The Legacy of Alex Hanscombe

Right in. Here in New Jersey, every school day begins with the pledge of Allegiance. And every school day, they learn a little more about our shared history so they can help build a brighter future for us all. That's how we will live up to the promise made over two hundred and fifty years ago We liberty and justice for all The twenty twenty six FIFA World Cup Meal at McDonalds is underway with one of nine legendary cups in the lineup. Christian Pulisk, David Bickham, Laignal, Ronald Digno, Tier Henri, Son Hung Min, Alfonso Davies, Santi Jermenez. And between the posts, It's grrimous! Get one of nine collectible cups with a FIFA World Cup meeal. P participating atconal' for limited time Wh while suppies last All rights reserve twenty six McDonalds FF Wor Cup twenty I'm Soti and welcome So to R reed handed episode seven hundred and fifty five. One day it actually will be that. O my dead body One day it will. One day it will, O day it will, but today iss not that day. I'm a liar and a bounder and a cad We've actually got a very sad story for you today and veryy specifically one that would have I mean, at least for me I was very aware of this always. Me too, me too so it's about time, we covered it Often perceived as a brutalist concrete jungle, London is actually the greenest city in Europe We have three thousand parks and green spaces Richmond Park is a whopping two thousand five hundred acres and they've got deer and stuff. Yeah, I mean, if you go stand down in the middle of Richmond Park, you feel like you are in the countryside but it's fucking far from her. So far. Sometimes on Sunday I'll be like,h we go to Richmond Park? and then I look up how far is and I'm like, now I don think I've actually ever been. I've been once. It is so far. Just go sound an Epping forest instead. Kind of feels Yeah similar There are cows knapping forest I've never seen a cat. Big hes with big horns. Really? I don't know they theirreland, but they're like shaggy with big horns. Oh fun. I think they're called like long horns but they're there. They're there I don't find them But if you're more interested in womombles than cows or deer The one thousand one hundred acres of Wimbledon Common might be more your speed There are very, very few podcasts on this case which I was surprised by. The amount of people who don't know what a whumble is terrifies me It doesn't know what a wor. It doesn't know what a womumble is I know. Uncle Bulara. Keep Britain tidy If you don't know what a Wble is, I can't help you. I used to have a lunchbox with the Wble.. I still have a t shirt that has great Uncle Bgara on it that says keepep ititt and tidy. It's a good message, goodood wholesome message. It is 'cause all they do is live on the common and tidy up Do thatt mean it's adorable Southwest, London home to tennis and Great Uncle Bulgaria, Wimbledon has never been particularly rough. Traditionally speaking, air in West London was always a lot cleaner, so that's where all the rich people lived and all the poor people lived in the east in the slums because that's where all of the air was much dirtier. Wimbledon always been nice And that's why Rachel Nicel took her toddler son, Alex and her Labrador Molly. So Wimbledon Common for walks rather than some of the other green spaces closer to her home a few miles away twenty three year old Rachel lived in Balham with her partner, Andre They'd met a few years before while Rachel was working as a lifeguard in Richmond. Andre Hanscomb was a former tennis coach, and they were a super attractive couple. I think if you see pictures of Rachel in particular, she is just, she's beautiful. She's beautiful and not even in a like kind of nineties way where you're like Oh she was beautiful for the night? No, no She and Andre are like love isolland material. Totally. L they are timelessly beautiful, both of them. And a year after they met, they had their son, Alex Rachel even did a bit of modeling before pursuing an English and history degree But once little Alex came along She threw herself into motherhood. She held on to aspirations of being a children's TV presenter. and she kind of does look like a children' sl doesn her. And I think with her, Andre and little Alex, who was probably the fucking cutest baby. Oh my God, imagines. There's a lot of video footage of him doing like when kids get to their age where they're just asking questions about everything There's a lot of very nineties videos because like in the nineties like everyone had handheld camcorders. what we h. Yeah. Yeah. Like, so there's a lot of footage of Alex being like, But why? It's adorable. Yeah So they were The perfect young family. On the fifteenth of july nineteen ninety two, Rachel took Alex and their dog for a walk on Wimbledon Common. like she did all the time. this time. She would never come home. About a mile away, twenty eight year old unemployed Colin Stag also took his dog