25, and Rachel was 19.

219
00:13:13,680 --> 00:13:17,960
She was very much on the track
of, you know, getting studies finished,

220
00:13:18,040 --> 00:13:19,760
getting a career, getting a good job.

221
00:13:20,600 --> 00:13:23,960
But the moment
that Rachel could see I was committed,

222
00:13:24,560 --> 00:13:26,600
she could see
that we could make this work.

223
00:13:27,960 --> 00:13:29,440
So we just went for it.

224
00:13:32,440 --> 00:13:35,800
That first time
that you pick up… pick up a child

225
00:13:35,880 --> 00:13:37,640
and see them breathing,

226
00:13:38,160 --> 00:13:39,880
it's… it's supernatural.

227
00:13:40,680 --> 00:13:42,000
It's absolutely supernatural.

228
00:13:42,080 --> 00:13:45,440
You can't not believe in magic
if you've seen a child being born.

229
00:13:50,120 --> 00:13:52,320
Rachel was a natural mother.

230
00:13:53,000 --> 00:13:55,320
She was… She was, uh, breathtaking.

231
00:13:57,240 --> 00:13:59,800
The two of them
were so passionate about each other.

232
00:13:59,880 --> 00:14:02,680
They were so fulfilled with each other.

233
00:14:07,640 --> 00:14:09,200
I think it's a human reaction.

234
00:14:09,280 --> 00:14:12,480
You wish it had happened to you
rather than it happened to them.

235
00:14:21,040 --> 00:14:23,400
The detective suggested
we pop back to the flat

236
00:14:23,480 --> 00:14:25,000
and pick up a few things.

237
00:14:27,400 --> 00:14:31,040
I was throwing Alex's favorite stuff
into a bag, you know.

238
00:14:32,440 --> 00:14:35,920
His favorite teddy bear, you know,
shorts and T-shirts, his pajamas,

239
00:14:36,000 --> 00:14:41,960
and the sheepskin that they slept on
since he was, uh… since he was first born.

240
00:14:43,400 --> 00:14:44,760
We never lived there again.

241
00:14:44,840 --> 00:14:47,520
It felt like
a space that had been violated.

242
00:14:50,800 --> 00:14:52,280
The boyfriend of Rachel Nickell,

243
00:14:52,360 --> 00:14:54,360
the young mother murdered
on Wimbledon Common

244
00:14:54,440 --> 00:14:55,760
in South London yesterday,

245
00:14:55,840 --> 00:14:57,960
has appealed for help
to track down her killer.

246
00:14:58,040 --> 00:15:00,280
-[cameras clicking]
-[indistinct chatter]

247
00:15:01,320 --> 00:15:04,240
[André] I wasn't prepared when I walked
through the door into that room.

248
00:15:04,320 --> 00:15:07,000
There must have been
a hundred press present.

249
00:15:07,080 --> 00:15:10,800
So it was cameras, telephoto lenses,

250
00:15:10,880 --> 00:15:15,840
TV cameras all pointed towards you
like a… an enemy battalion.

251
00:15:16,640 --> 00:15:21,320
Everyone wanted to see
what Rachel's partner was like.

252
00:15:22,040 --> 00:15:23,960
Somebody must know something,

253
00:15:24,520 --> 00:15:27,520
um, from the ferocity of the attack.

254
00:15:28,520 --> 00:15:31,160
They couldn't have walked down the road
and not be noticed.

255
00:15:32,000 --> 00:15:34,680
And I would say to anybody
who does know this person,

256
00:15:34,760 --> 00:15:36,560
no matter how they feel about them,

257
00:15:37,160 --> 00:15:40,400
please come forward
before he destroys anybody else's life.

258
00:15:40,480 --> 00:15:45,200
But also everyone really wanted to know
what had happened to Rachel's son.

259
00:15:45,280 --> 00:15:46,760
It was just so shocking.

260
00:15:47,520 --> 00:15:49,600
He hasn't said anything. Um…

261
00:15:50,440 --> 00:15:54,440
I don't know how he's gonna be
in the future, but… he's not too bad.

262
00:15:54,520 --> 00:15:56,240
He wasn't injured, thank God.

263
00:15:56,320 --> 00:15:59,560
And the most fortunate thing
is that they tell me

264
00:15:59,640 --> 00:16:01,920
he's small enough
that he won't remember much.

265
00:16:04,800 --> 00:16:08,720
We went back to the common
to leave the rose for Rachel

266
00:16:08,800 --> 00:16:10,680
to say our farewell,

267
00:16:10,760 --> 00:16:14,120
and we were now front-page news.

268
00:16:15,000 --> 00:16:18,960
There was a full color picture printed
of Alex in my arms,

269
00:16:19,040 --> 00:16:20,720
completely identifiable.

270
00:16:21,400 --> 00:16:24,400
They were identifying
the only witness to his mother's murder,

271
00:16:24,920 --> 00:16:28,120
and there was a possibility
that some deranged person may come back

272
00:16:28,200 --> 00:16:30,880
to try and dispose of
the only witness to his crime.

273
00:16:30,960 --> 00:16:32,000
I knew from now on,

274
00:16:32,080 --> 00:16:35,760
if we weren't in danger before,
now we were in the gravest of danger.

275
00:16:35,840 --> 00:16:38,120
Two-year-old Alex Nickell
is said to be bearing up,

276
00:16:38,200 --> 00:16:40,880
but in a state of deep shock
after his ordeal.

277
00:16:40,960 --> 00:16:44,520
[woman] I think a two-year-old would have
no concept of death at all.

278
00:16:45,040 --> 00:16:47,000
[man] How long could this trauma last?

279
00:16:47,080 --> 00:16:48,680
Well, it could last a lifetime.

280
00:16:50,360 --> 00:16:54,480
[Rachel] Down came the rain
And washed the spider out…

281
00:16:54,560 --> 00:16:58,000
[André] We were able to find
some sanctuary at my mother's home.

282
00:16:58,880 --> 00:17:01,840
Alex, he's had nightmares,
terrible nightmares.

283
00:17:01,920 --> 00:17:05,400
If he could sleep soundly
through the night, for the last hour,

284
00:17:05,480 --> 00:17:08,840
he'd be… you know,
he'd be in a difficult place.

285
00:17:13,280 --> 00:17:17,240
So whatever I was feeling,
I had to swallow it, put it away.

286
00:17:17,320 --> 00:17:20,160
You deal with it later.
You can't deal with it now.

287
00:17:22,160 --> 00:17:23,640
No matter how, you know,

288
00:17:23,720 --> 00:17:27,560
how terrible my circumstances were
in that particular moment,

289
00:17:27,640 --> 00:17:29,480
our child's needs came first.

290
00:17:29,560 --> 00:17:31,560
[siren wailing]

291
00:17:33,240 --> 00:17:37,040
[reporter] The police effort to hunt down
the murderer involves 54 detectives.

292
00:17:37,120 --> 00:17:38,880
What name is that, then?

293
00:17:38,960 --> 00:17:41,920
[reporter] This is one
of three special incident rooms.

294
00:17:42,000 --> 00:17:45,120
There have already been
1,500 calls from the public.

295
00:17:45,200 --> 00:17:47,960
Every one has to be assessed and acted on.

296
00:17:48,600 --> 00:17:52,640
It was a very complex case
to… to put together.

297
00:17:52,720 --> 00:17:54,160
[phone ringing]

298
00:17:54,240 --> 00:17:55,480
Morning, incident room.

299
00:17:55,560 --> 00:17:59,400
We had to go through this chaos of
getting as much information as possible.

300
00:17:59,480 --> 00:18:01,080
The telephones are ringing.

301
00:18:02,760 --> 00:18:04,920
[officer] You've seen
the photographs of Rachel.

302
00:18:05,000 --> 00:18:06,120
-[man] Yeah.
-Yeah?

303
00:18:06,200 --> 00:18:08,160
-Had you seen her before up here?
-[man] No.

304
00:18:08,240 --> 00:18:11,200
[Paul] On the common,
we were taking statements.

305
00:18:11,280 --> 00:18:13,560
Surely somebody must have seen the person

306
00:18:13,640 --> 00:18:16,880
coming towards the murder scene
or going away from the murder scene.

307
00:18:16,960 --> 00:18:18,280
[indistinct speech]

308
00:18:18,360 --> 00:18:20,840
Lots of pressure was on to find a witness.

309
00:18:20,920 --> 00:18:24,800
That's the Rachel Nickell murder squad
at Wimbledon. You've already been stopped?

310
00:18:24,880 --> 00:18:26,880
[John] We are responding
as quickly as we can.

311
00:18:26,960 --> 00:18:30,080
We do have a backlog.
I will not deny that.

312
00:18:30,160 --> 00:18:32,360
But we eventually
will get round to see everyone.

313
00:18:32,960 --> 00:18:36,360
It's left to me and it's left
to the officers I have working for me.

314
00:18:36,440 --> 00:18:37,600
We will catch him.

315
00:18:38,760 --> 00:18:41,040
[Ron] Samples were taken
from the crime scene

316
00:18:41,560 --> 00:18:44,960
and submitted to the lab for DNA analysis.

317
00:18:45,040 --> 00:18:46,760
And I just kept hitting a wall.

318
00:18:47,800 --> 00:18:50,480
The biologist was saying,
"We're getting nothing."

319
00:18:51,000 --> 00:18:54,480
And I thought, "What do you mean nothing?
What about her DNA?"

320
00:18:54,560 --> 00:18:56,360
"No, we're getting nothing."

321
00:18:56,440 --> 00:18:59,640
And I'd never encountered that before.
That was kind of strange.

322
00:19:00,160 --> 00:19:02,080
And so the scientist was saying,

323
00:19:02,160 --> 00:19:04,960
"Well, we'll look at it again
from a different aspect."

324
00:19:05,520 --> 00:19:07,160
But still nothing.

325
00:19:07,760 --> 00:19:13,360
There's a feeling of hopelessness
because this person had to be traced ASAP.

326
00:19:13,440 --> 00:19:15,760
And here we were
two or three weeks down the road

327
00:19:15,840 --> 00:19:20,120
and no nearer that
than we had been on the day.

328
00:19:21,480 --> 00:19:24,520
There we had a murder scene
with no witnesses,

329
00:19:25,040 --> 00:19:26,800
with no forensic evidence.

330
00:19:26,880 --> 00:19:31,360
And that was it.
Where do you go from there?

331
00:19:32,080 --> 00:19:33,840
[pensive music playing]

332
00:19:34,960 --> 00:19:37,360
[André] The situation
being as dire as it was,

333
00:19:37,440 --> 00:19:41,840
the police then wanted to talk to Alex
about what he'd seen.

334
00:19:44,400 --> 00:19:45,800
Because our greatest concern

335
00:19:45,880 --> 00:19:48,240
is that we find this person,
but more than anything,

336
00:19:48,320 --> 00:19:51,520
that we stop it from happening
to anybody else if we possibly could.

337
00:19:51,600 --> 00:19:55,440
We had to be very careful
how we dealt with young Alex

338
00:19:55,520 --> 00:20:00,280
because this was obviously
a traumatic incident that he witnessed.

339
00:20:01,560 --> 00:20:05,000
Therefore, we were obviously
taking advice as to how to do that.

340
00:20:05,080 --> 00:20:07,320
[indistinct chatter]

341
00:20:07,400 --> 00:20:08,480
[man] How's it going?

342
00:20:10,200 --> 00:20:12,720
[Paul] The advice was
that we should deal with that

343
00:20:12,800 --> 00:20:14,760
through a child psychologist.

344
00:20:16,400 --> 00:20:18,680
[André] Will you show Jean
your dinosaur book?

345
00:20:18,760 --> 00:20:19,960
[indistinct speech]

346
00:20:20,040 --> 00:20:21,800
[man] I like the pterodactyls.

347
00:20:22,440 --> 00:20:23,280
[Alex] Yeah.

348
00:20:23,880 --> 00:20:27,720
[woman] I was a child
and adolescent psychiatrist.

349
00:20:29,600 --> 00:20:32,280
And this was unique in our experience.

350
00:20:32,360 --> 00:20:35,320
This is the only case
I've ever worked with

351
00:20:35,400 --> 00:20:39,520
where the child was the only witness
to a crime of violence.

352
00:20:39,600 --> 00:20:42,080
[Alex] Look, my dinosaur book.

353
00:20:42,160 --> 00:20:44,520
[man] Yes, I like these ones,
the flying ones.

354
00:20:44,600 --> 00:20:46,120
[Alex] But I like all of them.

355
00:20:46,200 --> 00:20:47,520
[man] You like all of them, yeah.

356
00:20:47,600 --> 00:20:49,840
[Jean] I said we could use my home.

357
00:20:49,920 --> 00:20:53,840
And, uh, the first interview,
there was a policeman there,

358
00:20:53,920 --> 00:20:57,800
André and myself and the little boy.

359
00:20:58,320 --> 00:21:01,480
The police were intensely hopeful

360
00:21:01,560 --> 00:21:05,600
that this child, young as he was,
could give them more information.

361
00:21:05,680 --> 00:21:09,360
I had no experience
of how this piece of very intensive work

362
00:21:09,440 --> 00:21:11,400
could affect a small child.

363
00:21:11,480 --> 00:21:15,480
And yet the rational part of my brain
fully agreed that it was important

364
00:21:15,560 --> 00:21:17,600
to try and prevent further killings.

365
00:21:17,680 --> 00:21:19,160
So there was a dilemma there.

366
00:21:19,240 --> 00:21:21,320
It was a very, very hard call to make.

367
00:21:21,400 --> 00:21:23,960
So I was just trying to be
as vigilant as possible.

368
00:21:24,040 --> 00:21:26,760
If I felt we'd crossed a line,
we just had to stop.

369
00:21:27,280 --> 00:21:29,600
[André] There was a scary bit yesterday,
wasn't there?

370
00:21:29,680 --> 00:21:30,680
[Alex] Mmm.

371
00:21:30,760 --> 00:21:32,120
[André] What was that like?

372
00:21:32,720 --> 00:21:36,960
[Alex] The dinosaur was that big one.

373
00:21:37,040 --> 00:21:39,080
[André] There was
this huge dinosaur on the ground.

374
00:21:39,160 --> 00:21:41,480
The three little ones
were eating it, weren't they?

375
00:21:41,560 --> 00:21:44,000
-[Alex] Yeah.
-They were covered in blood, weren't they?

376
00:21:44,080 --> 00:21:47,040
[Jean] Covered in blood?
That must have been difficult.

377
00:21:47,680 --> 00:21:49,880
[indistinct speech]

378
00:21:49,960 --> 00:21:51,880
[Alex] They're not going to see that.

379
00:21:51,960 --> 00:21:53,960
The decision was made
that it would be best

380
00:21:54,040 --> 00:21:56,120
if her questions came through me

381
00:21:56,200 --> 00:21:58,720
to get Alex to respond
as naturally as possible.

382
00:21:59,480 --> 00:22:02,440
[Jean] Alex had blood on him, didn't you?
You had blood on you.

383
00:22:03,000 --> 00:22:05,720
[André] All your clothes were
covered in blood, weren't they?

384
00:22:05,800 --> 00:22:06,800
[Alex] Yeah.

385
00:22:06,880 --> 00:22:08,640
[André] When you were with Mummy that day.

386
00:22:09,960 --> 00:22:11,080
Hmm?

387
00:22:13,520 --> 00:22:17,840
[Jean] Mostly, I was just trying to focus
only on Alex and to observe him.

