‘Gross errors of judgement’

Last week, the IPCC published its damning report of the investigation by the Metropolitan Police Service into the murder of Rachel Nickell in July 1992. It has taken 18 years for an authoritative and comprehensive statement of the failures to be made, although a private apology was offered to Rachel’s partner, Andre Hanscombe, in 2008. Simon McKay, of McKay Law Solicitors & Advocates of Leeds, examines the findings.

It was a case of incalculable tragedy exacerbated by circumstances that are barely conceivable in a modern policing era. Rachel Nickell was viciously and repeatedly stabbed and sexually assaulted while walking with her young son and their dog on Wimbledon Common on a warm summer’s morning. Her partially-clothed body was discovered by a passer-by shortly afterwards. Colin Stagg was quickly identified as a suspect, although there was little, if any, evidence suggesting he was involved.

An investigation followed in the wake of massive public interest. Rachel Nickell was a former model and the grim details of her savage murder captured the mass media’s collective imagination.
An undercover operation was conceived by the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) with the assistance of Paul Britten, a self-styled ‘Cracker’ who felt his experience as a psychologist qualified him to direct and assist the investigation. He later celebrated his contribution in a book entitled The Jigsaw Man, although has recently asserted he told the police Stagg was not their man.

The undercover operation was a classic ‘honey trap’; a policewoman befriended the sexually-inexperienced Stagg with the promise of intercourse if he confessed to the murder. A murder charge followed and Stagg spent a year on remand, labelled as one of the country’s most notorious killers. But in 1994, Mr Justice Ognall, having heard details of the police operation, acquitted Stagg, describing the activities of the police as “a deception of the grossest kind”. Both Stagg and Mr Justice Ognall subsequently earned the enmity of the British press.

Coincidence

It was in fact a remarkable coincidence that on Wimbledon Common that day was a man who looked uncannily like Stagg and who between August 1989 and May 1992 had been responsible for a series of increasingly violent sexual offences, known because of where they had occurred as the Green Chain rapes.

Robert Napper was later arrested for these offences and when his flat was searched the police recovered maps of the commons of London, as well as a collection of knives.

His mother informed the police that she thought her son may be responsible but despite this he was not arrested.

In November 1993, he broke into the flat of single mother Samantha Bisset and sexually assaulted her and her young daughter Jazmine before murdering both of them. Mr Britten, in his book, expressly argued that Napper could not have been responsible for Rachel Nickell’s murder as the “profile” did not fit.

The Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) report investigated a number of areas where the investigations into Rachel Nickell’s murder went wrong.

There were a variety of mistakes and faults committed by the MPS, not just in relation to the murder of Rachel Nickell but also the “connecting” events. These were described by Rachel Cerfontyne, IPCC Commissioner, as “gross errors of judgement” in the early stages which led to missed opportunities to take Napper off the streets before he killed Rachel Nickell and abused others.

The most notable failings, according to the IPCC, of the MPS included the failure to make sufficient investigations into Napper’s mother’s report to the police regarding his confession to her that he raped a woman on Plumstead common. The police have, in fact, no record of this call, although it is accepted that it was made and Napper was not investigated further and his mother was not requested to give a formal statement.

The IPCC concluded