for a walk on the common quite early in the morning. He did this often Mostly for hours. But that day, Colin's stag wasn't feeling too hot So he and his dog returned to their home on the Alon Eestate in Roehampton at nine twenty five AM Colllin took some painkilles and went back to bed hoping to sleep off his headache At nine hundred and forty five, Rachel, Alex and their dog Molly were walking along minding their own business They were not off the beaten track It was broad daylight They had no reason to be afraid what they didn't know. is that they were being stalked less than two hundred yards from a well frequented green area. Rachel was grabbed and ferociously attacked by a white man Ab five foot ten with dark hair He wrestled Rachel to the ground, and in an attempt to silence the young mother screams, he cut her throat so violently almost decapitated her Let me just remind you that this is before ten o'clock in the morning The frenzied attack continued and Rachel sustained forty eight stab wounds to her body. All of this happened in front of her two year old son Alex, just a couple of weeks shy of his third birthday, picked up the keys and money that had fallen out of his mother's pockets Then he took a piece of paper he had found and dabbed his mother's forehead. trying to make her better There's a lot of documentaries about the c And there's an interview with one of the police officers like first on the scene And he was like all of my years of policing That's the one that' still like makes me cry. Yeah and it's going to get worse because Alex sat there repeatedly saying Wake up, mummy In his adult life, Alex would claim that after he said this for a third time He realized that his momum wasn't coming back. Quickly because the park was so full of people. The dog walker saw the young boy covered in blood Anmar next to a woman he assumed was sunbathing. As he got closer, the dog walker realized what he was really looking at. Soon, the London Metropolitan pololice descended on the comment There were about five hundred people there that day All of them were questioned and the area was cleared. Eventually Only Rachel Nicellel's car was left in the car park And the five foot ten man with dark hair was nowhere to be found. No one had seen a blood stained man A horrified Andre was informed and a murder squad was assembled swiftly Rachel's parents were on holiday in Canada So two officers flew out there immediately to tell them what had happened before the press could Once all of Rachel's family were gathered together They held a press conference, imploring the public to come forward with any information. Like so many cases we deal with in this fair country of ours. The British press would have a part to play Can you imagine being on holiday in Canada? I know. And there's just a knock at the door. I. And it's two British bobbies being like, by the way, your daughter has been stabbed to death in front of your grandson The murder of Rachel Now swept the nation. People were terrified Could women not even walk on Wimbledon Common in broad daylight anymore And like always, that meant that the Met were under an enormous amount of pressure to find the man who had killed Rachel I feel like it happens in Britain way more than it happens in anywhere else, but this like balance of like, we need the press because we have nothing to go on The flip side of that is that the met is then under much more pressure to get it done fast. I think it is the trade off, right that they've got to make. It's like, how much do you want the press to be involved? And then when you let them in They're not going to go away. Oh yeah they ain't going anywhere. No. And then they're there and the m really don't have much to go on at all Despite the hundreds of people on the common two year old Alex was the only witness He was questioned by a child psychologist and he gave a description of the man who killed his mum. Alex told the child psychologist that the man was wearing dark trousers and a white shirt, and he was carrying a black bag that he pulled the knife from When Alex was asked to draw a picture of the man who hurt Mummy, he repeatedly stabbed the paper with a pencil The murder squad was led by Detective Inspector Keith Pedder. rememember that name He was newly promoted and he had a lot to prove But Keith Petter had a problem when it came to the Rachel al case. He had literally no evidence He had also been told, in no uncertain terms that this investigation was so high profile If he fucked it up, his career would be over And when we say that they had nothing, we mean they had nothing Forensics found nothing. The nineties were not the CSI evidence kingdom that we live in today, but there was no DNA, no stranger's blood, no murder weapon, no fibers, only the testimony. two year old boy. So samples are taken ye They just didn't the technology to test them sufficiently Eight, seven, seven, three