388
00:22:20,480 --> 00:22:22,640
He'd had few words at this point.

389
00:22:22,720 --> 00:22:25,240
He was reluctant to look at people.

390
00:22:25,320 --> 00:22:29,800
But… I think he was… he was showing stress

391
00:22:29,880 --> 00:22:32,800
after a very, very extreme trauma.

392
00:22:33,680 --> 00:22:36,360
His whole body language,
every movement he made showed that.

393
00:22:37,480 --> 00:22:41,760
I think you know now
that terrible things suddenly happen.

394
00:22:42,280 --> 00:22:44,320
I think you're very frightened.

395
00:22:44,400 --> 00:22:47,960
From Jean's point of view,
she thought it was better to push.

396
00:22:49,080 --> 00:22:51,000
So when you saw the man standing there,

397
00:22:51,080 --> 00:22:53,320
was he looking at you,
or was he looking at Mummy?

398
00:22:53,400 --> 00:22:54,600
[Alex] Mummy.

399
00:22:55,480 --> 00:22:58,160
-[André] So he didn't say anything to you?
-[Alex] No.

400
00:22:58,240 --> 00:22:59,840
[André] He didn't shout at you?

401
00:23:01,840 --> 00:23:04,160
-Did he shout at you or not, Alex?
-[Alex] No.

402
00:23:04,680 --> 00:23:07,120
[André] As my questions
led more towards the incident,

403
00:23:07,200 --> 00:23:10,440
you could see there was a change in him.
He was tensing up.

404
00:23:11,320 --> 00:23:13,680
-Alex, did he hit you?
-[Alex] No.

405
00:23:13,760 --> 00:23:15,880
-[André] With his hand?
-[Alex] No.

406
00:23:16,440 --> 00:23:20,240
My concern wasn't how much information
we could get out of a small child.

407
00:23:20,320 --> 00:23:23,920
It was, you know, what sessions like this,
what distress they were gonna cause

408
00:23:24,000 --> 00:23:26,960
and what damage
they were gonna do to his recovery.

409
00:23:27,560 --> 00:23:29,640
[Alex] Well, I can't tell you that bit.

410
00:23:29,720 --> 00:23:31,960
[André] No, it's really painful
to remember it, isn't it?

411
00:23:32,040 --> 00:23:33,960
[Jean] You're saying,
"I can't tell you that bit"?

412
00:23:34,040 --> 00:23:37,560
-[Alex] I can't tell you that bit.
-[André] No?

413
00:23:37,640 --> 00:23:41,640
There was a mystery
about just how much he might have seen.

414
00:23:41,720 --> 00:23:44,200
I wish that he hadn't seen any of it,
you know?

415
00:23:44,280 --> 00:23:45,400
That was a hope,

416
00:23:45,480 --> 00:23:49,960
that he'd been pushed away
and all this had taken place out of,

417
00:23:50,040 --> 00:23:51,600
you know, out of his, uh,

418
00:23:53,160 --> 00:23:54,680
recognition and understanding.

419
00:23:54,760 --> 00:23:58,040
You know when Mummy was lying
on the ground and the man had gone?

420
00:23:58,120 --> 00:24:00,440
-Did you say anything to her?
-[Alex] No.

421
00:24:00,520 --> 00:24:02,600
-[André] Did you talk to her at all?
-[Alex] No.

422
00:24:02,680 --> 00:24:04,040
[André] Were you scared?

423
00:24:04,120 --> 00:24:05,080
[Alex] Mmm.

424
00:24:06,120 --> 00:24:09,000
-[André] Did you think she was asleep?
-[Alex] Mmm.

425
00:24:09,080 --> 00:24:10,480
-[André] Did you?
-[Alex] Mmm.

426
00:24:10,560 --> 00:24:12,120
[André] Did you want her to wake up?

427
00:24:12,760 --> 00:24:14,040
Did you want her to wake up?

428
00:24:14,120 --> 00:24:15,000
[Alex] Mmm.

429
00:24:15,520 --> 00:24:16,800
[André] Did she wake up?

430
00:24:18,760 --> 00:24:19,760
[Alex] No.

431
00:24:23,040 --> 00:24:24,560
[André] It was pretty intense.

432
00:24:25,440 --> 00:24:29,160
Every few days, there was another session.
This was going on over several weeks.

433
00:24:34,160 --> 00:24:37,760
Alex was able to again show
the incredible recall,

434
00:24:37,840 --> 00:24:39,520
you know, of a small child.

435
00:24:41,400 --> 00:24:43,480
The events, how they unfolded,

436
00:24:43,560 --> 00:24:46,960
where, you know,
the bad man came out from,

437
00:24:47,040 --> 00:24:49,080
you know, from behind them

438
00:24:49,160 --> 00:24:53,040
and, uh… how afterwards, he moved away,

439
00:24:53,120 --> 00:24:55,880
washed his hands in a stream,
and then disappeared.

440
00:24:56,600 --> 00:25:02,160
[man] Alex, the man who hurt your mummy,
what type of trousers did he have?

441
00:25:03,800 --> 00:25:06,120
-[Alex] This one.
-[man] That one?

442
00:25:06,640 --> 00:25:09,640
[André] And then
Alex started to describe this person.

443
00:25:09,720 --> 00:25:12,000
-[man] What color were they?
-[Alex] Blue.

444
00:25:12,720 --> 00:25:14,600
[man] What color were his shoes?

445
00:25:14,680 --> 00:25:15,960
[Alex] That color.

446
00:25:16,680 --> 00:25:19,840
We got a description from him
of a younger white man,

447
00:25:19,920 --> 00:25:23,080
white shirt over blue trousers,

448
00:25:23,160 --> 00:25:24,800
brown shoes.

449
00:25:24,880 --> 00:25:27,560
But the most significant item of all

450
00:25:27,640 --> 00:25:30,520
was Alex remembering he was wearing
a belt over his white shirt,

451
00:25:30,600 --> 00:25:32,280
almost like a butcher's apron.

452
00:25:34,360 --> 00:25:38,160
[Paul] Alex's description
was similar to one from a woman

453
00:25:38,240 --> 00:25:41,240
who'd seen a man
walking towards the murder scene

454
00:25:41,840 --> 00:25:44,120
ten minutes before the murder,

455
00:25:45,920 --> 00:25:48,760
wearing a white top, dark trousers,

456
00:25:48,840 --> 00:25:50,320
carrying a sort of bag.

457
00:25:50,400 --> 00:25:54,840
So we… we came to the conclusion
that of all the people on the common,

458
00:25:54,920 --> 00:25:58,320
that was most likely to be the suspect.

459
00:25:59,760 --> 00:26:02,440
Now we just had to find him.

460
00:26:02,520 --> 00:26:04,360
Superintendent, would it be fair to say

461
00:26:04,440 --> 00:26:07,240
you've made very little progress
in reality so far?

462
00:26:07,760 --> 00:26:09,720
Yes, uh, that is a fair assessment.

463
00:26:09,800 --> 00:26:13,560
Uh, I'd have hoped by now
that we'd have had the man in custody,

464
00:26:13,640 --> 00:26:17,440
uh, but when you see the enormity
of my problem here on the common,

465
00:26:17,520 --> 00:26:19,920
you'll understand why.

466
00:26:20,600 --> 00:26:23,680
[reporter 1] In the absence of evidence,
police turned to criminal psychologists

467
00:26:23,760 --> 00:26:26,040
to help build up
a profile of the attacker.

468
00:26:26,640 --> 00:26:30,440
At the time, we're seeing films
such as Silence of the Lambs…

469
00:26:31,200 --> 00:26:33,880
We're interviewing
all the serial killers now in custody

470
00:26:33,960 --> 00:26:35,880
for a psycho-behavioral profile.

471
00:26:35,960 --> 00:26:39,600
…where criminal psychologists work out
who their suspect was

472
00:26:39,680 --> 00:26:41,360
through offender profiling.

473
00:26:41,440 --> 00:26:43,080
I'm interested in it.

474
00:26:43,160 --> 00:26:46,600
Uh, as I say,
the Americans have a lot of success.

475
00:26:47,200 --> 00:26:52,240
[reporter 2] One expert they've consulted
is Robert Ressler, a retired FBI agent.

476
00:26:52,760 --> 00:26:56,720
Ressler has interviewed many
of America's most notorious sex killers,

477
00:26:56,800 --> 00:26:58,000
like Jeffrey Dahmer.

478
00:26:58,840 --> 00:27:02,840
He says the man who murdered
Rachel Nickell is disorganized.

479
00:27:02,920 --> 00:27:05,280
The first thing people think about
is this is a serial killer.

480
00:27:05,360 --> 00:27:08,640
Are we gonna see this again,
uh, within days or weeks?

481
00:27:08,720 --> 00:27:12,480
We're dealing with
a disorganized, uh, frenzied,

482
00:27:12,560 --> 00:27:15,120
possibly mentally disordered individual.

483
00:27:15,640 --> 00:27:17,800
[Paul] Although John Bassett
had met Bob Ressler,

484
00:27:17,880 --> 00:27:20,080
that was basically a flying visit.

485
00:27:20,160 --> 00:27:25,360
But it was thought that we probably should
progress the offender profiling idea.

486
00:27:26,160 --> 00:27:30,000
And so
the most important offender profiler,

487
00:27:30,080 --> 00:27:32,000
who'd worked with the police before,

488
00:27:32,080 --> 00:27:36,320
became involved in this inquiry
as an advisor.

489
00:27:38,440 --> 00:27:41,080
When the police ask me to come and help,

490
00:27:41,160 --> 00:27:45,080
it's usually because things have stuck
in some way.

491
00:27:45,160 --> 00:27:48,680
And I'm quite sure this was true
with the murder of Rachel Nickell.

492
00:27:50,520 --> 00:27:52,400
[reporter 3]
Leicester University's Paul Britton

493
00:27:52,480 --> 00:27:55,760
has worked on some of the country's
most notorious crime cases.

494
00:27:55,840 --> 00:27:59,080
[Paul Britton] In each case,
the police, they say,

495
00:27:59,160 --> 00:28:00,120
"What I want from you

496
00:28:00,200 --> 00:28:04,280
is something that will help me
to identify a perpetrator."

497
00:28:04,360 --> 00:28:08,320
[reporter 4] Dennis Nilsen, interviewed
in prison by psychologist Paul Britton,

498
00:28:08,400 --> 00:28:10,200
preyed on homeless young men.

499
00:28:10,280 --> 00:28:15,120
"Something that will take me closer
to preventing this person doing it again."

500
00:28:15,200 --> 00:28:17,160
[reporter 5] Paul Britton,
a forensic psychologist,

501
00:28:17,240 --> 00:28:20,360
says the Wests aren't as unique
as people might believe.

502
00:28:20,440 --> 00:28:23,520
He's certain
there are other mass murderers at large.

503
00:28:24,920 --> 00:28:28,320
I was asked to come along
and look at this case

504
00:28:28,400 --> 00:28:32,360
between three and four weeks
after Rachel had been killed.

505
00:28:35,400 --> 00:28:39,240
And what they wanted from me
was my opinion,

506
00:28:39,320 --> 00:28:42,880
a psychological analysis
of who might have done this.

507
00:28:45,080 --> 00:28:46,760
[ominous music playing]

508
00:28:46,840 --> 00:28:48,840
I have the crime scene materials.

509
00:28:49,480 --> 00:28:52,160
I have the video.
I have the maps of the common.

510
00:28:53,240 --> 00:28:54,760
But what I need to do

511
00:28:54,840 --> 00:28:57,720
is to actually make a visit
to the scene itself.

512
00:29:00,120 --> 00:29:03,600
There's a car park by a windmill
on Wimbledon Common.

513
00:29:03,680 --> 00:29:04,720
We parked there,

514
00:29:04,800 --> 00:29:08,800
and we walked across to the crime scene.

515
00:29:08,880 --> 00:29:10,880
[ominous music continues]

516
00:29:12,240 --> 00:29:14,320
What the offender would be looking at

517
00:29:14,400 --> 00:29:17,760
is a place where he can find
a victim of opportunity.

518
00:29:20,000 --> 00:29:22,640
It's somewhere
where he would be able to observe,

519
00:29:23,760 --> 00:29:25,080
to monitor.

520
00:29:25,800 --> 00:29:30,160
He waits to find whoever it is
that's closest to his preference,

521
00:29:30,240 --> 00:29:32,960
and it happens to be poor Rachel Nickell.

522
00:29:33,480 --> 00:29:36,320
He was able to look and watch

523
00:29:37,280 --> 00:29:39,560
because he's a watcher. He's a surveiller.

524
00:29:40,440 --> 00:29:42,880
[music intensifies, ends]

525
00:29:43,480 --> 00:29:45,400
And so very often,

526
00:29:45,480 --> 00:29:48,080
and I speak plainly, if you don't mind,

527
00:29:48,680 --> 00:29:50,480
you would have this…

528
00:29:52,680 --> 00:29:55,280
"That bitch
would look down her nose at me."

529
00:29:56,480 --> 00:29:57,880
"I'm not having that."

530
00:29:58,680 --> 00:29:59,960
"I'm gonna have her."

531
00:30:02,240 --> 00:30:08,280
What you have is a very focused intention
to obliterate this young woman.

532
00:30:09,200 --> 00:30:11,080
[poignant music playing]

533
00:30:11,160 --> 00:30:16,120
But Rachel Nickell, she would not likely
just give herself up to death…

534
00:30:18,240 --> 00:30:20,840
without there being some response.

535
00:30:22,960 --> 00:30:25,080
But if someone is basically saying,

536
00:30:25,160 --> 00:30:28,600
"You do what I want now
or I'll hurt the child,"

537
00:30:28,680 --> 00:30:30,160
that changes everything.

538
00:30:32,920 --> 00:30:34,960
The child is there as a hostage.

539
00:30:35,040 --> 00:30:39,560
The child is there
as a bargaining counter.

540
00:30:39,640 --> 00:30:44,920
She knows that she's giving up her life
for her child's.

541
00:30:45,000 --> 00:30:47,000
[poignant music continues]

542
00:30:53,240 --> 00:30:55,320
I was able to be absolutely clear.

543
00:30:55,400 --> 00:30:57,040
He will kill other people.

544
00:30:57,120 --> 00:31:00,040
This is just not a static picture.

545
00:31:00,120 --> 00:31:04,080
This is just a frame
in a film that's carrying on.

546
00:31:05,080 --> 00:31:07,080
[soft, sorrowful music playing]

547
00:31:09,480 --> 00:31:13,120
When you got back to Mummy,
was she standing, or was she lying down?

548
00:31:13,640 --> 00:31:17,080
[Alex] Huh. I can't remember that bit.

549
00:31:17,160 --> 00:31:20,480
Don't keep asking me
these questions, Daddy.

550
00:31:20,560 --> 00:31:24,280
[André] You're doing very well, Alex.
You're doing very well.

551
00:31:25,120 --> 00:31:28,040
The days are turning into weeks.
Weeks are turning into months.

552
00:31:28,120 --> 00:31:29,160
And we reached a point

553
00:31:29,240 --> 00:31:31,520
where it was just becoming
heavy and repetitive.

554
00:31:32,040 --> 00:31:34,120
And that was a point
where I felt, "This is…"

555
00:31:34,200 --> 00:31:37,880
"We're playing for diminishing returns.
What more can he possibly give?"

556
00:31:37,960 --> 00:31:40,480
-When you got back to Mummy…
-[Alex] I'm fed up.

