Desperate to charge her murderer, anyone it seems, the police fixated on Colin Stagg, who, to them appeared to fit the photokit. He lived in the area, a noticeable drifter and they needed to charge someone urgently to stem the sense of national outrage at the killing of this innocent woman. He was selected as the murderer soon afterwards and, aided and abetted by a vengeful press, they took Stagg's life apart. Everything about him was put under the microscope to 'prove', show and demonstrate why he was the killer. His name became synonymous with Rachel's. But Colin Stagg, from the moment he was arrested, kept saying he was innocent, and said it persistently, even when he was dogged in his daily life by TV cameras expecting some kind of confession. In that climate of outrage, no one was listening.
He had been charged because of two things: an undercover policewoman, working in a kind of 'honeytrap' investigation to lure a confession from him, and an 'expert' psychologist who 'profiled' Stagg as the likely murderer. Stagg served 13 months in prison awaiting trial and when the prosecution brought its case against him in court, it was thankfully thrown out by a little known judge, Mr Justice Ognall. As Boris Johnson wrote in 2006, Stagg was the subject of a trial by the press, a kind of "irrational media hysteria".
Boris continued: "The awfulness of the killing provoked the press to paroxysms of outrage. So deafening were the calls for retribution that the police were driven quite out of their wits. There being no forensic evidence, they were forced to look for likely suspects, and in Colin Stagg they found a man who ideally suited the tabloid agenda. He was runtish and rat-like, and yet also into body-building. He lived on his own. He was given to wearing dodgy-looking singlets and he was a devotee of the ancient pagan religion called Wicca. He had a picture of the Cerne Abbas giant inscribed on a black-painted wall in his flat. Someone said that they had seen him, or a man very like him, on the common on the morning of the murder - and that was enough."
In short, he was different from the norm and difference always means fear. He didn't stand a chance of being acquitted under those circumstances.
A Very Brave Judge
Yet, Justice Ognall bravely stood up to all the media and parliamentary bullies baying for blood, showing his own "audacity and common sense", and threw out Stagg's case. He had been lured by the undercover policewoman to admit things he never did because he fancied her and wanted to please her, and there was not much else that was real evidence. Yet the media hounded Stagg for years afterwards, always hinting that he was the killer who got away! Even though a newspaper paid him £43000 ($80,000) to take a lie detector test, which he passed, they still kept at him in the absence of anyone else being charged.
However, while Stagg was banged up and undergoing trial by media, Robert Napper was free, on the loose and on to his next victim in Scotland. Even when his own mother reported him to the police for a confession of rape from him, nothing happened. Just like Rachel, Samantha Bissett was young, pretty and had a four year old daughter, Jazmine. Napper kept stalking her for a while, watching her every move, then in November of 1993, armed with three knives, he crept into her basement flat and stabbed her 8 times, then cut her up and dismembered her body. As if that wasn't enough, he raped and smothered her four year old daughter with a pillow.
He was later caught and admitted manslaughter under diminished responsibility, along with two other rapes. Psychiatrists believed Napper had paranoid schizophrenia and Asperger's syndrome at the time of the killing. He was sent to Broadmoor high security hospital in 1995 where he stayed until the development of advanced DNA testing. It revealed that the tiny particle of DNA, which was swabbed from Rachel Nickell's body, did match his, and was confirmed in 2004. Despite being interviewed by police a few times since, Napper never admitted anything, until yesterday: December 18, 2008. He confessed to the killing of Rachel Nickell, 16 years after he callously mutilated her. This sad case has led to significant changes in how the police approach a murder enquiry, but it came too late to save Rachel or Samantha.
In August 2008, Colin Stagg was awarded over £700,000 ($1,250,000) for his false accusation and imprisonment, but I don't think any amount of money could make up for at least 12 years of hell that man went through, especially as he wasn't officially acquitted until 2006. He was never out of the papers which felt it their duty to play judge and jury.
What is so tragic about this case is that there are many people worldwide being accused of crimes they did not commit because of convenience, expediency and the desire for a handy scapegoat, while the real criminals are left free to continue in the same vein. Troy Davis, who has a pending execution over his head in Georgia, America, comes to mind. He has always maintained his innocence, yet regardless of the new developments with the witnesses, he is still being treated sceptically. The public do not deserve scapegoats for crimes, because they are still at the mercy of the real perpetrators. The public can only feel safe when the actual wrongdoers are caught and genuine justice has been applied.
As Boris aptly puts it: "Whom shall the media blame? The tabloids should realise that they are very largely at fault for the disaster. They decided not so much that Stagg had done it, but that this was what their readers wanted to hear, and they hammered away at it so vociferously that the criminal justice system was driven almost to insanity.
The Stagg case is a perfect example of why we should not allow ourselves to be ruled by tabloid editors. The Daily Mail's MMR panic has brought us an increase in measles, and the general panic over paedophiles has all but driven men from primary school classrooms. It needs brave politicians to resist this kind of nonsense, and brave judges to tell the media when they are wrong."
Indeed. Otherwise we simply reap what we sow.
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