nine, three, four, four, four eight afternoon five so f so fine. Got another provider leaving behind. Come on everybody, let's get online. thirty a month gonna blow your mind. F oers don't hesitate. L it' now before's too late eight, seven, seven, three nine, three four ly to optimum. com for details. So you know that uneasy anxious feeling you get when you think about dealing with your insurance company? Well, there's actually a term for that. It's called insoranoia And if that sounds like something you're way too familiar with, you should really think about getting NJM insurance They go to great lengths to do what's best for their policyholders. likeike providing dedicated reps whose priority is you. And that means you'll find more peace of mind with them Relieve your insuranooyia with NjM insurance by visiting njM. com for a quote today Now any of the usual suspects known in the area couldouldn't be placed on the common that morning The police had absolutely no idea therefore. where to startop whoever the assailant was Pedathal They had had the luck of the devil. Hoping that the devil would return to the scene of the crime, the Met set up sensors, linked to an alarm. and even lay a chemical on the ground that would mark any shoes that lay tread there The censors were triggered pretty quickly, but it turned out that it was just some drunk teenagers, a pretty common occurrence in Britain And that plan was swiftly abandoned, and the surveillance team was withdrawn I could have told you that. It's a public park. Yeah. And if you cordon it off, then the person's also not going to turn up and just stomp all over it because it's cordoned off Honestly, like I think drinking in public parks in London is not like Everyone does it because nobody has a fucking garden. So like it is much less common in other cities where people have bigger houses and everyone has a garden. But in London, drinking in the park isn't a particularly look down on thing to do, unless you're Mark Corrigan, and you get put on the news But make light of things no longer because Rachel's autopsy brought with it more horror It revealed that she had been sexually assaulted during the fatal attack And it was confirmed that she had been stabbed a total of forty nine times. Horrible but nothing forensics could use. So the police turned to a relatively new and much maligned discipline. forensic profighting They brought in Paul Briton, who seemed to be the only man for the job. He seems to be the only man in Britain that's ever done this He'd worked on the Wests and the abduction of Stephanie Slater, amongst loads of other cases that you would recognise the names of And Ball Britain put together the following profile Whoever had sexually assaulted and killed Rachel Now. would be a man who lived within easy walking distance of Wimbledon Common. He would live alone in a flat or a bedsit or he'd live with his parents. This man would also have a long history of failed relationships, an interest in the occult, an obsession with knives, and above all If this man wasn't caught he would inevitably strike again With all of this in mind, along with Little Alex's description of the killer and the interviews compiled from the hundreds of people on the common that day An artist's impression of the assailant was made broadcast on the British inststitution So after the program add eight hundred viewers called in, saying that they recognized this man and a few of them enough to make it notable said that this man Colin Stag I mean, imagine that. Imagine doing a crime watch appeal and then getting multiple people calling in and telling you that This is the name of the person Stagg had actually returned to the common that day that Rachel died. He had woken up feeling better and decided to take his dog out again. When he got to the common, he was stopped by an officer who explained why the park was closed Collenstag told this officer that he'd been on the common that morning. hadaven't seen anything He gave the officer his name. and then went on his way But after the crimeot showing police now wanted a word with him again The metet searched Colin's house, and they found books on the occult and allegedly a hooded cowl and a pentagram. I don't believe that But that is what they say Colin had been described by those who knew him as a loner and by the police as, quote, a very unusual individual So far then, he's ticking all of Paor Britain's boxes And based on that alone, Colinstag would very quickly become the M's prime suspect Colin freely told the police what we already know that he had been on the common, but he left at nine hundred fifteen And he was at home At the time Rachel was murdered But Colin's neighbor police that she had seen Colin head to the commment at nine hundred twenty five, which would, if she didn't have her days mixed up Place him on the common exactly the time when Rachel was attacked So Colin was held for three days at