557
00:31:40,560 --> 00:31:41,920
-You're fed up?
-[Alex] Yes.

558
00:31:42,000 --> 00:31:45,160
-One last question, Alex.
-[Alex] No. No more.

559
00:31:45,240 --> 00:31:47,280
Okay, all right, that's fine. Come here.

560
00:31:47,360 --> 00:31:49,760
[man] You've done well.
You've done really well.

561
00:31:53,120 --> 00:31:54,600
[André mutters reassuringly]

562
00:31:57,080 --> 00:31:59,000
Talk another time about the rest, huh?

563
00:31:59,080 --> 00:32:00,160
[Alex] No.

564
00:32:00,680 --> 00:32:03,920
No, I… I would be still fed up.

565
00:32:04,000 --> 00:32:05,880
-[André] You'll still be fed up?
-Yes.

566
00:32:05,960 --> 00:32:07,600
[André] We won't talk anymore.

567
00:32:08,120 --> 00:32:11,280
[Jean] The police wanted to try
one last throw of the dice.

568
00:32:12,040 --> 00:32:14,920
Came up with
this still more desperate idea

569
00:32:15,000 --> 00:32:17,760
that perhaps we could go
to Wimbledon Common and relive that.

570
00:32:20,120 --> 00:32:21,120
They hoped, I think,

571
00:32:21,200 --> 00:32:25,880
that seeing the actual site of the killing
would trigger yet more memories.

572
00:32:25,960 --> 00:32:28,120
I thought it was a very long shot,

573
00:32:28,640 --> 00:32:30,760
but I didn't feel
I could forbid them to do it.

574
00:32:30,840 --> 00:32:31,960
[man] All right.

575
00:32:34,480 --> 00:32:37,760
[André] So now, okay,
it's not another repetitive session

576
00:32:37,840 --> 00:32:40,040
in the same… in the same environment.

577
00:32:40,120 --> 00:32:42,040
Maybe there is some value in it.

578
00:32:44,600 --> 00:32:47,840
And when we got there, he was
actually reluctant to get out of the car.

579
00:32:51,200 --> 00:32:56,440
The thing that was bothering him was
the presence of all these unknown adults,

580
00:32:56,520 --> 00:32:58,240
because the police had turned up.

581
00:32:58,760 --> 00:33:00,760
It wasn't just the detectives
he was used to.

582
00:33:00,840 --> 00:33:02,880
There were several other officers.

583
00:33:04,360 --> 00:33:07,160
We eventually got out of the car,
and we started walking.

584
00:33:08,840 --> 00:33:10,720
Once we started walking, he was happy.

585
00:33:12,360 --> 00:33:13,920
We were walking down that path.

586
00:33:14,960 --> 00:33:17,840
We just started running,
Alex and I, for the fun of it.

587
00:33:21,320 --> 00:33:24,680
He was having a good time. But we had
a bunch of coppers running behind us

588
00:33:24,760 --> 00:33:26,720
and a psychologist running behind us.

589
00:33:30,200 --> 00:33:31,680
[Jean] The police were taking us,

590
00:33:31,760 --> 00:33:34,640
but I could see that the little boy knew
where we were going…

591
00:33:36,920 --> 00:33:38,640
and was remembering things.

592
00:33:48,440 --> 00:33:51,360
We were getting nearer and nearer
to the site of the crime.

593
00:33:55,000 --> 00:33:57,920
I was aware
the child was stiffening and stiffening,

594
00:33:58,000 --> 00:34:00,320
and I'm pretty sure he was remembering.

595
00:34:01,120 --> 00:34:01,960
[André] Alex?

596
00:34:02,480 --> 00:34:04,800
The man who killed Mummy, where was he?

597
00:34:07,400 --> 00:34:08,480
Was it here?

598
00:34:11,080 --> 00:34:13,000
When did he start talking to Mummy?

599
00:34:13,920 --> 00:34:14,960
Do you remember?

600
00:34:17,920 --> 00:34:18,920
You said to me once

601
00:34:19,000 --> 00:34:22,000
that he was talking to Mummy
before he killed Mummy.

602
00:34:22,080 --> 00:34:25,520
Do you remember
where he was talking to Mummy?

603
00:34:26,360 --> 00:34:28,120
Hmm? Down by the pond?

604
00:34:31,960 --> 00:34:33,320
[Alex cries]

605
00:34:33,400 --> 00:34:37,360
And then there came a point
when he stumbled and fell forwards.

606
00:34:38,280 --> 00:34:40,160
[Alex sobs]

607
00:34:40,240 --> 00:34:42,200
[Jean] And he howled and sobbed.

608
00:34:42,840 --> 00:34:44,600
[Alex wails]

609
00:34:44,680 --> 00:34:47,400
[Jean] And that's the point
when André had had enough.

610
00:34:47,480 --> 00:34:49,200
[André] This is fucking stupid.

611
00:34:49,280 --> 00:34:51,160
[Alex cries]

612
00:34:51,680 --> 00:34:54,960
He was crying, and, uh, I snapped.

613
00:34:55,040 --> 00:34:56,920
That was enough for me. I had enough.

614
00:34:57,000 --> 00:35:01,440
This was… This was, uh,
taking too heavy a toll on… on… on him

615
00:35:01,520 --> 00:35:03,440
and too heavy a toll on me as well.

616
00:35:03,520 --> 00:35:05,480
[André shouts] Go! Let's fucking go!

617
00:35:07,800 --> 00:35:10,800
So I picked him up
and just headed back to the car.

618
00:35:12,280 --> 00:35:14,360
[Alex cries loudly]

619
00:35:23,480 --> 00:35:28,120
We, you know, we drove off at full speed,
left them in our dust, basically.

620
00:35:28,640 --> 00:35:30,240
But, uh, I was in no fit state,

621
00:35:30,320 --> 00:35:33,840
so I pulled up as soon as I could,
found a quiet spot.

622
00:35:34,360 --> 00:35:36,360
And, uh, I really burst into tears,

623
00:35:36,440 --> 00:35:39,120
and I just… I just couldn't stop.

624
00:35:39,640 --> 00:35:42,320
I just couldn't, uh… prevent myself.

625
00:35:42,400 --> 00:35:44,640
I couldn't be strong at that point.

626
00:35:44,720 --> 00:35:47,760
And I knew he was watching me.
He was calm by then.

627
00:35:47,840 --> 00:35:50,080
But, uh, I just had to let it out.

628
00:35:50,600 --> 00:35:53,760
And then, you know,
once I got myself together,

629
00:35:54,640 --> 00:35:57,400
I said that… I said that I was sorry,

630
00:35:57,480 --> 00:36:00,760
and, uh, we head back to Grandma's house.

631
00:36:00,840 --> 00:36:02,760
So we pulled away.

632
00:36:06,120 --> 00:36:08,240
[Jean] That was
the last time I ever saw them.

633
00:36:09,080 --> 00:36:10,800
I'd done what I could.

634
00:36:10,880 --> 00:36:14,480
I wasn't very happy with what I'd done,
but I'd tried and, um…

635
00:36:15,520 --> 00:36:18,200
Sadness. And…

636
00:36:22,280 --> 00:36:25,520
just awareness that it was an attempt
that hadn't worked.

637
00:36:28,200 --> 00:36:30,960
First, a notorious crime

638
00:36:31,040 --> 00:36:33,640
that, two months ago,
made headlines all over Britain.

639
00:36:33,720 --> 00:36:35,800
On Wimbledon Common in Southwest London,

640
00:36:35,880 --> 00:36:40,040
a young mother, Rachel Nickell,
was waylaid and repeatedly stabbed.

641
00:36:40,120 --> 00:36:42,360
It appears to be a random killing,

642
00:36:42,440 --> 00:36:45,320
which, of course,
makes it extremely hard to solve.

643
00:36:45,400 --> 00:36:48,120
Tonight, detectives are putting
all their cards on the table,

644
00:36:48,200 --> 00:36:51,520
and they're appealing
for the nation's help to name the killer.

645
00:36:51,600 --> 00:36:53,360
We came to a stage in the inquiry

646
00:36:53,440 --> 00:36:58,800
when we were quite satisfied
that the description we had,

647
00:36:58,880 --> 00:37:00,920
there's a good chance he was the murderer.

648
00:37:01,000 --> 00:37:03,640
So that was time now to go to the media

649
00:37:03,720 --> 00:37:06,640
to see if anybody
could come up with any names

650
00:37:07,160 --> 00:37:09,440
as to who that person might be.

651
00:37:10,360 --> 00:37:12,320
[host] The man
was in his twenties or thirties.

652
00:37:12,400 --> 00:37:15,600
He was tall, more than five feet ten,
and had short brown hair.

653
00:37:15,680 --> 00:37:19,480
He had a white shirt with buttons
and dark trousers, possibly blue,

654
00:37:19,560 --> 00:37:21,840
and was carrying a small, dark bag.

655
00:37:21,920 --> 00:37:25,720
Curiously, his belt was over his shirt
rather than round his trousers.

656
00:37:26,400 --> 00:37:29,520
Now, from this point,
let's add some informed conjecture.

657
00:37:30,480 --> 00:37:35,520
A consultant clinical psychologist is
drawing up a likely profile of the killer.

658
00:37:37,320 --> 00:37:39,160
[Paul Britton] What they got from me

659
00:37:39,240 --> 00:37:43,920
was a point-by-point
psychological analysis of the killer,

660
00:37:44,000 --> 00:37:45,000
in my view.

661
00:37:45,080 --> 00:37:48,320
[host] The killer is under the age of 30.
He lives locally.

662
00:37:48,400 --> 00:37:51,440
He has few friends
and has solitary hobbies.

663
00:37:51,520 --> 00:37:53,720
He may have an interest in martial arts.

664
00:37:53,800 --> 00:37:55,200
He likes pornography.

665
00:37:55,280 --> 00:37:57,120
He doesn't have a steady girlfriend.

666
00:37:57,200 --> 00:37:58,720
If he's had previous girlfriends,

667
00:37:58,800 --> 00:38:01,640
they'll have found him unsatisfying,
sexually inexperienced…

668
00:38:02,280 --> 00:38:07,560
[Britton] I told them this is an offender
who wouldn't live very far away.

669
00:38:07,640 --> 00:38:11,160
This is someone who knew the common,
who knew his way around.

670
00:38:11,240 --> 00:38:13,280
He would have been travelling on foot.

671
00:38:13,360 --> 00:38:15,320
The telephone number to ring…

672
00:38:15,400 --> 00:38:17,040
[Paul Penrose] After Crimewatch,

673
00:38:17,560 --> 00:38:19,440
a lot of telephone calls came in.

674
00:38:19,520 --> 00:38:21,880
As far as the Rachel Nickell murder
is concerned,

675
00:38:21,960 --> 00:38:25,040
90 calls here to the studio
the last time I spoke to the team.

676
00:38:25,120 --> 00:38:27,240
Ten of them are very interesting.

677
00:38:27,320 --> 00:38:30,800
One man has gone straight to the top
of their priority list.

678
00:38:32,680 --> 00:38:36,480
[Penrose] We were getting phone calls
from two or more local people,

679
00:38:36,560 --> 00:38:38,920
saying that the artist's impression…

680
00:38:41,240 --> 00:38:44,920
looked like a man called Colin Stagg.

681
00:38:45,000 --> 00:38:47,000
[tense music playing]

682
00:38:47,080 --> 00:38:49,640
And they indicated that they thought

683
00:38:49,720 --> 00:38:53,280
he was the type of individual
that could have carried out this killing.

684
00:38:53,360 --> 00:38:55,800
And he admitted having been on the common

685
00:38:55,880 --> 00:38:58,800
around about the same time
as Rachel was found.

686
00:39:01,120 --> 00:39:04,960
The lady who saw
a man walking towards the murder scene

687
00:39:05,040 --> 00:39:09,160
then later picked Stagg out
of an identification parade

688
00:39:09,240 --> 00:39:10,320
as that person.

689
00:39:10,880 --> 00:39:14,320
[reporter] Police say the man was arrested
around midday yesterday.

690
00:39:14,400 --> 00:39:15,960
He's still being questioned.

691
00:39:17,480 --> 00:39:19,720
[Penrose] Stagg lived near to the common,

692
00:39:20,320 --> 00:39:23,480
so when he was arrested,
his flat was searched.

693
00:39:24,000 --> 00:39:27,600
It was a very strange set-up in that flat.

694
00:39:28,560 --> 00:39:32,680
I remember when we arrived,
there was something on the front door.

695
00:39:36,600 --> 00:39:39,800
It said, "Christians beware,"
or words to that effect.

696
00:39:40,720 --> 00:39:42,040
And there was one room

697
00:39:42,120 --> 00:39:45,880
where the sort of signs of the Zodiac
were painted on the floor,

698
00:39:45,960 --> 00:39:48,440
and there was gothic images
all around the place.

699
00:39:48,520 --> 00:39:50,200
It was just a bizarre place.

700
00:39:50,280 --> 00:39:52,160
One of the officers found a cupboard,

701
00:39:52,240 --> 00:39:55,640
and in the cupboard,
there was some survivalist equipment.

702
00:39:55,720 --> 00:39:56,960
There were knives.

703
00:39:57,640 --> 00:40:00,600
There was also a club
with a ball on the end of it.

704
00:40:00,680 --> 00:40:05,640
And it certainly indicated that this just
wasn't a normal member of the public,

705
00:40:05,720 --> 00:40:08,120
that there was something odd about him.

706
00:40:08,200 --> 00:40:12,000
Plus, of course,
he fitted to a tee the offender profile.

707
00:40:13,720 --> 00:40:15,680
But there was a problem.

708
00:40:16,560 --> 00:40:20,120
Despite the fact
that he fitted the offender profile,

709
00:40:20,640 --> 00:40:23,600
we just didn't have enough evidence
to link him with the murder.

710
00:40:24,520 --> 00:40:28,440
He admitted that he would sunbathe naked
on the common,

711
00:40:28,520 --> 00:40:31,040
and he was charged with indecent exposure.

712
00:40:31,120 --> 00:40:33,560
But then he was released.

713
00:40:33,640 --> 00:40:35,400
[music fades]

714
00:40:35,480 --> 00:40:40,320
It was obviously disappointing,
because not only was he a good suspect,

715
00:40:40,400 --> 00:40:44,120
but he was the only suspect
from the whole inquiry.

716
00:40:44,200 --> 00:40:48,520
So we needed to work out, "Is he our man?"

717
00:40:48,600 --> 00:40:50,560
And without forensic evidence,

718
00:40:51,280 --> 00:40:52,400
we didn't know.

719
00:40:54,880 --> 00:40:56,880
[soft, sorrowful music playing]

720
00:40:57,480 --> 00:41:01,280
[André] After they released Colin Stagg,
the press were on our doorstep.

721
00:41:04,360 --> 00:41:07,400
Alex was the only witness
to his mother's murder,

722
00:41:07,960 --> 00:41:11,200
and whoever had perpetrated that
was still on the loose.

723
00:41:11,280 --> 00:41:12,760
So he was in danger.

724
00:41:13,400 --> 00:41:15,840
That's when I knew
we really weren't safe here,

725
00:41:15,920 --> 00:41:17,640
and I had to take him away.

726
00:41:18,200 --> 00:41:20,200
[tense music playing]

727
00:41:21,320 --> 00:41:23,920
We didn't have a lot of trust in anybody.

