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Like, Seriously? The Murder of Rachel Nickell · Dead Serious

• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to Dead Serious, a true crime podcast.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: I'm your host, James Murray.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: This podcast contains mature themes.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: Your discretion is advised.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_01: Back to Dead Serious.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_01: This is like seriously the mini sode where I take something I watched or read, so maybe a trial, a documentary, a true crime book, and we discuss it.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_01: And I tell you exactly what I thought about it, whether or not that was requested.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_01: Because I love talking about things that I watch and getting other perspectives.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_01: So here we are.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_01: How are you guys doing?
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_01: What is happening?
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_01: I am so excited that we are creeping closer and closer to Halloween, my favorite time of the year.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_01: I'm excited for new horror movies and shows.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_01: It just kind of brings me peace.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_01: Today we're going to talk about the documentary on Netflix, The Murder of Rachel Nickel.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_01: This coincided with the airing of The Witness, a three-part dramatized series about the same case.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_01: I have not watched that one yet.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_01: And there's also another one on Prime called The Wimbledon Killer.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_01: And I'll link all of that in the show notes.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_01: And if you've already watched the drama and cried into your couch cushions, check out the documentary with the actual victims.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_01: Rachel Nikal was 23 years old.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_01: She lived in southwest London with her partner, Andre Hanscombe, and their two-year-old son Alex.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_01: She was described as warm, funny, and completely devoted to that little boy.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_01: On the morning of July 15th, 1992, Rachel and Alex waved Andre off to work and later set out for Wimbledon Common, a 1,140-acre public green space in London with their dog, Ollie.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_01: It was what the two often did, and it was a beautiful day.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_01: At some point that morning, while on their walk, a stranger attacked Rachel.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_01: She was sexually assaulted and stabbed 49 times.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_01: All of this while her two-year-old son watched in horror.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_01: A passerby walking their own dog ended up finding Alex, who was covered in dirt and blood, holding onto his mother.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_01: This was truly one of the most heartbreaking things to hear in this whole episode.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_01: Andre called home a couple of hours later to check in, and police answered the phone.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_01: He asked where Rachel was, and they told him to come home.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_01: And he immediately knew something was not good, not right.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_01: And he demanded to know if Rachel was okay.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_01: But the officer was like, just come home.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_01: So he knew.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_01: Now you would think that a murder in broad daylight in a busy public park with a living witness would be the kind of case police could actually solve, but you would be wrong.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_01: Alex was just two years old.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_01: Police asked Andre for permission to have a child psychiatrist help them interview him.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_01: Alex could remember a few things about what the man was wearing, but that was about it.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_01: You know, he was only two.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_01: After repeated interviews and a return visit to the scene that clearly traumatized him further.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_01: Andre stopped allowing Alex to be a part of the investigation.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_01: And honestly, good for him, that poor child.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_01: Investigators brought in a forensic psychologist named Paul Britton to build a psychological profile of the killer.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_01: Between that profile and a composite sketch, the public was invited to call in with names.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_01: And the public sure did.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_01: And several callers pointed to the same man, Colin Stagg, a local who lived near the common and regularly walked his own dog over there.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_01: Was there any evidence, any physical evidence linking Colin Stag to the crime scene?
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_01: No.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_01: Was that going to stop anybody?
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_01: Also, no.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_01: Now the police could not charge Stag with anything, so they come up with this, like a honeypot plan.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_01: An undercover female officer using the name Lizzie James started writing to him through a lonely hearts club he had joined.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_01: The idea was that she would build a romantic relationship with him through letters, encourage him to share his fantasies, and eventually get him to confess.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_01: This is the part of the documentary where I just basically did my like seriously, this is what they're gonna do.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_01: So let us review.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_01: The Metropolitan Police took a lonely man with no connection to the crime, invented a woman who was interested in him, led the conversation toward violence, and then treated whatever he wrote back as evidence of murder.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_01: Right, okay, sure.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_01: The letters did become violent and sexual, but what they never became was a confession.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_01: At no point did he admit to killing Rachel Nikel, but they arrested him anyway in August of 1993, about 13 months after the murders.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, like seriously, you you built a fake girlfriend and she still could not get him to say he did it.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_01: At some point, that is not a clue that he is clever.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_01: That is a clue that he did not do it.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_01: Meanwhile, the actual killer, and this is where it's just ah gosh, super heartbreaking.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_01: Again, that this whole film was, but when you hear how this could have been prevented, in November of 1993, while Colin Stagg was sitting in a custody uh waiting for trial, a young mother named Samantha Bissett and her four-year-old daughter Jasmine were murdered and sexually assaulted in their home in Southeast London.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_01: Forensic evidence, thankfully, was able to get a match, and that pointed to a man named Robert Knapper.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_01: Knapper had a criminal history, and the similarities between the Bissett murders and Rachel Nickel's murders were obvious enough that detectives on the Bissett case asked the Nickel team whether the two could be connected.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_01: Hold on to that one.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_01: In September 1994, Colin Stagg's case went before a judge who looked at the honeypot operation and threw the evidence out.