Wimbledon Police Station and questioned at length During these interrogations, Colin was shown a crime scene photo of Rachel Nel. Ash she laay dead Remember this, it's very, very important This photo was taken from the back did not show Rachel's face or crucially her hands Coolumn was also picked out of an identity parade by a woman who claimed to have seen a man acting suspiciously on the common on the dayate of Rachel's murder. Yeah, this lady is like one of the hundreds, right? And she's said, I was pushing a pram and I saw this man And I was a bit worried because I thought he was following a woman And then I lost track of him basically. And then she picks him out on an identity parade So the police looked through any previous disturbances on the common in the past few years And they found a complaint of a woman who said that a man had exposed himself to her And that man was Colin Stag He claimed that he'd been sunbathing naked, which a lot of people did in the area of the common in the nineties, apparently. I tried to look into this, right We are not a body positive nation We don't like nakedness, not very many people do it When Colin Stag talks to others, he was like, there was a particular area in the common where people would do that I tried to look it up and I came across this article about something called the Secret Swimming Club. There is apparently a group of people who swim naked on Wimbledon Commons specifically. So maybe we're more German than I thought. Who knows? It's all underground though secret. Yeah, yeah, I mean, it's probably like those fucking house buy what WhatsApp groups? I So this man Was Colin Staggen like he said, apparently, he was just sunbathing naked But the police were having none of it Coolin Stag was charged with indecent exposure His solicitor advised him to plead guilty And he got a two hundred quit fine. I think I've made it quite clear I'm very much on Col inside. This is a fair cop. He deserves this You are not allowed to be public naked in this country. and I don't believe he you aggressively exposed himself to this woman. I do believe he was nakedly sunbathing, but the problem is that's against the law Colin said that he pleaded guilty because he thought it would just all go away. and I understand why his solicitor is saying Plead guilty, you'll get a two hundred quid fine. it'll all be over But it didn't. Yes Conenstag was now on a sex pervert list This is the problem, isn't it? is that the sex offenders register There's many ways you can end up on that. Let's just public urination, public urination, public nudity And obviously sliding a little bit along the scale of like if you're eighteen and have sex with your like sixteen year old girlfriend, something like that L there's a lot of different ways that people can end up on this list. And then if you are on that list, if something does happen, you become suspect and numero. who know. Exactly. It becomes very easy to tie you with the same brush and that's exactly what happens to Colin Stag because the met used this indecent exposure charge to tick another Paul Britain box violent sexual fantasies I don't think that's the same thing But they're like, pubver, doneone, next, great And admittedly, Colin Stagg did not help himself by running out of the magistrate's court where he was convicted like a bat out of hell and flipping the vis to the press in September of nineteen ninety two, So Rachel's only been dead a couple of months And he does look menacing Crucially, the most consistent factor of identification of the man who killed Rachel McCell is that everyone says he's about five foot ten Colinstag is nowhere fucking near five foot ten And we need to remember that. I think it's interesting that the most consistent description is the one that seems to be completely ignored An indecent exposure charge was not enough to pin Colin Stag for the murder of Rachel Nickeel So the Met got their thinking caps on Very problematic thinking caps Now, before we go into all of the very, very problematic things that happened with this case, the only one sentence I'm going to utter in favor of the police and not even in favor, but in mildest defense mey mouth defense is that when you are facing a case like this of a young murdered woman where the child is there like This was such We must have been so young, but I remember this case being like full front Heline. You'll remember the reopening of it. Yes, exactly, exactly And I think that When they had nothing to go on, then you get multiple people calling in and telling you that it's Cin Stack And although they should have exercised the idea that there are many different shades of Rongen on the sex offender's register When you have nothing else Following this line of inquiry into Colinstag. Yes. Yeah, but how they do it No no, no, no, no Also no no, no to the fact that they ignore a lot of things that come in and a lot of connections are not made. They