728
00:41:25,560 --> 00:41:30,280
So we just took every precaution possible
not to be followed, not to be tracked…

729
00:41:33,440 --> 00:41:35,760
and head off into the dark.

730
00:41:40,080 --> 00:41:43,080
And we, you know, headed to the coast

731
00:41:43,160 --> 00:41:45,560
to put as much distance between us and…

732
00:41:45,640 --> 00:41:47,760
and a killer on the loose

733
00:41:47,840 --> 00:41:50,560
and a press pack
that was willing to stop at nothing.

734
00:41:51,440 --> 00:41:55,160
And we left friends and family.
We left everything material behind.

735
00:41:55,240 --> 00:41:56,960
We left the home that we'd shared.

736
00:41:57,040 --> 00:42:00,240
It was only what we could literally carry
with us that we took forward.

737
00:42:00,760 --> 00:42:04,480
We crossed the frontier
and, uh, entered a new world.

738
00:42:04,560 --> 00:42:06,000
[music softens]

739
00:42:06,080 --> 00:42:08,480
[birds singing]

740
00:42:08,560 --> 00:42:10,640
[music fades]

741
00:42:13,280 --> 00:42:15,200
[Alex babbles]

742
00:42:15,720 --> 00:42:17,720
[gentle music playing]

743
00:42:23,840 --> 00:42:27,000
Rachel and I had always talked
about moving to France.

744
00:42:32,760 --> 00:42:35,840
I'd spent a lot of time in France
when I was a teenager.

745
00:42:36,640 --> 00:42:38,000
Played a lot of tennis

746
00:42:38,560 --> 00:42:42,320
and, uh, hitchhiked around,
so I knew the country pretty well.

747
00:42:44,120 --> 00:42:47,800
We were in a small village,
just a few miles from the coast.

748
00:42:48,680 --> 00:42:50,960
Pulled up outside the front door
for the first time

749
00:42:51,040 --> 00:42:53,560
with the keys in our hand,
opened the door,

750
00:42:55,080 --> 00:42:58,240
just had a wonderful feeling
of something new starting.

751
00:42:58,320 --> 00:43:00,640
[indistinct speech]

752
00:43:00,720 --> 00:43:03,400
I've only got two.
You've got about 50 over there.

753
00:43:03,480 --> 00:43:04,640
Look under…

754
00:43:04,720 --> 00:43:06,720
It was absolutely idyllic.

755
00:43:07,960 --> 00:43:09,480
A lovely little house.

756
00:43:10,440 --> 00:43:12,160
A view out of the courtyard.

757
00:43:12,240 --> 00:43:15,520
There were chickens in the run.
There were puppies running around.

758
00:43:16,120 --> 00:43:19,720
And, uh, we really could finally stop

759
00:43:19,800 --> 00:43:24,080
and… and take stock
and feel some peace and quiet around us.

760
00:43:26,960 --> 00:43:28,440
Alex, calm down.

761
00:43:29,200 --> 00:43:30,840
-Calm down.
-[Alex giggles]

762
00:43:30,920 --> 00:43:33,480
You're gonna get a tummy ache
if you eat like that.

763
00:43:33,560 --> 00:43:37,880
What it felt like is that we'd left
a great deal of the evil behind us.

764
00:43:37,960 --> 00:43:40,640
You know, it felt like
we were in a place of peace.

765
00:43:40,720 --> 00:43:42,360
[indistinct speech]

766
00:43:42,440 --> 00:43:46,480
Finally, it seemed like things were…
things were going in our direction.

767
00:43:47,000 --> 00:43:49,480
It was, uh, absolute bliss.

768
00:43:51,320 --> 00:43:54,080
You know?
Just to have that anonymity again.

769
00:44:04,000 --> 00:44:07,680
Good evening. The detective leading
the hunt for the killer of Rachel Nickell,

770
00:44:07,760 --> 00:44:10,560
the young woman murdered
on Wimbledon Common a year ago,

771
00:44:10,640 --> 00:44:13,080
says the inquiry may be
scaled down within weeks,

772
00:44:13,160 --> 00:44:14,800
unless there's a major development.

773
00:44:14,880 --> 00:44:20,560
I would think if nothing crucial
comes to light within the next two months,

774
00:44:20,640 --> 00:44:23,560
then I would say that will be
the end of the investigation.

775
00:44:23,640 --> 00:44:26,760
John Bassett was telling the press
that there were no new leads,

776
00:44:27,280 --> 00:44:29,960
that the inquiry,
we'd gone as far as you could,

777
00:44:30,040 --> 00:44:31,400
and it was winding down,

778
00:44:32,280 --> 00:44:34,920
whereas all the time
there was something going on.

779
00:44:35,000 --> 00:44:37,000
[intriguing music playing]

780
00:44:39,880 --> 00:44:42,840
[woman] It said, um,
"I've enclosed a fancy letter,

781
00:44:42,920 --> 00:44:45,800
and if you don't want to read it,
then you don't have to."

782
00:44:46,440 --> 00:44:50,000
Um, but curiosity got the better of me,
and I had to read the letter.

783
00:44:50,080 --> 00:44:52,800
[Paul Penrose] We received a phone call
from a woman

784
00:44:52,880 --> 00:44:56,520
who'd seen Colin Stagg on the television,

785
00:44:56,600 --> 00:44:57,920
and she said, "That man

786
00:44:58,000 --> 00:45:03,440
is a man who I've had
a lonely hearts club exchange of letters."

787
00:45:04,920 --> 00:45:06,920
"And they're very strange letters."

788
00:45:08,200 --> 00:45:09,200
[woman] Every word,

789
00:45:09,280 --> 00:45:12,080
he uses the most filthiest,
vulgar words you can use.

790
00:45:12,880 --> 00:45:15,680
He asked if I liked the letter
that he'd written to me.

791
00:45:15,760 --> 00:45:18,560
Um, I said
I wasn't impressed by it, basically,

792
00:45:18,640 --> 00:45:20,800
and that he said
he'd written me another one

793
00:45:21,320 --> 00:45:24,000
and would I like him to send it to me,
and I said no.

794
00:45:24,080 --> 00:45:27,520
If I did get another letter from him,
I was gonna give them to the police.

795
00:45:28,120 --> 00:45:30,840
[Penrose] She sent those letters to us,

796
00:45:30,920 --> 00:45:35,480
which gave us some insight into the way
that Colin Stagg was thinking.

797
00:45:37,080 --> 00:45:41,200
Then John Bassett asked me
to go upstairs to his office,

798
00:45:41,720 --> 00:45:44,360
and I was introduced to
this female police officer.

799
00:45:44,440 --> 00:45:46,840
Bassett said,
"This is my detective sergeant,

800
00:45:46,920 --> 00:45:49,360
and I want him to know what's happening."

801
00:45:50,240 --> 00:45:52,440
And then it was explained to me

802
00:45:52,520 --> 00:45:54,840
that there was gonna be
an undercover operation

803
00:45:55,640 --> 00:45:59,800
to discover
if Colin Stagg's sexual fantasies

804
00:45:59,880 --> 00:46:02,960
would reveal some information
about the murder

805
00:46:03,040 --> 00:46:05,400
that only the murderer would know.

806
00:46:05,480 --> 00:46:06,640
The police came to me

807
00:46:06,720 --> 00:46:10,000
and asked if I could help them
with an undercover operation.

808
00:46:11,160 --> 00:46:12,880
The way that it would work

809
00:46:12,960 --> 00:46:18,320
is that the undercover police officer
would write a letter to Colin Stagg

810
00:46:18,400 --> 00:46:21,280
with the fake name Lizzie James.

811
00:46:21,360 --> 00:46:25,760
She's trying to get him to write to her
about his sexual fantasies

812
00:46:25,840 --> 00:46:30,120
so that if he wrote back

813
00:46:30,200 --> 00:46:32,920
in a way that was similar

814
00:46:33,000 --> 00:46:38,240
to the way that the killer
of Rachel Nickell might write back,

815
00:46:38,320 --> 00:46:41,800
then you had the basis
for further investigation.

816
00:46:43,320 --> 00:46:45,440
And Colin Stagg did write back.

817
00:46:46,440 --> 00:46:49,560
[Colin] Dear Lizzie,
I'm so glad you like my letters

818
00:46:49,640 --> 00:46:54,040
and that you are as broad-minded
and uninhibited as me.

819
00:46:54,120 --> 00:46:55,840
I want to dominate you.

820
00:46:55,920 --> 00:46:59,440
The things I'm going to do to you
will literally make your eyes water.

821
00:47:00,160 --> 00:47:03,040
You will be left humiliated and dirty.

822
00:47:03,120 --> 00:47:04,840
[Britton] The police were very excited

823
00:47:05,440 --> 00:47:10,240
at the first sexual elements
that came back from Colin Stagg.

824
00:47:11,160 --> 00:47:15,280
They're now feeling justified
in their operation,

825
00:47:15,360 --> 00:47:17,120
that there was more to know,

826
00:47:17,200 --> 00:47:20,240
and that they hadn't wasted their time.

827
00:47:23,920 --> 00:47:25,320
[church bells ring]

828
00:47:35,360 --> 00:47:38,520
[André] One day,
after we'd been there for maybe a year,

829
00:47:38,600 --> 00:47:41,440
Alex and I were doing
pretend sword fighting.

830
00:47:42,040 --> 00:47:44,400
[indistinct chatter]

831
00:47:45,800 --> 00:47:49,400
And, uh, he said,
"This is like when the bad man came."

832
00:47:50,560 --> 00:47:52,320
And I tried…

833
00:47:52,400 --> 00:47:53,480
I caught myself,

834
00:47:53,560 --> 00:47:55,960
and I tried to carry on
as naturally as possible.

835
00:48:00,000 --> 00:48:04,280
So, um, one morning,
I just sat down at the little red table,

836
00:48:04,360 --> 00:48:06,960
put the… put the…
put the camera up, and, uh….

837
00:48:08,000 --> 00:48:11,480
and, uh, just attempted
to talk about what happened.

838
00:48:17,480 --> 00:48:18,920
Alex wanted to draw,

839
00:48:19,000 --> 00:48:21,480
and he wanted me to help him
with the drawing.

840
00:48:22,880 --> 00:48:28,720
Dadda, can you help me draw Mummy
on this piece of paper?

841
00:48:29,440 --> 00:48:32,920
[André] As we continued with the drawing,
Alex came up with information

842
00:48:33,000 --> 00:48:35,840
which made it absolutely clear
what he'd seen.

843
00:48:36,640 --> 00:48:38,000
Did Mummy see him?

844
00:48:39,320 --> 00:48:41,000
I don't think she did.

845
00:48:41,080 --> 00:48:42,960
No? Did you see him first?

846
00:48:44,120 --> 00:48:46,040
Yeah, I saw him first.

847
00:48:47,160 --> 00:48:49,120
Did he have a bag?

848
00:48:49,840 --> 00:48:50,680
Yeah.

849
00:48:50,760 --> 00:48:53,000
And did he open it,
or was it already open?

850
00:48:53,080 --> 00:48:54,040
He opened it.

851
00:48:54,120 --> 00:48:55,440
And what did he get out?

852
00:48:55,520 --> 00:48:56,480
A knife.

853
00:48:58,200 --> 00:49:01,000
There's Mummy. There's the bad man.

854
00:49:01,520 --> 00:49:02,840
[André] Where's the knife?

855
00:49:10,680 --> 00:49:12,920
-What did he do to you?
-Knocked me over!

856
00:49:13,000 --> 00:49:14,560
-He knocked you over?
-Yeah.

857
00:49:15,080 --> 00:49:17,920
The bad man
was sticking his things in her.

858
00:49:18,000 --> 00:49:21,480
-What was he sticking in her?
-A knife. There's his knife.

859
00:49:22,000 --> 00:49:23,200
Did you see it?

860
00:49:23,920 --> 00:49:25,280
Yeah, I saw the knife.

861
00:49:25,360 --> 00:49:26,920
Did you see all the times?

862
00:49:28,040 --> 00:49:30,320
I saw it… Yeah, I saw it all.

863
00:49:30,840 --> 00:49:32,200
All of it.

864
00:49:33,200 --> 00:49:35,680
[André] He'd been there,
seen it all, had… had…

865
00:49:36,320 --> 00:49:39,680
assimilated all of this, you know,
survived nearly a year,

866
00:49:39,760 --> 00:49:42,040
basically withholding this in his head
on his own.

867
00:49:42,920 --> 00:49:45,920
-Did you see everything pretty much?
-Yeah, I saw everything.

868
00:49:46,000 --> 00:49:47,440
Did you look the other way?

869
00:49:48,520 --> 00:49:51,200
Yeah, I looked that way.

870
00:49:51,920 --> 00:49:55,560
I looked that way to see
if anything else was happening.

871
00:49:55,640 --> 00:49:56,960
-Did you?
-Yeah.

872
00:49:57,040 --> 00:49:58,240
Was it really horrible?

873
00:49:58,760 --> 00:50:01,040
Yes, it was really horrible.

874
00:50:03,880 --> 00:50:05,560
[André] It was very hard to hear.

875
00:50:05,640 --> 00:50:08,400
You know, this is your child.
This is your baby.

876
00:50:09,120 --> 00:50:11,600
He was there.
Rachel was there. I wasn't there.

877
00:50:11,680 --> 00:50:14,200
I tried to imagine that
all the way through that year,

878
00:50:14,280 --> 00:50:17,680
over and over, night after night.
I wanted to know what they'd been through,

879
00:50:17,760 --> 00:50:20,200
because I wanted to be able
to do something about it

880
00:50:20,280 --> 00:50:22,160
or share in some way.

881
00:50:22,240 --> 00:50:25,240
And here, you know,
I was getting confirmation

882
00:50:25,320 --> 00:50:29,440
of exactly what, you know,
what took place, what Alex had seen,

883
00:50:29,520 --> 00:50:33,880
and, uh… it put me right back
in a state of imagining

884
00:50:33,960 --> 00:50:36,920
what that must have been like
for… for… for both of them.

885
00:50:39,920 --> 00:50:42,280
And then a couple of weeks later,

886
00:50:42,360 --> 00:50:43,880
well, the news came

887
00:50:43,960 --> 00:50:47,800
that they were gonna charge Colin Stagg
for Rachel's murder.

888
00:50:48,360 --> 00:50:52,880
Scotland Yard says Colin Francis Stagg
was arrested at 5:30 this morning

889
00:50:52,960 --> 00:50:55,400
at his home in Roehampton
in Southwest London.

890
00:50:55,480 --> 00:50:57,400
[reporter 1] The address
where the arrest was made

891
00:50:57,480 --> 00:51:00,320
is within a mile or so of the spot
on Wimbledon Common

892
00:51:00,400 --> 00:51:02,680
where Rachel was killed
just over a year ago.

893
00:51:02,760 --> 00:51:04,880
[reporter 2] Police spent the day
digging up his garden

894
00:51:04,960 --> 00:51:07,040
and scanning the ground
with metal detectors.

895
00:51:07,120 --> 00:51:12,240
Colin Stagg was arrested, uh,
and brought to Wimbledon Police Station,

896
00:51:12,920 --> 00:51:14,560
uh, as a suspect for murder.

897
00:51:15,600 --> 00:51:18,360
[reporter 3] His detention followed
an undercover operation

898
00:51:18,440 --> 00:51:20,440
involving a woman police constable.

899
00:51:20,520 --> 00:51:23,280
She struck up
a close relationship with Stagg.