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_01: He described the police tactics as deceptive conduct of the grossest kind.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_01: With the letters gone, the prosecution had nothing, and the case collapsed.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_01: Now, you might think that would be the moment everyone would go back to the drawing board start over, but instead the police leadership publicly stood by their officers, which the public heard loud and clear as, you know, he did it and he just got away with it.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_01: Stagg spent roughly the next 15 years living under that cloud, treated by much of the country as a murderer who had slipped through a loophole.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_01: Meanwhile, in 1995, Robert Knapper pleaded guilty to the manslaughter of Samantha and Jasmine Bassett.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_01: He also admitted to earlier sexual attacks along the Green Chain Walk in Southeast London.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_01: He was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and sent indefinitely to Broadmoor, a secure psychiatric hospital.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_01: And the Rachel McKell case basically goes cold.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_01: In 2002, a cold case team would reopen the file.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_01: Forensic scientists, including Dr.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_01: Angela Gallup, who is interviewed in a documentary, spent about two years developing a way to amplify the tiny amounts of DNA recovered from Rachel's body and clothing.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_01: By December 2004, the answer came back.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_01: And yes, it was Robert Knapper.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_01: In December of 2008, Knapper pleaded guilty to Rachel's manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility and was given another indefinite hospital order at Broadmoor, where he remains.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_01: I don't agree with that, but that's what happened.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_01: That same year, Colin Stagg received 756,000 pounds in compensation, and the Metropolitan Police formally apologized to him and acknowledged that he was completely innocent.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_01: 16 years.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_01: It took 16 years for Andre and Alex to get an answer and for an innocent man to get his name.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't know anything about this story.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_01: And it was just so raw, so emotional.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_01: It was so sad.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_01: I liked that it centered around the family.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_01: Like Alex and Andre both sat down for new interviews.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_01: And Alex is an adult now.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, hearing him speak about his mother and about what his father gave up to raise him is just, it's so emotional.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_01: And after the murder, the two of them moved to France to escape the press and later to Spain.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_01: Andre's grief, though, it's it's raw even now, more than 30 years later.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_01: Like you feel the pain when he talks about Rachel.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_01: They also have uh Colin Stagg is interviewed and he talks about the years the accusation stole from him, because he was also a victim in this investigation as well.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_01: And the detectives, forensic specialists, and Paul Burton himself all appear.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_01: So got all the police on record, and you get to watch people explain decisions that in hindsight look indefensible.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_01: And then you can kind of decide for yourself how much accountability are they actually taking in this.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't feel like it exploited anything.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_01: It was it's very somber uh feeling.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_01: Now, moments where I just again, you know, stepped away, were the the honeypot or the the honey trap.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_01: I know I kind of ranted about it, but again, it's like, God, a real police force spent real money and real months running a fake romance, the coke fantasies out of a man with no evidence against him.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_01: Like, seriously, you're really going to do that?
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_01: Like, this is what's happening?
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_01: Just wild.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_01: And then the they missed, you know, detectives on the Bissette case raised the possibility of a link to Rachel's murder.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_01: And the documentary makes it clearer, it took years for anyone to seriously follow that, you know, while an innocent man just sat in custody.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_01: And I hate that with the you know, police departments where it's like, oh, this is my case.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_01: No, it's my case.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_01: I can't, you know, help you.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_01: I won't help you.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_01: It's like just solve the damn case.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_01: And when you find out, you know, about Napper, about, you know, he could have been taken off the streets earlier, that's very infuriating.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_01: Alex Hanscombe has said the police failed to take Knapper off the streets despite dozens of earlier attacks.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_01: And if even part of that is true, which I imagine it is, Rachel, Samantha, and Jasmine, they didn't have to die.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_01: And that is a how is anyone still employed moment?
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_01: Then the public statement after the collapse.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_01: Standing by the investigation after a judge called it gross deception, did not protect anyone.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_01: It just made sure Collenstag paid for the police's mistakes for another decade and a half.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_01: The verdict on this one, I definitely recommend it's worth your time.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_01: It's not easy, it's not supposed to be, but it's well done and it holds the right people to account while giving the family the space to tell their story.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_01: And if you watched The Witness, I would watch this one next.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_01: And even better, if you haven't watched either, definitely start with a documentary.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_01: So you, you know, you know what is real before the dramatization gets filled in.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_01: If you want to go even deeper, Alex wrote a memoir called Letting Go, which is actually what The Witness is based on.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_01: And Andre wrote a book called The Last Thursday in July.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_01: At the end of the day, Rachel McHell was just 23 years old.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_01: She was a mother, a partner, and a person who went for a walk with her son on a sunny morning.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_01: Just a normal human thing to do.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's the best way to remember her.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_01: That's going to be it for this Like Seriously minisode.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_01: If you have watched the documentary, I want to hear what made you yell at your screen.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_01: You can find me on socials at dead underscore serious pod.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_01: You can subscribe on YouTube and please share.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_01: Until next time, stay curious, stay skeptical.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_01: And remember, if you're asking, like seriously, you're probably not the only one.