go after him and they do not pursue any other lines of inquiry. It's one of the most blinkkered, yes, cases that we've come across So finally, they get a lead, they think. In the wake of the Crime Watch broadcast A woman got in touch with the police, explaining that a couple of years previously, she had exchanged a series of letters with Colin Stag after he replied to her Lonely hearts ad in the paper Julie Pines explained to the police that she was concerned because one of these letters from Colin Stag contained a sexual fantasy. DI Keith Pedder with his job on the line, remember came up with a plan Any trap A sticky sticky honey trap. Sticky sticky, very illegal. Yes Sepeta enlisted the help of an undercover copper who had worked on the gang scene for a long time So she was very well practiced in getting information out of people trying to hide it Now, we've never found out this officer's real name. She's only ever been known as Lizzie James. And this honey trap would be called Operation Edel, which is apparently a village in Scotland.. Well we did find out from our conversation with former detective Colin Sutton a long time ago that they just apparently picked names for these operations alphabetically. So if it comes back to E, what's an E word, let's go So under this fake name, Lizzie James wrote to Coolinstack, saying that she hoped that he didn't mind her intrusion that she'd been given his address by a good friend, Julie Pines and that she wanted to get to know him she was much more open minded than Julie was Naturally, nearly thirty and extremely single. Coolinsstag wrote back Pen Power relationship began Colin Stack, if you believe him is a virgin this stage in his life What followed the initial contact from Lizzie James was a series of letters each one more explicit than the last Lizzy James would introduce more and more violent fantasies into the letters telling Colin that she wanted a real man. and when Colin didn't respond in a violent enough way, Lizzie James pushing him saying that she felt like he was being restrained and that she wanted him to quote burst and that she wanted to be completely in his power, quote, defenseless and humiliated Can we make up a siren for entrapment What does entrapment sound like? Oh, I think that covers it for honey trapp and entrapment. Thank you, Hannah People haven't come across this. They actually did turn this story into a TV show. I don't know if you've seen this. Dce Deceit, deceit on channel four I actually got like six point nine out of ten on IMDV. I started watching the first episode and I think I just wasn't in the right headspace for it and I gave up. But it's basically all about the honey trarap situation. It follows Lizzy James and it's got that actor out of Coronation Street or E Eenders. She's very good, but maybe I'll come back to watching it because this is all sorts of fun ar made this story Absolutely Insane So the inexperienced Colin, in his own words, just trying to get a shag wrote back to Lizzie James with the type of fantasies he thought that she wanted. This is like fucking The most basic shit. But evenven still, so he would give her what he thought she wanted because he's desperate for a sh, right even still he would follow up these L like, oh I'll sort you out kind of things being like, but please don't think I'm violent. Oh. He says things like I think I have an idea of what you want, Is it this, but I really don't want you to think that I'm going to hurt Like that's a very consistent theme in the letters Eventually after a series of escalating correspondence, including an audio recorded sexual fantasy by Lizzie James delivered to Colin Stag on cassette tape Colin wrote her a letter describing an open air sexual experience between the two of them on Wimbledon Common that included a knife cutting a flesh and the flowing of blood. Till this very day Keith Pedder will swear up and down that the violent themes were only introduced by Colin and never by the elusive Lizzie James But that, my friends, is Bllocks. It's also fucking provable. Yeah, because the letters are there. Yeah. and you can piece them together in which fucking order they do. Exactly. How stupid do you think we are, Keith Betder I mean, he really gets his comeuance but like The whole Lizzy James thing is some of the most fuck stuff I've ever read. Oh, it truly truly is. So after a few months of steamy letter writing and steamier cassette recordings, Lizzy James arranged to meet Colin Stag in Hyde Park. She was surrounded by more undercover officers, and she gave Colin a black hat that she said was a present But it was actually so he could be more easily identified by the officers at a distance. Maybe give a hide v this hat, H black hat. Yeah, I feel like a lot of people are wearing black hats, you know So during this in person meeting Lizzie To Cller. that she had a dogs secret She said that she had been abducted as a child And