900
00:51:23,360 --> 00:51:25,880
[man 1] Would you like
to introduce yourself formally?

901
00:51:26,400 --> 00:51:28,640
[woman] Yes, I'm a serving police officer.

902
00:51:28,720 --> 00:51:31,920
For the purpose of this interview,
I'm known as Lizzie James.

903
00:51:32,000 --> 00:51:35,800
[man 2] If I were to show you
some 30 or 40 letters

904
00:51:36,920 --> 00:51:39,040
that you've exchanged with Lizzie James,

905
00:51:40,400 --> 00:51:43,160
would you have anything to say
concerning your desire

906
00:51:43,240 --> 00:51:46,480
to have sexual intercourse
and sexual practices

907
00:51:47,360 --> 00:51:50,680
on Wimbledon Common and in open woodland

908
00:51:50,760 --> 00:51:52,480
involving the use of knives…

909
00:51:52,560 --> 00:51:53,560
No comment.

910
00:51:53,640 --> 00:51:56,440
…where blood is caused to flow?

911
00:51:56,520 --> 00:51:57,480
No comment.

912
00:51:57,560 --> 00:52:00,280
[Paul Britton]
During the undercover operation,

913
00:52:00,360 --> 00:52:03,200
Colin Stagg met
with the undercover policewoman,

914
00:52:03,280 --> 00:52:06,280
and what he did was hand her a letter

915
00:52:06,880 --> 00:52:10,440
which introduced the notion of knives
and all sorts of other things

916
00:52:10,520 --> 00:52:12,760
that were present
in the fantasies of the killer.

917
00:52:12,840 --> 00:52:15,000
[Lizzie] Do you remember
this letter now, Colin?

918
00:52:15,080 --> 00:52:16,240
No comment.

919
00:52:17,360 --> 00:52:19,480
[Lizzie] "The man then goes over
to his pile of clothes

920
00:52:19,560 --> 00:52:22,040
and produces some string and a knife."

921
00:52:22,560 --> 00:52:25,720
What the killer of Rachel Nickell had

922
00:52:25,800 --> 00:52:29,560
was a series
of very specific elements in their fantasy

923
00:52:29,640 --> 00:52:31,360
that are not that common.

924
00:52:32,600 --> 00:52:37,640
And now Colin Stagg seems to have
exactly that same set of fantasies.

925
00:52:39,760 --> 00:52:42,920
[man 2] We have to look at the fantasies
as they've progressed

926
00:52:43,000 --> 00:52:45,000
as you've written to Lizzie James.

927
00:52:45,800 --> 00:52:47,160
The increasing deviance,

928
00:52:47,240 --> 00:52:50,160
the increasing domination,
the increasing violence.

929
00:52:50,680 --> 00:52:53,080
The need to humiliate and dominate.

930
00:52:53,160 --> 00:52:56,400
There was just so much pointing
towards him as being the murderer.

931
00:52:57,000 --> 00:53:00,120
[man 2] I think what happened
is you walked off down the windmill path,

932
00:53:00,200 --> 00:53:02,320
and you sat down
on a little patch of grass.

933
00:53:02,400 --> 00:53:06,360
I think you actually described it
in one of your letters to Lizzie James.

934
00:53:07,440 --> 00:53:10,480
The fact that you see
this gorgeous blonde woman

935
00:53:10,560 --> 00:53:12,560
approaching from a distance.

936
00:53:12,640 --> 00:53:15,160
-Is that what happened to Rachel?
-No comment.

937
00:53:15,240 --> 00:53:18,560
[man 2] You looked down
from your vantage point and spied her.

938
00:53:18,640 --> 00:53:21,040
And you rushed down, and you ambushed her.

939
00:53:21,120 --> 00:53:24,040
And you pushed the little boy face down.

940
00:53:25,000 --> 00:53:27,320
Pushed the little boy face down
into the mud.

941
00:53:28,600 --> 00:53:32,960
-No comment.
-[man 2] Then you stabbed Rachel 49 times.

942
00:53:33,040 --> 00:53:33,920
No comment.

943
00:53:34,000 --> 00:53:40,120
On 15th July 1992, on Wimbledon Common,

944
00:53:40,200 --> 00:53:42,440
you murdered Rachel Nickell,

945
00:53:42,520 --> 00:53:45,400
causing her death by multiple stab wounds.

946
00:53:45,920 --> 00:53:46,960
No comment.

947
00:53:47,040 --> 00:53:49,040
[indistinct chatter]

948
00:53:50,040 --> 00:53:52,920
[reporter] After being held overnight
at a police station nearby,

949
00:53:53,000 --> 00:53:56,360
Colin Stagg was driven quickly
into Wimbledon Magistrates Court,

950
00:53:56,440 --> 00:53:58,760
charged with the murder of Rachel Nickell.

951
00:54:01,960 --> 00:54:05,080
Magistrates remanded him in custody
until next week.

952
00:54:05,680 --> 00:54:07,800
[Penrose] The Crown Prosecution Service
were consulted

953
00:54:07,880 --> 00:54:12,680
with all the evidence relating
to the letters and the interview,

954
00:54:12,760 --> 00:54:15,120
and it was decided
that there was enough evidence

955
00:54:15,200 --> 00:54:17,320
to charge him with the murder.

956
00:54:19,560 --> 00:54:22,080
With Colin Stagg off the streets,

957
00:54:22,160 --> 00:54:25,360
as far as I was concerned,
this was all finished.

958
00:54:26,680 --> 00:54:30,720
So I decided that it was a good time
to go for something else.

959
00:54:31,240 --> 00:54:33,520
So I left the investigation.

960
00:54:35,600 --> 00:54:38,680
The fact
that Colin Stagg was now in custody,

961
00:54:38,760 --> 00:54:41,000
it gave a certain…
certain feeling of relief.

962
00:54:41,080 --> 00:54:42,960
But we'd learned really early on,

963
00:54:43,040 --> 00:54:48,640
I knew that if you'd been through
a situation as we'd had,

964
00:54:49,400 --> 00:54:55,400
you're constantly protecting yourself,
and you have a wait-and-see mentality.

965
00:54:56,840 --> 00:54:58,840
[crickets chirping]

966
00:55:04,960 --> 00:55:06,960
[quiet, tense music playing]

967
00:55:11,920 --> 00:55:15,800
Police in South London hunting the killer
of a four-year-old girl and her mother

968
00:55:15,880 --> 00:55:19,520
say it's one of the most shocking cases
they've ever had to investigate.

969
00:55:19,600 --> 00:55:22,000
I'm Mummy. [laughs]

970
00:55:22,080 --> 00:55:24,160
[reporter] Close friends of Samantha
and Jazmine Bisset

971
00:55:24,240 --> 00:55:26,120
are still trying to take in what happened.

972
00:55:27,720 --> 00:55:30,720
What has shocked police
is the ferocity of the murders.

973
00:55:30,800 --> 00:55:34,360
A senior officer said
Sam Bisset's injuries were horrific.

974
00:55:35,160 --> 00:55:37,960
[man] I mean,
I consider myself fairly hard,

975
00:55:38,560 --> 00:55:40,360
uh, not affected much,

976
00:55:40,440 --> 00:55:42,400
but… [sighs]

977
00:55:42,480 --> 00:55:44,160
…even now, it makes me think,

978
00:55:44,240 --> 00:55:48,920
"Christ, what on earth went on there?"
I mean, it was horrendous, you know?

979
00:55:49,920 --> 00:55:52,080
Micky Banks was
my detective superintendent.

980
00:55:52,160 --> 00:55:55,560
He was the senior investigating officer,
and he actually…

981
00:55:55,640 --> 00:55:57,440
I remember he put his arm around me

982
00:55:57,520 --> 00:56:00,880
and said, "Rog," you know,
"just brace yourself, son."

983
00:56:00,960 --> 00:56:04,160
"This is the worst one I've ever seen."
I remember that to this day.

984
00:56:06,800 --> 00:56:09,720
And then we went in together
with the forensic team

985
00:56:09,800 --> 00:56:11,120
and went through the flat.

986
00:56:12,360 --> 00:56:14,560
It was a small flat. It was one-bedroomed,

987
00:56:14,640 --> 00:56:17,720
and we understood
that Samantha Bisset lived there

988
00:56:17,800 --> 00:56:20,840
with her four-year-old daughter,
but they had to share a bedroom.

989
00:56:21,880 --> 00:56:25,120
She was a single mum,
probably didn't have much money.

990
00:56:26,160 --> 00:56:31,000
There were lots of toys in the bedroom,
lots of Jazmine's paintings on the walls.

991
00:56:32,480 --> 00:56:35,000
It seemed to me that they were very close.

992
00:56:36,400 --> 00:56:37,720
Uh, and when we walked in,

993
00:56:37,800 --> 00:56:42,880
it became apparent that Samantha had been
possibly stabbed to death in the hallway,

994
00:56:44,560 --> 00:56:46,320
dragged through to the living room,

995
00:56:46,400 --> 00:56:50,000
and placed on a large cushion
in, like, a star formation.

996
00:56:50,880 --> 00:56:52,960
And she'd been mutilated.

997
00:56:53,480 --> 00:56:56,600
Uh, an attempt had been made
to remove her legs,

998
00:56:56,680 --> 00:56:59,120
and the body had been opened up.

999
00:57:01,760 --> 00:57:04,120
When we walked back down the hallway,

1000
00:57:04,200 --> 00:57:07,280
the bedroom was at the right-hand side
near to the front door.

1001
00:57:07,360 --> 00:57:09,280
And we went into the bedroom,

1002
00:57:09,360 --> 00:57:14,440
and there was a little girl's head
peeping out of a… underneath a duvet.

1003
00:57:15,920 --> 00:57:18,440
You could just see
these tousled, um, hair,

1004
00:57:18,520 --> 00:57:21,160
and it turned out
that she'd been suffocated

1005
00:57:21,240 --> 00:57:22,640
and sexually assaulted.

1006
00:57:23,160 --> 00:57:25,600
So she was dead,
but she looked like she was asleep.

1007
00:57:26,120 --> 00:57:28,520
[sorrowful music playing]

1008
00:57:28,600 --> 00:57:29,720
[Micky] First thoughts was,

1009
00:57:29,800 --> 00:57:33,000
"We've gotta get whoever done this,
because this is a maniac."

1010
00:57:35,160 --> 00:57:39,320
Everybody wanted to catch this bastard
that had done this crime, you know?

1011
00:57:39,400 --> 00:57:42,440
Uh, it was…
it was a thing that we all agreed on,

1012
00:57:42,520 --> 00:57:44,720
because if you don't,
there'll be another murder.

1013
00:57:44,800 --> 00:57:46,840
Because once these people start this,

1014
00:57:46,920 --> 00:57:50,640
you know, it's quite obvious
they would become a serial killer.

1015
00:57:53,960 --> 00:57:56,160
There was hundreds of fingerprints
in the flat,

1016
00:57:56,240 --> 00:57:59,960
and, of course, it had to go through
the fingerprint department,

1017
00:58:00,040 --> 00:58:02,000
each one looked at individually.

1018
00:58:05,720 --> 00:58:08,560
The fingerprint officers would
look through a magnifying glass

1019
00:58:08,640 --> 00:58:12,280
at a fingerprint and identify it
through the swirls and the marks,

1020
00:58:12,360 --> 00:58:14,000
which is an art.

1021
00:58:15,040 --> 00:58:17,440
But within maybe two months,

1022
00:58:17,520 --> 00:58:21,360
we'd managed to eliminate
all of those finger marks,

1023
00:58:22,600 --> 00:58:24,960
which in itself is quite unusual

1024
00:58:25,040 --> 00:58:29,200
because there's normally one or two marks
which remain unidentified,

1025
00:58:29,280 --> 00:58:31,640
and they're often the suspect's.

1026
00:58:31,720 --> 00:58:35,000
There was no… no DNA. There was no clues.

1027
00:58:35,080 --> 00:58:38,600
Nothing at all
that would help the investigation.

1028
00:58:38,680 --> 00:58:41,920
We found absolutely nothing,
which is most unusual.

1029
00:58:42,000 --> 00:58:44,400
[reporter] There was no sign
of a break-in at the flat,

1030
00:58:44,480 --> 00:58:47,360
and detectives admit
they have few clues in this case.

1031
00:58:47,440 --> 00:58:50,840
As for the motive for this murder
of a mother and her young daughter,

1032
00:58:50,920 --> 00:58:53,280
it appears only the killer knows that.

1033
00:58:54,040 --> 00:58:57,880
I was approached
by my then-detective chief superintendent

1034
00:58:57,960 --> 00:59:00,760
that, uh, I should get Paul Britton in

1035
00:59:02,480 --> 00:59:03,800
because he was an expert.

1036
00:59:03,880 --> 00:59:07,000
He'd done a lot of work
on the Rachel Nickell inquiry.

1037
00:59:10,560 --> 00:59:15,040
[Paul Britton] I was then taken
to the scene of the murders itself.

1038
00:59:15,120 --> 00:59:20,160
The flat that Samantha
and Jazmine Bisset lived in

1039
00:59:20,240 --> 00:59:22,840
is really quite important in its location.

1040
00:59:22,920 --> 00:59:25,520
Immediately behind the flat,

1041
00:59:25,600 --> 00:59:28,000
there is a garden area.

1042
00:59:31,920 --> 00:59:33,160
And then beyond that,

1043
00:59:34,000 --> 00:59:35,880
you have a tree-banked area,

1044
00:59:35,960 --> 00:59:39,600
where he sits,
he watches, he fulfils his fantasies,

1045
00:59:40,320 --> 00:59:41,880
and gets these sort of thoughts.

1046
00:59:41,960 --> 00:59:43,840
"You're not going to tease me."

1047
00:59:43,920 --> 00:59:46,240
"You're not going to ridicule me."

1048
00:59:46,320 --> 00:59:48,880
"Let's see how you get on
when I've finished with you."

1049
00:59:49,640 --> 00:59:52,640
Paul Britton's a clinical psychologist.
How much do you think you know him?

1050
00:59:52,720 --> 00:59:55,640
I think we know quite well
what was going through his mind

1051
00:59:55,720 --> 00:59:57,360
at the time of the offense,

1052
00:59:57,440 --> 01:00:01,720
but I would like him to tell me
how he got started on the pathway

1053
01:00:01,800 --> 01:00:05,160
that led him eventually to kill,
to harm Samantha.

1054
01:00:05,240 --> 01:00:06,680
You'd like him to tell you?

1055
01:00:06,760 --> 01:00:09,000
He's not very likely to ring up and say,

1056
01:00:09,080 --> 01:00:12,120
"Can I speak to Paul Britton, please?"
and here are his answers.

1057
01:00:12,200 --> 01:00:15,720
I think that there is a possibility
that he might want to do that.

1058
01:00:17,400 --> 01:00:21,480
[Roger] It's extremely rare that
strangers attack members of the public.

1059
01:00:23,320 --> 01:00:26,160
Children being present is even rarer.

1060
01:00:27,960 --> 01:00:31,120
He's probably done
something similar before.

1061
01:00:31,200 --> 01:00:35,640
He's not gone out and just done this.
You work up to that level of violence.

1062
01:00:37,560 --> 01:00:40,760
And we couldn't fathom out how,

1063
01:00:40,840 --> 01:00:44,880
within a gap of 16 months

1064
01:00:44,960 --> 01:00:50,120
between the Wimbledon Common murder
and the Plumstead murder,

1065
01:00:50,640 --> 01:00:57,560
how two different people could commit
such ferocious, audacious crimes.

