The murder of Rachel Nickell in July 1992 is one of the most notorious crimes in British history, and one of the most catastrophic miscarriages of justice British policing has ever produced. Rachel Nickell was a 23-year-old former model and devoted young mother when she was attacked and killed on Wimbledon Common in southwest London, in broad daylight, in front of her two-year-old son, who was the only witness. Under enormous public pressure, the police fixed on a local dog walker named Colin Stagg and, with no forensic evidence against him, mounted one of the most controversial undercover operations in British history, a so-called honeytrap that a judge would later condemn as deceptive conduct of the grossest kind. Colin Stagg was innocent. And while the police pursued the wrong man, the real killer, Robert Napper, remained free, and took two more lives before he was stopped. In this episode of Crime at Bedtime, we tell the full story of the murder of Rachel Nickell: the killing on the common, the disastrous profiling and the honeytrap, the collapse of the case at the Old Bailey, the terrible cost of pursuing the wrong man, and the tiny speck of DNA that finally, sixteen years later, identified the true killer and cleared an innocent man's name. We tell it with care, and we keep Rachel, and every life this failure touched, at its heart. Settle in, get comfortable, and let us tell you the story of the wrong man.
","author_name":"Jack Laurence"}