The tragic murder of Rachel Nickell—a young mother brutally stabbed to death on Wimbledon Common while her toddler watched—captured public attention for years until her true killer was finally revealed over a decade later.
Netflix’s documentary, The Murder of Rachel Nickell, revisits this heartbreaking case, but omits certain details about the wrongly accused man and the early criminal history of the actual perpetrator.
For more details, continue reading below:
On July 15, 1992, 23-year-old Nickell and her two-year-old son, Alex Hanscombe, visited Wimbledon Common for a day at the park. Their outing turned tragic when a man violently attacked Nickell, knocking her son to the ground and stabbing her over 40 times.
“It was truly the worst crime scene imaginable. It appeared to be a frenzied assault,” recalled Met Police forensic detective Ron Turnbill in the documentary. “The victim had been attacked, dragged, and stabbed 49 times around the neck and chest. She lay with her hands up, as if still trying to defend herself. It was horrific.”
“It really was the worst crime scene. It just looked like a frenzied attack,” Met Police forensic detective Ron Turnbill recalled in the documentary. “The victim had been attacked, dragged, stabbed 49 times in and around the neck and chest area and she lay with her hands sort of up in front of her face as if she was still trying to protect herself. It was monstrous.”
Nickell was just 23 when she took her son Alex Hanscombe, 2, to Wimbledon Common on July 15, 1992 to spend the day at the park. While there, a man viciously attacked the young mother, throwing Hanscombe to the ground and then stabbing her more than 40 times.
“It really was the worst crime scene. It just looked like a frenzied attack,” Met Police forensic detective Ron Turnbill recalled in the documentary. “The victim had been attacked, dragged, stabbed 49 times in and around the neck and chest area and she lay with her hands sort of up in front of her face as if she was still trying to protect herself. It was monstrous.”
Alex Hanscombe Tried to Fix His Mom in the Aftermath of the Attack
Hanscombe was found, caked in mud and blood, clinging to his mother’s lifeless body. While Nickell’s numerous wounds have been well documented, there’s one heartbreaking detail that has garnered less attention.
When Nickell’s body was discovered, she was found with a tiny piece of paper placed on her forehead, according to The Guardian. Her son had placed it there as a makeshift bandaid in the hopes of fixing his mother, as he clung to her body and cried, “Get up mummy.”
Colin Stagg Received Nearly $1 Million Settlement in Rachel Nickell Case
Less than a year after the slaying, Colin Stagg became a suspect after he allegedly resembled a sketch created from Hanscombe’s description of the killer, per the documentary.
Stagg was charged in 1993, per The Guardian, but the case against him collapsed months later after Justice Ognall condemned the police for setting a honey trap that resulted in “deceptive conduct of the grossest kind.”
Police had used an undercover officer to write Stagg sexually intimate letters under the name “Lizzie James” in a misguided effort to get him to confess to the murder, according to The Independent. Stagg—who spent a year behind bars before he was ultimately ruled out as the killer—never made any admission to link him to the crime.
In 2008, he was received a settlement of nearly $1 million for the damage the false accusation caused to his life.
At the time, his attorney Alex Tribick told The Guardian, “Colin is realistic enough to realize and accept that his name, no matter what happens, will always be synonymous with the tragic events of Rachel Nickell’s death.”
Colin Stagg Threatened Someone With an Axe After His Release From Custody
Despite his case being thrown out in court, Stagg remained under public scrutiny for years. In 1995, while in Wimbledon Common—the same park where Nickell was murdered—he pulled an axe on someone during a fight, according to The Independent.
“His life, in short, was a complete and utter misery,” his attorney Ian Ryan said at the time. “He lost his sense of reality.”
Stagg was ultimately sentenced to 12 months probation after pleading guilty to threatening behavior and possessing an offensive weapon, per The Guardian.
Samantha Bissett’s Body Was Discovered By Her Boyfriend
Nickell’s murder was linked to rapist and convicted killer Robert Napper in 2004 after DNA advances linked Napper to the scene through a crime database, according to the documentary.