1066
01:00:57,640 --> 01:01:01,360
So was it possible
that the same person committed both?

1067
01:01:03,280 --> 01:01:08,040
The victims were
very similar in age and looks.

1068
01:01:08,720 --> 01:01:12,280
Both had a child present
during the attacks.

1069
01:01:12,960 --> 01:01:17,040
And the number of stab wounds
on Rachel Nickell and Samantha Bisset

1070
01:01:17,120 --> 01:01:18,640
were in the region of 50.

1071
01:01:21,160 --> 01:01:22,880
So at our request,

1072
01:01:22,960 --> 01:01:25,960
the senior detectives
investigating the Nickell investigation

1073
01:01:26,040 --> 01:01:27,480
came over to our incident room

1074
01:01:28,720 --> 01:01:32,320
to discuss the similarities
between both scenes.

1075
01:01:33,720 --> 01:01:37,800
And they basically dismissed
our suggestion

1076
01:01:37,880 --> 01:01:41,160
that the two crimes could have
been committed by the same person.

1077
01:01:41,240 --> 01:01:42,520
Because, of course,

1078
01:01:42,600 --> 01:01:45,800
Colin Stagg was in custody
when the Bissets were murdered.

1079
01:01:48,480 --> 01:01:53,520
And we tried to impress upon them
that they may have got the wrong person.

1080
01:01:55,640 --> 01:01:57,120
[woman] And how was that met?

1081
01:01:57,200 --> 01:02:01,960
Uh, with hostility and just absolutely…

1082
01:02:03,160 --> 01:02:05,560
"There's no way
we haven't got the right person."

1083
01:02:07,520 --> 01:02:10,440
[Micky] They had their suspect,
and, uh, they just…

1084
01:02:10,520 --> 01:02:12,720
they weren't interested in discussing it.

1085
01:02:13,800 --> 01:02:16,200
They were convinced
that they had the right chap.

1086
01:02:30,000 --> 01:02:32,520
[sing-song] Opening the presents!

1087
01:02:32,600 --> 01:02:33,960
[giggles]

1088
01:02:34,040 --> 01:02:38,160
[André] It had been a year and a half,
and Alex was, you know, in a good place.

1089
01:02:38,240 --> 01:02:42,520
There are not much presents
under the tree now.

1090
01:02:42,600 --> 01:02:44,480
[André] There's loads of presents
under the tree.

1091
01:02:44,560 --> 01:02:47,120
He was settled in at school,
happy with his friends.

1092
01:02:47,200 --> 01:02:49,280
So, you know, he was really thriving.

1093
01:02:49,360 --> 01:02:51,240
It's a big crane.

1094
01:02:55,360 --> 01:02:56,880
[André] Around that time,

1095
01:02:57,440 --> 01:02:59,480
the word got to me that, uh…

1096
01:03:00,480 --> 01:03:05,800
that the police needed Alex
to give evidence at Colin Stagg's trial.

1097
01:03:08,240 --> 01:03:11,480
They were hoping he could provide
physical descriptions of the assailant

1098
01:03:11,560 --> 01:03:14,600
and also descriptions of his movements
before and after the attack.

1099
01:03:16,920 --> 01:03:19,880
So once again, we're caught
between a rock and a hard place.

1100
01:03:20,760 --> 01:03:21,840
What do we do?

1101
01:03:21,920 --> 01:03:26,040
If this is the person
and, uh, we don't turn up,

1102
01:03:26,120 --> 01:03:27,400
he's back on the street.

1103
01:03:27,480 --> 01:03:29,680
But what is the price
that Alex is gonna pay

1104
01:03:29,760 --> 01:03:32,960
in coming face-to-face
with the person who did this?

1105
01:03:33,040 --> 01:03:35,040
[TV playing in background]

1106
01:03:42,360 --> 01:03:44,360
[suspenseful music playing]

1107
01:03:47,680 --> 01:03:50,320
[Micky] I think it was just a feeling,
you know.

1108
01:03:50,840 --> 01:03:53,760
Just a feeling
that there was something so wrong here.

1109
01:03:59,560 --> 01:04:02,600
Because it was one of the first crimes
I've ever been to

1110
01:04:02,680 --> 01:04:06,200
where every print
that was there was eliminated.

1111
01:04:12,960 --> 01:04:16,400
[Roger] Micky Banks spoke to me,

1112
01:04:16,920 --> 01:04:21,640
and he wanted
the finger marks to be searched again,

1113
01:04:22,240 --> 01:04:24,360
especially those
belonging to Samantha Bisset.

1114
01:04:25,520 --> 01:04:28,520
Micky really, really pushed hard
for that to be done,

1115
01:04:29,120 --> 01:04:32,320
and the fingerprint branch
eventually gave in

1116
01:04:32,400 --> 01:04:37,640
and agreed to re-examine
some of the more suspicious marks

1117
01:04:37,720 --> 01:04:39,840
which were found at the Bisset flat.

1118
01:04:46,040 --> 01:04:51,560
Sometime afterwards, he called me
and said, "We've had a result."

1119
01:04:53,040 --> 01:04:54,160
Some of the fingerprints

1120
01:04:54,240 --> 01:04:57,960
that had initially been identified
as belonging to Samantha Bisset…

1121
01:05:00,840 --> 01:05:02,000
did, in fact,

1122
01:05:02,720 --> 01:05:04,400
belong to a man called

1123
01:05:05,200 --> 01:05:06,240
Robert Napper.

1124
01:05:07,680 --> 01:05:10,480
[Micky] And that was a eureka moment,
I'll tell you.

1125
01:05:11,600 --> 01:05:15,520
I'll never forget it, you know.
God… Jesus, I was over the moon.

1126
01:05:16,120 --> 01:05:20,800
They found about three or four prints
of Napper in the flat.

1127
01:05:20,880 --> 01:05:24,120
Uh, one was on the ledge
outside the patio door,

1128
01:05:24,200 --> 01:05:25,640
and some on the inside,

1129
01:05:25,720 --> 01:05:29,680
where he'd obviously got in
through the French windows.

1130
01:05:31,200 --> 01:05:34,440
He lived locally.
He had a very, very short criminal history

1131
01:05:34,520 --> 01:05:38,160
and had, in fact,
spent, uh, two months in custody.

1132
01:05:38,240 --> 01:05:40,920
[reporter] Napper was arrested
at his home on Friday.

1133
01:05:41,000 --> 01:05:42,800
He was living in Plumstead High Street,

1134
01:05:42,880 --> 01:05:45,200
half a mile
from where the killings took place.

1135
01:05:46,200 --> 01:05:48,720
After he was arrested and assessed,
it was apparent

1136
01:05:48,800 --> 01:05:51,040
he was suffering
from some sort of mental illness.

1137
01:05:51,120 --> 01:05:52,760
And when he was interviewed,

1138
01:05:52,840 --> 01:05:56,840
um, he did give very, very strange answers
in the third person,

1139
01:05:56,920 --> 01:05:58,960
as if he was talking about someone else.

1140
01:06:00,040 --> 01:06:03,720
He was the sort of bloke who thought
that he was different to the rest of us.

1141
01:06:03,800 --> 01:06:06,440
He was aloof. Weird, weird chap.

1142
01:06:06,520 --> 01:06:08,760
Everybody said the same,
anybody who met him.

1143
01:06:08,840 --> 01:06:10,360
He just… He was weird.

1144
01:06:11,760 --> 01:06:15,200
[Roger] We went to his flat
at Plumstead High Street,

1145
01:06:15,280 --> 01:06:17,160
a very, very small bedsit.

1146
01:06:19,360 --> 01:06:22,840
Uh, he didn't have a bed or a mattress,
which I thought was strange.

1147
01:06:22,920 --> 01:06:25,040
He slept on the floor, apparently.

1148
01:06:26,560 --> 01:06:29,880
And then we began to search the property.

1149
01:06:31,400 --> 01:06:35,760
And very quickly we found the red toolbox,

1150
01:06:35,840 --> 01:06:37,760
which was on the floor.

1151
01:06:39,360 --> 01:06:41,000
Uh, it was padlocked,

1152
01:06:41,080 --> 01:06:44,360
and obviously we were desperate
to find out what was inside.

1153
01:06:44,440 --> 01:06:45,680
When we opened it,

1154
01:06:45,760 --> 01:06:48,360
there were knives.

1155
01:06:50,000 --> 01:06:51,040
There was a book.

1156
01:06:51,120 --> 01:06:54,840
And in the book, there were methods
of, I think, strangulation

1157
01:06:54,920 --> 01:06:57,760
and vulnerable points on the body,

1158
01:06:57,840 --> 01:07:03,120
which were used to attack people
and either immobilize them or kill them.

1159
01:07:04,080 --> 01:07:05,720
There was an A to Z.

1160
01:07:08,720 --> 01:07:12,280
And in his A to Z, there were
all sorts of markings and doodles.

1161
01:07:13,160 --> 01:07:15,640
At the time,
we couldn't work out what they were.

1162
01:07:18,520 --> 01:07:21,360
And we thought they were
obviously gonna be very important

1163
01:07:21,440 --> 01:07:26,160
in the possible identification
of, uh, of scenes of his crimes.

1164
01:07:26,240 --> 01:07:28,840
And on one of the doodles,

1165
01:07:30,200 --> 01:07:32,400
there was a set of steps

1166
01:07:33,960 --> 01:07:37,760
which looked like it could have
possibly been Heathfield Terrace.

1167
01:07:40,280 --> 01:07:44,360
And in that doodle,
he wrote the words "potential area."

1168
01:07:45,800 --> 01:07:48,920
He'd identified it
as a possible target for him.

1169
01:07:49,720 --> 01:07:52,040
A 28-year-old man has been charged
with the murders

1170
01:07:52,120 --> 01:07:53,840
of a single mother, Samantha Bisset,

1171
01:07:53,920 --> 01:07:56,200
and her four-year-old daughter
last November.

1172
01:07:56,280 --> 01:07:58,600
[reporter] Today,
Robert Napper denied murder

1173
01:07:58,680 --> 01:08:00,680
but admitted their manslaughter.

1174
01:08:00,760 --> 01:08:04,360
Samantha's killer is expected
to be sentenced later today.

1175
01:08:05,600 --> 01:08:09,640
The really sad thing about this case
is that Samantha was an only child,

1176
01:08:09,720 --> 01:08:12,120
and her mother, Margaret,

1177
01:08:12,640 --> 01:08:14,400
never recovered from the loss

1178
01:08:14,480 --> 01:08:16,720
of her only grandchild
and her only daughter.

1179
01:08:18,320 --> 01:08:20,960
[Micky] I mean, it's bad enough
losing your daughter,

1180
01:08:21,040 --> 01:08:22,800
but your granddaughter as well?

1181
01:08:24,080 --> 01:08:25,840
The family's wiped out.

1182
01:08:27,800 --> 01:08:30,120
You know, tragedy. Awful.

1183
01:08:30,200 --> 01:08:34,600
And to add to the distress of this case,

1184
01:08:35,120 --> 01:08:36,200
her mother died

1185
01:08:36,280 --> 01:08:39,760
the very day before Napper was
due to stand trial at the Old Bailey.

1186
01:08:42,520 --> 01:08:45,480
So it's just a very… very, very sad case.

1187
01:08:52,280 --> 01:08:54,280
[suspenseful music playing]

1188
01:08:55,600 --> 01:08:57,040
Sometime later,

1189
01:08:58,480 --> 01:09:00,240
looking at his maps again,

1190
01:09:01,880 --> 01:09:05,560
although most of the markings
were within Southeast London…

1191
01:09:09,080 --> 01:09:11,520
there was a particular mark

1192
01:09:12,720 --> 01:09:14,680
way away from Plumstead

1193
01:09:14,760 --> 01:09:17,160
in Richmond Park, Southwest London.

1194
01:09:18,120 --> 01:09:20,040
It's called Isabella Plantation,

1195
01:09:21,800 --> 01:09:26,280
which was a plot of open land
very, very close to Wimbledon Common,

1196
01:09:26,360 --> 01:09:28,600
the scene of the Rachel Nickell murder.

1197
01:09:32,840 --> 01:09:35,960
[reporter] Stagg was first questioned
by detectives last September.

1198
01:09:36,600 --> 01:09:38,240
He's due to appear here at court

1199
01:09:38,320 --> 01:09:40,960
charged with murdering Rachel Nickell
this morning.

1200
01:09:46,680 --> 01:09:51,120
I was informed before the trial
that, uh, Alex wouldn't be needed,

1201
01:09:51,200 --> 01:09:53,160
that his testimony wasn't necessary.

1202
01:09:53,240 --> 01:09:56,640
A part of me was very grateful
he wouldn't have to go through the ordeal.

1203
01:09:56,720 --> 01:09:58,200
Another part of me was concerned

1204
01:09:58,280 --> 01:10:01,600
that we weren't putting
everything into this we possibly could.

1205
01:10:04,720 --> 01:10:07,840
And then a few days later,
the shock news came.

1206
01:10:08,360 --> 01:10:12,160
A friend called to see how I was,
to see if I was holding up with the news.

1207
01:10:12,240 --> 01:10:13,760
And I said, "With what news?"

1208
01:10:13,840 --> 01:10:16,040
And he said, "You don't know?"

1209
01:10:16,120 --> 01:10:18,560
He said, "It's been…
It's been thrown out."

1210
01:10:20,000 --> 01:10:22,920
The man accused of the brutal murder
of Rachel Nickell

1211
01:10:23,000 --> 01:10:24,720
on Wimbledon Common two years ago

1212
01:10:24,800 --> 01:10:28,560
today walked free from court
before the trial proper had even begun.

1213
01:10:28,640 --> 01:10:30,240
It was an absolute shock.

1214
01:10:30,320 --> 01:10:32,760
An Old Bailey judge
launched a stinging attack

1215
01:10:32,840 --> 01:10:35,360
on police methods today
after throwing out the case

1216
01:10:35,440 --> 01:10:38,320
against the man
accused of killing Rachel Nickell.

1217
01:10:38,400 --> 01:10:42,040
[reporter 1] Colin Stagg walked free,
having spent more than a year in custody

1218
01:10:42,120 --> 01:10:45,240
after being entrapped
by an undercover police operation

1219
01:10:45,320 --> 01:10:50,000
that was strongly criticized by the judge
and ruled to be inadmissible.

1220
01:10:50,080 --> 01:10:55,840
I was angry because whoever decided
that this evidence was good

1221
01:10:55,920 --> 01:11:00,200
and would stand up to challenge
had obviously made a big mistake.

1222
01:11:00,280 --> 01:11:03,680
And I was angry that maybe
the person who decided to kick it all out

1223
01:11:03,760 --> 01:11:07,560
was going to an extreme, because there was
strong circumstantial evidence.

1224
01:11:07,640 --> 01:11:11,960
There was probably a feeling
that if there was a decision to be made

1225
01:11:12,040 --> 01:11:16,000
as to whether
Colin Stagg committed a murder,

1226
01:11:16,080 --> 01:11:18,400
that decision should be made by a jury.

1227
01:11:19,000 --> 01:11:20,800
But we didn't get that far.

1228
01:11:20,880 --> 01:11:25,600
[reporter 2] William Clegg QC, defending,
argued WPC James had lied,

1229
01:11:25,680 --> 01:11:28,160
offered inducements of sex
and a relationship.