inducted into a satanic seck. What's our satanic panic noise? You're gonna make a cat noise. I just saw it in your face. You can't help yourself Sic Satonic kitty Okay, fine Thank you So whilst in this devil worship phase of her life, There you go Lizzy said that she had assisted in the sacrifice of a pregnant woman and an unborn baby Then she said, She had taken part in a massive orgy and was under the control of a man who she described to Colin as, quote, The best man ever Colin gave very little reaction. presumably Colin is standing in Hydepark wearing this black hat confused out of his fucking mind about what is going on. And the police took this lack of reaction from Colin to mean that he was completely unphazed by all of this stuff that Lizzie was telling him and that he did things like this all the time. So that's why he's not running away my. But according to Colin, he thought that she was, quote, off her head But he still wanted to get his hand away. Men will ignore a lot, just 'cause she's crazy So after the Satanic Panic meeting, the pair met a few more times And Lizzy James eventually brought up the murder of Rachel Mcu And how she wished that Colin had done it. You know She even said that she could only be with a man who had committed a murder specifically the murder of Rachel Ncell. Colin, still trying to get his leg over, explained that he was actually on the common on the day that Rachel died, but he was very sorry he hadn't killed her But he's still trying to impress Lizzie James, so he tells her that he had actually seen a crime scene photo And then, Colin imitated the way Rachel's body had been in the picture he was shown when he was interrogated, I told you to remember it He placed his hands flat on the ground to lower himself into the fetal position he had seen in that crime scene photograph during questioning the years before And as he pushed himself back up off the ground, he dusted his hands off as he would Lizzy James reported back to the Met that Colin had crossed his wrists and placed his palms together which just so happened to be how Rachel's hands were when she was found Which considering Colin had never been shown her hands in the photo, means that he must have killed her. how else would he know They got him. They thought they were like, great, this is it But in reality, they weren't even close Soon after this exchange, the press interviewed Coolinstag about his involvement in the case And he gave a very strong denial Shit, Keith Pedder thought. There was no way after such a public denial that he would confide in Lizzy James they had to re it in I don't understand The me I don't understand a lot of things about Keith Petter, but I don't understand this idea of like, oh, because he's denied it in the press, he's never gonna to tell anyone that he actually did it. I don't get that. For me, I feel like there's something that Petder isn't saying. I think it's ' you watched that denial and he's like, fuck he didn't do that. I think that's what it is. And he's like, we better just fucking cut and shut this. Yeah. I bet yeah. But cut and shot this in the worst way, which he then take it to the CPA. Yeah ye, takeake it to the C. B cut and shot this. He's like, cut and shut this boys and they're like, do you mean stop going after this man who clearly didn't do it? No, I mean take it to the CPA Jesus Christ So For the murder squad This point felt like it had been five months worth of work down the drain. with no evidence to show fororever. They were running out of time But Keith Feder and his team had to chance their lg with the CPS So they arrested Colin once again and brought him in for even more questioning Bearing in mind that between the time that they originally questioned him and now they have no new evidence besides some bizarre conversations with Lizzie James And some crime watch calls. Yes So this time, Colin was a lot less amiable. And no commented his way through everything for hours So, Keith Petder played his last ace Lizzy James walked into the interrogation room and revealed herself to her former pen pal. It's like they think they're making a nineties thriller. Literally. She was not his maybe girlfriend She was definitely never going to have sex with him, she was an undercover. However, this bombshell didn't have the desired effect. I think they thought they were going to crack him wide open The big reveal didn't break Colin He was visibly shocked, but he continued to no comment He was thinking to himself, All I've done is write some sexy letters. This is utterly absurd But somehow, with not one witness apart from a toddler No forensics, no confession, no murder weapon, and a man significantly shorter than the assailant described. This case made it all the way to the old Bailey and Colinstag was officially charged with the rape and murder. of Rachel Nical and was held on remand thirteen months when basically all the police had was forensic