At the time, Napper was already serving time in a psychiatric hospital for the 1993 murders of Samantha Bissett, 27, and her daughter Jazmine, 4. Bissett was discovered stabbed and mutilated on the couch of her home, while her young daughter had been sexually assaulted, killed, and hidden under a duvet in a bedroom, according to the documentary.
The victims were discovered by Bissett’s boyfriend Conrad Ellam, according to The Independent.
“The first thing I saw was a stain on the carpet, which turned out to be Sam’s blood,” he recalled. “I couldn’t tell so I thought Jazmine had knocked paint over.”
He then stumbled upon Bissett’s body in the living room, before going in search for her daughter.
“I couldn’t really understand it all,” he said of the murders. “I don’t know how you’re supposed to react to something like that.”
Robert Napper Attacked Another Mother Weeks Before Rachel Nickell’s Murder
Napper admitted to killing Bissett and her daughter in October 1995 on the grounds of diminished responsibility, per The Independent. That same year, he admitted to another rape and two attempted rapes.
The grisly crime was detailed in The Murder of Rachel Nickell—but Nickell and Bissett weren’t the only young mothers to have been targeted.
Just seven weeks before Nickell’s death another 22-year-old mother had been walking with her 2-year-old daughter in a stroller through southeast London when someone grabbed her from behind and put a ligature around her neck, The Guardian reported.
The woman—identified in the news outlet only as “C”—was stripped, raped and beaten as her young daughter watched.
“I asked him not to kill me,” the woman said, per The Guardian. “He didn’t stop hitting me. He put a rope around my neck and kept bashing me on the head.”
While the victim survived, Nickell and Bissett did not have the same fate.
Napper was later linked to the Green Chain rapes through DNA, The Guardian reported.
Robert Napper Was Dismissed As Rape Suspect Due to His Height
Napper had a long string of criminal history before his arrest. According to The Guardian, he grew up watching his father abuse his mother and was assaulted by a family friend during a camping trip at the age of 12.
He was arrested for the first time in 1986 for being in possession of an airgun. Not long after, he allegedly confessed to his mother that he raped a woman on Plumstead Common. Although she called the police to report the attack, police could not find any evidence and let the matter drop, the outlet reported. However, there had been a 31-year-old woman raped in front of her children by a masked intruder eight weeks earlier, per The Guardian.
Then, over a two-month period in 1992, three other women—including “C”—were attacked along Green Chain Walk.
When Napper’s neighbors suggested him as a possible suspect in the Green Chain rapes, police questioned him and asked for a blood sample, but he failed to ever provide one. He was eventually dismissed as a possible suspect because he was taller than the description provided of the attacker, per The Guardian.
Napper was also accused of stalking someone in October 1992.
During a search of his home, police found two knives, a crossbow, .22 pistol and notes describing how to restrain someone, maps and a fitness card belonging to a young woman, the outlet reported. He later pleaded guilty to possessing a firearm and ammunition.
Metropolitan Assistant Commissioner Cressida Dick said in a statement in 2010 that police planned to offer an apology to Hanscombe and his father Andre Hanscombe for not doing more to stop Napper before Nickell’s killing.
“The Met has accepted that more could, and should have been done,” Dick said per the BBC, “and had more been done we could have been in a better position to have prevented very serious attacks by Napper.”
Independent Police Complaints Commission Commissioner Rachel Cerfontyne also noted “bad decisions” and “errors” had been made in the investigation.
“Without these errors, Robert Napper could have been off the streets before he killed Rachel Nickell and the Bissets,” she said, “and before numerous women suffered violent sexual attacks at his hands.”
Robert Napper Apologized to Colin Stagg After Pleading Guilty
Napper pleaded guilty to manslaughter in connection to Nickell’s death in December 2008.
Through his attorney David Fisher, he offered Stagg an apology.
“At the time of these events, the arrest and the preliminary trial of that man, this defendant was not in a satisfactory mental state to appreciate what was going on,” Fisher said, according to The Independent. “He is now.”
Police also issued Stagg an apology.
“I apologize to him for the mistakes that were made in the early 1990s,” Metropolitan Police Assistant Commissioner John Yates said, per the outlet, “and we also recognize the huge and lasting impact that this has had on his life.”