1230
01:11:28,240 --> 01:11:29,760
[reporter 3] Mr. Justice Ognall said

1231
01:11:29,840 --> 01:11:33,920
the police behavior betrayed
not merely an excess of zeal

1232
01:11:34,000 --> 01:11:36,560
but a blatant attempt
to incriminate a suspect

1233
01:11:36,640 --> 01:11:40,080
by positive and deceptive conduct
of the grossest kind.

1234
01:11:40,160 --> 01:11:41,200
We failed.

1235
01:11:41,720 --> 01:11:44,560
And, um, that is not a good feeling.

1236
01:11:45,480 --> 01:11:49,200
"My life has been ruined by a mixture
of half-baked psychological theories

1237
01:11:49,280 --> 01:11:52,240
and some stories written
to satisfy the strange sexual requests

1238
01:11:52,320 --> 01:11:54,200
of an undercover police officer."

1239
01:11:54,280 --> 01:11:57,160
"The judge recognized
there was never any evidence against me,

1240
01:11:57,240 --> 01:11:59,920
no forensic evidence,
no confession evidence, nothing."

1241
01:12:00,000 --> 01:12:03,880
[reporter 4] Asked if Stagg should receive
an apology from the police,

1242
01:12:03,960 --> 01:12:06,760
Sir Paul Condon said
the police had already apologized

1243
01:12:06,840 --> 01:12:08,640
to those it thought necessary.

1244
01:12:09,680 --> 01:12:12,960
I… I make no apologies at all

1245
01:12:13,040 --> 01:12:16,600
for the Metropolitan Police inquiry
in this case.

1246
01:12:16,680 --> 01:12:19,520
I fully support the action of my officers,

1247
01:12:19,600 --> 01:12:23,320
and I take full responsibility
for police action in this case.

1248
01:12:25,400 --> 01:12:27,400
[poignant music playing]

1249
01:12:28,600 --> 01:12:31,400
[André] It felt like
we were back at day one,

1250
01:12:32,120 --> 01:12:35,920
you know, with the killer on the loose
and no protection.

1251
01:12:38,320 --> 01:12:40,120
And what really underlined that

1252
01:12:40,200 --> 01:12:42,960
was Paul Condon, the head of the Met,
making a statement

1253
01:12:43,040 --> 01:12:45,320
that they weren't looking for
anybody else.

1254
01:12:45,400 --> 01:12:48,240
At the moment,
there is no new information,

1255
01:12:48,320 --> 01:12:50,880
no new leads for us to explore.

1256
01:12:53,040 --> 01:12:56,320
[André] They made it clear that
they thought Stagg got away with murder

1257
01:12:56,400 --> 01:12:57,800
and was now on the loose.

1258
01:12:58,840 --> 01:13:02,000
I was left feeling like
I couldn't trust anybody,

1259
01:13:02,080 --> 01:13:06,600
and we always wondered whether or not
we were treated in a different way

1260
01:13:06,680 --> 01:13:09,840
because, uh, I was a young man of color.

1261
01:13:11,320 --> 01:13:13,880
You lose all faith in… in the system.

1262
01:13:14,480 --> 01:13:16,680
So now any closure that we…

1263
01:13:17,200 --> 01:13:21,200
that was gonna be truly meaningful was
something we'd have to find for ourselves,

1264
01:13:21,280 --> 01:13:23,600
and we couldn't rely on
outside circumstances

1265
01:13:23,680 --> 01:13:25,120
to provide us with that.

1266
01:13:28,200 --> 01:13:30,200
[gentle music playing]

1267
01:13:37,480 --> 01:13:41,000
[man] For many, many years,
there was no real… real progress.

1268
01:13:43,000 --> 01:13:47,360
Nothing had really changed
in terms of, you know, what we knew.

1269
01:13:52,080 --> 01:13:54,440
From day one, it was the three of us.

1270
01:13:55,200 --> 01:13:58,960
You know, my father and me
and our dog, Molly.

1271
01:13:59,040 --> 01:14:01,280
That was who we were as a family.

1272
01:14:02,080 --> 01:14:05,400
My father knew
that I understood what had happened.

1273
01:14:06,360 --> 01:14:08,000
That my mother loved me,

1274
01:14:08,600 --> 01:14:12,400
and, um, that
she wouldn't have wanted to leave me.

1275
01:14:13,760 --> 01:14:15,520
So, my father and me,

1276
01:14:15,600 --> 01:14:18,080
we didn't talk about… about my mother.

1277
01:14:18,160 --> 01:14:20,320
You know? We didn't talk about the past.

1278
01:14:22,720 --> 01:14:26,800
But I still… I felt an anger
that this had happened,

1279
01:14:26,880 --> 01:14:32,160
and, you know, that no matter what I did,
I couldn't stop it from happening.

1280
01:14:35,840 --> 01:14:40,240
I think if you witness
that degree of evil,

1281
01:14:40,320 --> 01:14:42,880
you know, as a small child,

1282
01:14:44,440 --> 01:14:47,440
the illusion that you have,
you know, that your parents,

1283
01:14:47,520 --> 01:14:50,120
no matter how good a job they do,

1284
01:14:50,200 --> 01:14:52,640
can really protect you from harm,

1285
01:14:52,720 --> 01:14:55,600
I think that that…
you know, that collapses.

1286
01:14:56,880 --> 01:15:00,000
[André] Alex was absolutely
a really sweet little boy.

1287
01:15:00,520 --> 01:15:03,120
There was a joy that was there.

1288
01:15:04,520 --> 01:15:08,240
But then in the preteen years,
there was an anger, you know,

1289
01:15:08,320 --> 01:15:12,040
and the anger was, you know,
quite rightly directed towards me.

1290
01:15:13,520 --> 01:15:17,000
I was very angry about a lot of the things
we'd lived through.

1291
01:15:18,120 --> 01:15:21,760
The sessions that went on
for weeks and months.

1292
01:15:21,840 --> 01:15:25,040
The thing that was most distressing for me
was to be taken back,

1293
01:15:25,120 --> 01:15:26,920
you know, to that day repeatedly

1294
01:15:27,000 --> 01:15:30,920
and suggestions given
about how I should feel about it.

1295
01:15:31,000 --> 01:15:34,600
And, you know,
I guess I carried that with me somewhat.

1296
01:15:37,160 --> 01:15:39,400
[André] He did get into trouble
with the authorities.

1297
01:15:39,960 --> 01:15:44,040
Just small stuff, but the police
were on the doorstep on occasions.

1298
01:15:47,000 --> 01:15:50,240
[Alex] I don't think that I had the same…
the same respect,

1299
01:15:50,320 --> 01:15:53,520
the same trust for my father
as I once had.

1300
01:15:55,360 --> 01:16:00,120
And the fundamental point was that he was
the protector of the family as the father

1301
01:16:02,080 --> 01:16:06,680
and, you know, unfortunately
had allowed this to happen to us.

1302
01:16:07,520 --> 01:16:11,920
So in my teenage years,
you know, we had a lot of conflict.

1303
01:16:14,680 --> 01:16:19,440
[André] I had a huge sense of guilt
that… that I hadn't protected my family.

1304
01:16:21,520 --> 01:16:23,120
And you do feel stupid.

1305
01:16:23,200 --> 01:16:24,520
You feel like a fool,

1306
01:16:24,600 --> 01:16:30,240
because we're told to put our security
in the hands of other agencies.

1307
01:16:30,320 --> 01:16:34,400
Once upon a time, it was the Wild West,
and you took the law into your own hands,

1308
01:16:34,480 --> 01:16:38,680
and you protected, you know,
your loved ones with whatever it took.

1309
01:16:39,960 --> 01:16:42,040
And that's what hit me at the time.

1310
01:16:43,000 --> 01:16:44,320
I didn't do that.

1311
01:16:44,920 --> 01:16:46,280
And I wish I had.

1312
01:16:51,960 --> 01:16:53,960
[music fades]

1313
01:16:54,720 --> 01:16:58,320
[Alex] With every week that goes by,
with every month that goes by,

1314
01:16:58,400 --> 01:17:00,400
with every year that goes by,

1315
01:17:00,480 --> 01:17:03,560
you've kind of come to terms with,
on some level,

1316
01:17:03,640 --> 01:17:05,560
that this may never be resolved.

1317
01:17:08,560 --> 01:17:10,000
[suspenseful music playing]

1318
01:17:10,080 --> 01:17:11,720
[carousel clicks]

1319
01:17:23,480 --> 01:17:29,280
[woman] By 2002, the Rachel Nickell case
did become a cold case.

1320
01:17:33,360 --> 01:17:38,320
The police came and asked
if I and my team would have a look at it.

1321
01:17:42,080 --> 01:17:46,640
I knew from reading the newspapers
that this had been a very violent attack.

1322
01:17:47,440 --> 01:17:48,520
But I was aware

1323
01:17:48,600 --> 01:17:53,160
Colin Stagg had been accused
and then acquitted.

1324
01:17:53,240 --> 01:17:56,840
But I think he was still a suspect
as far as the police were concerned.

1325
01:17:57,880 --> 01:18:01,840
And so they wanted us
just to cast a fresh pair of eyes over it

1326
01:18:01,920 --> 01:18:03,120
and see whether or not,

1327
01:18:03,200 --> 01:18:05,760
out of the things
that they'd collected at the time,

1328
01:18:06,280 --> 01:18:08,080
whether there was anything in that

1329
01:18:08,160 --> 01:18:10,680
that could possibly be used, um,

1330
01:18:10,760 --> 01:18:14,240
to identify Rachel's attacker.

1331
01:18:17,520 --> 01:18:21,720
There were some tapings,
these sticky tape lifts,

1332
01:18:21,800 --> 01:18:24,920
um, taken from Rachel's body

1333
01:18:25,000 --> 01:18:27,960
and particularly
the intimate parts of her body.

1334
01:18:30,840 --> 01:18:31,920
And we noticed

1335
01:18:32,000 --> 01:18:36,280
that the original scientists
hadn't found any DNA on these tapings.

1336
01:18:36,360 --> 01:18:40,440
And so we knew immediately
that something was wrong,

1337
01:18:41,160 --> 01:18:42,560
because there should've been

1338
01:18:42,640 --> 01:18:45,520
an enormous amount
of Rachel's own DNA on these tapings.

1339
01:18:46,440 --> 01:18:48,800
I think what probably happened is,

1340
01:18:48,880 --> 01:18:51,680
if you have too much DNA in a sample,

1341
01:18:51,760 --> 01:18:55,480
it can swamp the technique
so that you don't see anything.

1342
01:18:55,560 --> 01:18:59,680
And so one of the first things we did
was, of course, to repeat it,

1343
01:18:59,760 --> 01:19:02,280
but doing it in a slightly different way.

1344
01:19:02,360 --> 01:19:04,360
[suspenseful music continues]

1345
01:19:07,360 --> 01:19:10,560
Just as expected,
we got lots of Rachel's DNA.

1346
01:19:15,880 --> 01:19:19,080
But we also got a tiny trace of male DNA.

1347
01:19:22,320 --> 01:19:25,040
When we got this hint of male DNA,

1348
01:19:25,120 --> 01:19:26,760
we really didn't know

1349
01:19:26,840 --> 01:19:31,360
whether we'd be able to develop it enough,
get enough information out of it

1350
01:19:31,440 --> 01:19:35,600
to identify one particular individual.

1351
01:19:37,720 --> 01:19:41,040
And so we developed a whole new technique,

1352
01:19:41,120 --> 01:19:42,800
a new sensitive technique,

1353
01:19:43,480 --> 01:19:48,680
um, and this involved taking
a tiny amount of DNA from a sample

1354
01:19:48,760 --> 01:19:52,840
and then multiplying up the DNA,

1355
01:19:52,920 --> 01:19:54,840
or we call it amplifying.

1356
01:19:54,920 --> 01:19:58,400
So you've got
several times your original amount,

1357
01:19:58,480 --> 01:20:00,680
so you've got enough to actually analyze.

1358
01:20:01,880 --> 01:20:03,440
It took about two years

1359
01:20:03,520 --> 01:20:08,160
to develop this technique
to the point where we could use it.

1360
01:20:11,000 --> 01:20:14,480
Before we ran the…
uh, the information that we had,

1361
01:20:14,560 --> 01:20:17,160
this DNA profile we had,
through the database,

1362
01:20:17,240 --> 01:20:19,360
we checked it against Colin Stagg,

1363
01:20:20,000 --> 01:20:22,680
and it definitely didn't match him.

1364
01:20:22,760 --> 01:20:24,120
[keyboard keys clacking]

1365
01:20:24,880 --> 01:20:28,000
And so we put it through
the National DNA Database.

1366
01:20:28,520 --> 01:20:32,920
And when we did that,
that's when it came up as a match.

1367
01:20:35,480 --> 01:20:37,080
[André] The phone rang one day,

1368
01:20:38,200 --> 01:20:41,360
out of the blue, and it was the police,
and they had news.

1369
01:20:41,880 --> 01:20:45,800
And the news was
there was a positive identification.

1370
01:20:45,880 --> 01:20:48,960
And they said
that the person that had been identified

1371
01:20:49,040 --> 01:20:50,600
was a completely new name.

1372
01:20:52,080 --> 01:20:55,800
[Angela] The DNA database produced a match

1373
01:20:56,920 --> 01:20:58,880
for someone called Robert Napper.

1374
01:21:06,200 --> 01:21:10,600
And then we discovered
that Napper was in Broadmoor

1375
01:21:10,680 --> 01:21:16,080
because he'd also committed
a murder of a mother and a young daughter.

1376
01:21:16,160 --> 01:21:18,160
[poignant music playing]

1377
01:21:20,680 --> 01:21:23,280
It had been somebody else all the time.

1378
01:21:24,360 --> 01:21:25,600
So that moment in time

1379
01:21:25,680 --> 01:21:29,360
was when our worst possible scenario
had proved to be played out,

1380
01:21:29,440 --> 01:21:31,240
that somebody else had been murdered

1381
01:21:31,320 --> 01:21:33,640
by the same person
in the same circumstances.

1382
01:21:33,720 --> 01:21:35,360
Another family's been destroyed.

1383
01:21:38,360 --> 01:21:42,560
So if I didn't know
how blessed I'd been that Alex survived,

1384
01:21:43,160 --> 01:21:45,920
when we found out
what happened to Samantha and Jazmine,

1385
01:21:46,680 --> 01:21:48,680
I thank God every day.

1386
01:21:48,760 --> 01:21:52,680
Because it's only by the grace of God
that… that we've survived together,

1387
01:21:52,760 --> 01:21:55,840
and it's only by the grace of God
that he survived physically.

1388
01:21:55,920 --> 01:21:57,880
[poignant music continues]

1389
01:22:03,880 --> 01:22:05,880
[music fades]

1390
01:22:05,960 --> 01:22:07,960
[crowd cheering, whistling on TV]

1391
01:22:09,800 --> 01:22:12,840
[man] I was watching a football match
on TV one evening.

1392
01:22:15,280 --> 01:22:16,760
There was a knock on my door,

1393
01:22:17,280 --> 01:22:20,880
and I was a bit annoyed
'cause I was missing the match.

1394
01:22:24,320 --> 01:22:28,000
There was two journalists standing there.
And they said, um… um,

1395
01:22:28,080 --> 01:22:30,800
"Did you know
that the police have arrested another man

1396
01:22:30,880 --> 01:22:32,600
in relation to the Nickell murder,

1397
01:22:32,680 --> 01:22:35,280
and they got DNA evidence
to prove he was guilty?"