psychologist Paul Britton saying that Colin Stagg fit the personality type of someone who is capable of such a brutal murder A some Cryim watchatch calls. So our Cins stag was inside Police dug up Colin's gard filled with images of items being pulled from the ground and taken away in binliners Nothing ever came of those items. We don't even know what they were. Like honestly, such a prestent, like They never show up again. Yeah, yeah. It's just to be like, lookook, we better be seen to be doing something. Yeah totally. Just like dig up a bunch of shit bricks in some bag and carry it out of his front door But it was all pointless anyway. because the real murderer of Rachel Nical was still very much out there. And by august nineteen ninety three. He was preparing to strike again But no one was looking for him. No other leads were followed on the Rachel Ncell case becausecause as far as the mat were concerned, they had that man So when an unidentified knife showed up on Wimbledon Common It was squirreled away in an evidence locker Gotten about When Colin Stagg got his day at the O Bailey, the metet were on trial just as much as he was Collin's defense counsel made the very logical case. All he had done was give Lizzie James what he thought she wanted He wanted to satisfy her He had never actually had a sexual relationship before And in light of the fact that the only evidence the police actually had Was Colin Stag being a slightly odd guy case was eventually thrown out of court Judge Harry Ognell Dismiss the case on two counts Firstly, that using a psychological profile to prove identity was inherently dangerous, completely agree And secondly, that Operation Edel had used deception of the grossest kind also agree Yes. It's also not even that it's just gross and like immoral and like unethical. It's the fact that it is dangerously unsafe. Yeah because it is completely debunk. It's like beating a confession out of him and being like, well there you go And just like now The Met's case against Colin Stag collapsed Judge Ognor declared it to be improper, unfair, and inadmissible And in a matter of moments, Colin Stagg was a free man In one of the documentaries, he talks about this and he was like, no one explained to me what would happen. I thought it was going to be like send him down or you're a free man. He's like, none of that happened. They were just talking in this legal jargon that I didn't understand I was just sitting there waiting and then my lawyer turned around and winked at me. and then I realized that I was okay I think he expected it to be more of an event, like there to be more drama, but the judge was just like, this is fucked. like absolutely not Free, yes, but Colin Stagg's orrdeal was far from over Colin walked out of the old Bay to be met with screams of guilty and hang him from the people outside But still he gave a prepared statement to the press which basically says They never had anything against me. they never had any evidence and the judg has confirmed that. And the M gave a statement afterwards, declaring that they would not be looking at anyone else for the murder of Rachel Mckel which is just as good as saying they still believe that they had the right man, he just got away with it. Rachel's father told newscameras that the law may have been upheld, but justice certainly was not And DI Keith Pedder later said in an interview, I do not believe that justice was served to anyone on that particular day Peto was forced to resign And we're about to find out why In two thousand two The murder of Rachel Nicel, Investigation Cold case was reopened Technology had come a long way since the early nineties, and the DNA samples taken from Rachel's body ully kept firstly because we don't always see that happen Yeah, that're very true. and they were re examamined This time They turned up a match And guess what? was most definitely not Colin Stack These samples were a match for a then fifty five year old Robert Knaapper Paranoid schizophrenic. who was already being held indefinitely in Broadmore In nineteen ninety three, NappA had pleaded guilty to manslaughter of Sam Bette and her four year old daughter, Jasmine Plumstead He killed them sixteen months after Rachel Nical's death The only reason he was given a manslaughter charge rather than murder wasas his paranoid psychosis, meeting the threshold for diminished responsibility In order for you to be getting diminished responsibility, there has to be something really fucking wrong with you. It doesn't necessarily mean that You don't know right from wrong. It means that your ability to understand the nature of what you're doing and form rational judgment and exercise self control is substantially impaired. And I do think that is true in the case of Robert Kapper But it's very rare that happens So strap in because what you're about to hear now is pretty horrible So Jasmine, who was this four year old, remember on some