1398
01:22:35,360 --> 01:22:38,120
I was like, "Can you come back
in about an hour's time?"

1399
01:22:38,200 --> 01:22:39,720
"I'm watching the match."

1400
01:22:39,800 --> 01:22:42,120
They were like, "No problem,"
and they walked off.

1401
01:22:43,600 --> 01:22:45,880
I was sick of the whole thing, you know?

1402
01:22:45,960 --> 01:22:48,040
It dragged on for about 15 years.

1403
01:22:48,120 --> 01:22:50,760
[reporter 1] Colin Stagg had
police protection today

1404
01:22:50,840 --> 01:22:53,680
as the Rachel Nickell case
continued to haunt him.

1405
01:22:53,760 --> 01:22:57,040
[Colin] From when I was arrested,
there were articles in the newspapers

1406
01:22:57,120 --> 01:22:59,240
stirring people's emotions up against me.

1407
01:22:59,320 --> 01:23:01,960
People shouting out stuff like,
"Guilty," "Hang him,"

1408
01:23:02,040 --> 01:23:03,360
stuff like that, you know.

1409
01:23:03,440 --> 01:23:06,600
[reporter 2] Mr. Stagg remained
uncomfortably in the media spotlight

1410
01:23:06,680 --> 01:23:08,280
even after his release.

1411
01:23:08,920 --> 01:23:09,880
[woman] Don't!

1412
01:23:11,040 --> 01:23:12,920
[Colin] Instilling in people's minds

1413
01:23:13,000 --> 01:23:17,240
that, "We know we had the right man,
but he got off on a technicality."

1414
01:23:17,320 --> 01:23:20,040
You know? So I had to live with that.

1415
01:23:20,560 --> 01:23:22,240
[man] Many people thought he was guilty,

1416
01:23:22,320 --> 01:23:26,360
but nobody actually heard the evidence
either for him or against him.

1417
01:23:26,440 --> 01:23:29,720
That meant that he was
in a kind of limbo for all these years.

1418
01:23:29,800 --> 01:23:32,720
Now, 15 years on, a man has been charged.

1419
01:23:32,800 --> 01:23:34,800
He's 41-year-old Robert Napper.

1420
01:23:34,880 --> 01:23:37,880
The last man to be charged,
Colin Stagg, was cleared

1421
01:23:37,960 --> 01:23:40,720
because a policewoman
had tried to entrap him.

1422
01:23:41,320 --> 01:23:45,080
[Colin] I'd never had a proper girlfriend
up to the point of 29.

1423
01:23:45,160 --> 01:23:48,320
So when I received a letter
from Lizzie James,

1424
01:23:48,400 --> 01:23:51,480
I just felt really, um… happy

1425
01:23:51,560 --> 01:23:54,040
that, um, a woman had shown
some interest in me.

1426
01:23:54,800 --> 01:24:00,320
It is clear that he is completely innocent
of any involvement in that case.

1427
01:24:00,840 --> 01:24:03,360
And I today apologize to him

1428
01:24:03,440 --> 01:24:06,840
for the mistakes that were made
in the early 1990s.

1429
01:24:08,200 --> 01:24:11,400
[Colin] I had very low self-esteem anyway
before this started.

1430
01:24:11,960 --> 01:24:15,520
This knocked me back even further,
so even deeper and deeper.

1431
01:24:17,840 --> 01:24:19,640
It did make me feel very paranoid.

1432
01:24:19,720 --> 01:24:23,720
If I would accidentally sort of look at
a woman crossing the road and that,

1433
01:24:23,800 --> 01:24:26,680
I used to immediately think,
like, "No, look away,"

1434
01:24:26,760 --> 01:24:28,640
because somebody could be watching me

1435
01:24:28,720 --> 01:24:30,840
thinking, "Hang on,
he's stalking that woman."

1436
01:24:31,520 --> 01:24:35,040
And I just thought,
"Well, you know, this is your life now."

1437
01:24:35,120 --> 01:24:39,920
"You've just got to get on with it.
You know, don't trust anybody."

1438
01:24:50,360 --> 01:24:54,360
[André] On the build-up to the trial,
one of the lead detectives said, uh,

1439
01:24:54,440 --> 01:24:57,000
"After you fly in," he said, "we'll meet."

1440
01:24:57,520 --> 01:25:01,920
There was something I needed to know
before we got to the courtroom itself.

1441
01:25:03,200 --> 01:25:06,360
Seven o'clock in the evening,
we met at Hendon Police Station.

1442
01:25:07,920 --> 01:25:09,760
He showed me into a back room.

1443
01:25:11,320 --> 01:25:15,240
We're just the two of us present,
and he pushed a dossier across the table.

1444
01:25:15,320 --> 01:25:17,800
[tense music playing]

1445
01:25:17,880 --> 01:25:20,000
What I saw in the dossier of documents

1446
01:25:20,080 --> 01:25:25,440
was just
what an utter chaotic catalog of errors

1447
01:25:25,960 --> 01:25:27,680
this whole investigation had been.

1448
01:25:30,280 --> 01:25:32,080
It was absolutely devastating.

1449
01:25:33,800 --> 01:25:36,720
It took me
all the way back to the very first day.

1450
01:25:37,520 --> 01:25:38,680
The very first call,

1451
01:25:38,760 --> 01:25:41,960
the very first news
that Rachel had been taken from us,

1452
01:25:42,040 --> 01:25:44,520
and that Alex had been through
such an ordeal.

1453
01:25:45,040 --> 01:25:46,760
We'd been trying to make sense of that

1454
01:25:47,280 --> 01:25:50,040
week after week,
month after month, year after year.

1455
01:25:51,760 --> 01:25:53,640
And all that's just exploded.

1456
01:25:55,600 --> 01:25:58,560
Because here it says
it was all preventable.

1457
01:25:59,480 --> 01:26:01,240
[sorrowful music playing]

1458
01:26:06,520 --> 01:26:08,320
[Roger] In the summer of 1989,

1459
01:26:08,400 --> 01:26:10,560
three years before
the murder of Rachel Nickell

1460
01:26:10,640 --> 01:26:13,400
and also the murders
of Samantha and Jazmine,

1461
01:26:13,480 --> 01:26:17,600
a serial rapist started attacking women,

1462
01:26:17,680 --> 01:26:19,520
some with children present,

1463
01:26:20,200 --> 01:26:22,440
on the Green Chain Walk pathway,

1464
01:26:22,520 --> 01:26:27,200
which runs through woodland
and open common land in Southeast London,

1465
01:26:28,040 --> 01:26:32,440
which is also not far
from the scene of the Bisset murders.

1466
01:26:36,440 --> 01:26:40,480
DNA had identified one suspect
for that series of rapes.

1467
01:26:43,040 --> 01:26:46,640
Two people who had seen the poster
contacted the police and said,

1468
01:26:46,720 --> 01:26:49,040
"That artist's impression

1469
01:26:49,120 --> 01:26:51,600
looks remarkably like
a guy called Robert Napper."

1470
01:26:52,960 --> 01:26:56,520
Two detectives investigating
the Green Chain Walk rapes

1471
01:26:56,600 --> 01:26:59,320
went to his, uh, known address.

1472
01:26:59,400 --> 01:27:01,840
He appeared. They both spoke to him.

1473
01:27:01,920 --> 01:27:06,240
He was, uh, told that he had been
identified as a possible suspect.

1474
01:27:06,320 --> 01:27:10,280
And he then was asked to come
and voluntarily give blood,

1475
01:27:10,360 --> 01:27:11,720
which he agreed to do.

1476
01:27:12,800 --> 01:27:14,960
But he failed
to attend the police station,

1477
01:27:15,560 --> 01:27:17,480
so they went back to his address.

1478
01:27:17,560 --> 01:27:19,640
He'd packed his bags and left.

1479
01:27:21,120 --> 01:27:22,120
He'd gone.

1480
01:27:25,040 --> 01:27:26,120
Subsequently,

1481
01:27:26,200 --> 01:27:29,160
on the grounds that he was taller

1482
01:27:29,240 --> 01:27:31,480
than the descriptions
given by the rape victims,

1483
01:27:31,560 --> 01:27:32,800
the decision was made

1484
01:27:32,880 --> 01:27:36,320
by the senior investigating officer
and his deputy

1485
01:27:36,400 --> 01:27:40,640
to exclude him as a suspect
from that inquiry.

1486
01:27:42,320 --> 01:27:44,160
So basically nothing else was done.

1487
01:27:46,680 --> 01:27:48,400
Which baffles me to this day.

1488
01:27:50,120 --> 01:27:52,200
[music fades]

1489
01:27:52,280 --> 01:27:54,680
Had Napper attended the police station,

1490
01:27:54,760 --> 01:27:57,760
as he said he would do,
and his blood sample taken,

1491
01:27:57,840 --> 01:28:02,640
he would have been then arrested
for the Green Chain Walk rapes.

1492
01:28:03,400 --> 01:28:04,840
That didn't happen, which…

1493
01:28:05,360 --> 01:28:07,320
It had catastrophic consequences.

1494
01:28:07,840 --> 01:28:09,800
[poignant music playing]

1495
01:28:09,880 --> 01:28:12,680
[André] And then
there was something in the dossier

1496
01:28:12,760 --> 01:28:15,920
that was, for me, even more devastating.

1497
01:28:17,560 --> 01:28:22,600
In September or October of 1989,
and years before Rachel was killed,

1498
01:28:22,680 --> 01:28:25,680
Robert Napper's mother
reported to the police

1499
01:28:25,760 --> 01:28:29,680
that he confessed that he'd raped a woman
on Plumstead Common.

1500
01:28:30,720 --> 01:28:32,840
But the police didn't follow it up.

1501
01:28:35,960 --> 01:28:37,400
This was a fork in the road.

1502
01:28:37,920 --> 01:28:41,320
If the police had followed up
on Robert Napper's mother's call

1503
01:28:42,000 --> 01:28:43,920
and taken a blood sample from him,

1504
01:28:44,000 --> 01:28:47,760
this could have prevented
all of the attacks that followed.

1505
01:28:48,720 --> 01:28:51,320
The attack that Alex witnessed
was preventable.

1506
01:28:51,840 --> 01:28:53,600
Rachel's death was preventable.

1507
01:28:55,640 --> 01:28:58,440
Samantha and Jazmine's deaths
were preventable.

1508
01:28:59,760 --> 01:29:03,560
If they'd done their job properly,
he would have been taken off the street.

1509
01:29:05,200 --> 01:29:08,240
[reporter 1] We watch today
as one of the great unresolved murders

1510
01:29:08,320 --> 01:29:10,280
was finally resolved.

1511
01:29:10,360 --> 01:29:13,160
[reporter 2] Today, the killer
of Rachel Nickell was found guilty

1512
01:29:13,240 --> 01:29:16,480
of stabbing her to death
on Wimbledon Common 16 years ago.

1513
01:29:16,560 --> 01:29:18,480
[laughter and chatter on video]

1514
01:29:18,560 --> 01:29:20,480
Robert Napper was led out of the cells,

1515
01:29:20,560 --> 01:29:22,840
up into the dock of Court 1
here at the Old Bailey,

1516
01:29:22,920 --> 01:29:27,120
and there, gray-faced and balding,
with Rachel Nickell's parents looking on,

1517
01:29:27,200 --> 01:29:29,880
he finally confessed
to killing their daughter.

1518
01:29:29,960 --> 01:29:32,440
[Rachel laughs] André,
I'm right up on your…

1519
01:29:33,360 --> 01:29:35,840
[Alex babbles]

1520
01:29:35,920 --> 01:29:38,440
[reporter 3] Today's confession
brings to a close

1521
01:29:38,520 --> 01:29:42,320
one of the most damning episodes
in Scotland Yard's history.

1522
01:29:43,160 --> 01:29:45,720
[reporter 4] They admitted
they could have caught Napper earlier

1523
01:29:45,800 --> 01:29:47,120
and stopped him killing.

1524
01:29:47,200 --> 01:29:49,320
If the police had done things differently,

1525
01:29:49,400 --> 01:29:52,080
Rachel Nickell
and Samantha and Jazmine Bisset

1526
01:29:52,160 --> 01:29:53,680
would not have lost their lives.

1527
01:29:53,760 --> 01:29:56,640
More could and should have been done.

1528
01:29:57,600 --> 01:29:58,880
Had more been done,

1529
01:29:58,960 --> 01:30:01,960
we would have been in a position
to have prevented this

1530
01:30:02,040 --> 01:30:05,120
and other very serious attacks by Napper.

1531
01:30:05,200 --> 01:30:07,280
[music fades]

1532
01:30:18,160 --> 01:30:20,160
[birds singing]

1533
01:30:21,680 --> 01:30:23,680
[André] We all grew up with fairy tales.

1534
01:30:25,960 --> 01:30:29,080
We all grew up with that warning
not to go into the woods.

1535
01:30:29,160 --> 01:30:32,440
The darkness,
the monsters, the… the danger.

1536
01:30:33,720 --> 01:30:35,440
But it's not a fairy tale.

1537
01:30:35,960 --> 01:30:38,000
There is true evil in this world.

1538
01:30:39,360 --> 01:30:40,960
[soft, pensive music playing]

1539
01:30:43,480 --> 01:30:47,920
I was really forced to…
to come to terms with that.

1540
01:30:49,920 --> 01:30:54,440
My greatest confusion was, uh…
was why, you know?

1541
01:30:54,520 --> 01:30:57,440
You know, the anger with God that, uh…

1542
01:30:58,600 --> 01:31:01,120
that these kind of things
can happen to good people

1543
01:31:01,200 --> 01:31:03,360
with absolutely no explanation.

1544
01:31:06,400 --> 01:31:08,080
And so I had a mission,

1545
01:31:08,160 --> 01:31:13,160
and, uh, that was to bring, you know,
Rachel's child through this

1546
01:31:13,240 --> 01:31:14,880
in the best way possible.

1547
01:31:16,920 --> 01:31:21,440
[Alex] I think with people
you live through difficulties together,

1548
01:31:21,960 --> 01:31:25,560
they either break you
and they break the relationship

1549
01:31:25,640 --> 01:31:28,720
or they make the relationship
that much stronger.

1550
01:31:29,760 --> 01:31:32,400
We were ultimately forced
to find our own closure,

1551
01:31:32,480 --> 01:31:35,480
which I think is actually a good thing.

1552
01:31:35,560 --> 01:31:37,880
And that was ultimately
the realization that,

1553
01:31:37,960 --> 01:31:40,920
you know, you have no choice
but to make peace.

1554
01:31:41,000 --> 01:31:42,000
Make peace with it.

1555
01:31:45,800 --> 01:31:50,600
My parents believed in
the infinity of the spirit.

1556
01:31:51,560 --> 01:31:56,000
That my mother would be with me always
wherever I went.

1557
01:32:01,040 --> 01:32:05,600
My father sacrificed everything for me
and for what he believed in,

1558
01:32:06,120 --> 01:32:09,400
without any guarantees
of how it would turn out.

1559
01:32:12,520 --> 01:32:17,120
He was brave enough to…
to do what he felt was right in his heart.

1560
01:32:19,320 --> 01:32:21,680
I'm forever indebted to him for that.

1561
01:32:25,560 --> 01:32:27,560
[music fades]

1562
01:32:29,680 --> 01:32:31,680
[soft, sorrowful music playing]