Come on were discovered stabbed to death by Sam's partner Conrad Ellam. One evening Sam had answered the door to Napa And he had immediately attacked her. And what he did to her was so horrific The one of the police officers attending the scene said that it was the most gruesome sight he'd ever seen Robert Kapper had been stalking Sam for quite some time She had no curtains in her ground floor flat And she had seen him looking in on her just days before she was killed. Once Nnapper made his way into Sam's flat, he continued his frenzied attack on the young mum Napppa severed her spinal cord. He cut her open from her genitals to her chest, pulled her ribcaage apart, and exposed her internal organs and then stabbed every single one of them piece of her abdomen had been taken as a trophy and Naapa had also attempted to cut off her left leg The crime scene photographer present was never able to work again. Nappa was identified by a fingerprint that he left on an external windowsill and sent down for life but when it came to the case of Rach Ron Akel didn't just have NAppA's DNA all over their evidence samples Flecks of paint taken from Little Alex's clothes were also found to be a match for a red toolbox belonging to Nappa. It really is pretty damning stuff once they reopen it So when Nabber was questioned in Broadmore, he denied the crime The similarities and the brutality and all of the evidence were're pretty hard to ignore And so he ended up doing the same thing that he'd done before Naapa pleaded guilty to the crime but on a basis of diminished responsibility due to his paranoid schizophrenia. Robert Knapper was convicted of the manslaughter of Rachel Niel in two thousand eight And it's incredibly unlikely that he will ever get out of broadm. Yeah, he'll die in there, I think So you know that uneasy anxious feeling you get when you think about dealing with your insurance company? Well, there's actually a term for that. It's called inssureanoia And if that sounds like something you're way too familiar with, you should really think about getting NJM insurance They go to great lengths to do what's best for their policyholders by providing dedicated reps whose priority is you. 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Terms apply But that is not where our story ends The fact that Naaple was overlooked for so long and allowed to roam free for years is abbsolutely shocking allowed to Ram free and Murder Y, again And he is suspected of far more crimes, mainly a series of sexual assaults called the Green Chain rapes The Green Chain is a forty mile walk that connects a series of parks in South London And in the late eighties and early nineties, there were a series of sexual assaults, some at knifepoint along this walk But Robert Nnapper was nowhere on anyone's radar. But the Plumstead local really, really, really should have been Be because of the following reasons In nineteen eighty six, he was given a conditional discharge for a possession of an airgun In march ninety two, he'd attempted to rape a seventeen year old girl and sexually assaulted another at knnifepoint twowo months after that, he grabbed a twenty two year old mother in broad daylight as she pushed a buggy down the green chain, strangled her and raped her That is staggeringly similar to what he did to Rachel Ncow. But the link between the two cases was never made The police know the police obviously, of course we know about it, obbviously they know that he jumped out at this poor woman and raped her in front of her child. And it's, you know Mths before Rachel Nical, but no dots were ever connected. because they're too busy going after Colin Stack because he's a bit weird. Yeah because Paul Britton told them to look for somebody who was into the occult. So after this attack, Nnaappa's house was searched by police the house that he lived in with his mother, by the way And officers found an aid toZ This eight is . hvered in annotations of the local area I just said, by the way, for anybody, I don't know, do they do them outside of Britain? I don't know. It It's a big book of maps. Yeah, It's a big map book. It's a map book that's small enough fit in your car? Exactly Everyone who was like our age remembers there was one in the back of their car. Oh yeah, totally. A friend of mine who's only a couple of years older than us, when he went to Uni, he had to take an eight to Z to go to flat viewings. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They were like fully fully ubiquitous. Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. So this aidor said that they found in Nappa's house was covered in annotations of the local area. where someone could find a woman and where to follow them to The margins were filled with scribbles of stabbings and bloodshed and disturbingly a description of a woman being wpped in Klingfilm. I hate Klingfilm so much I refuse to have it in my house, actually. I can't stand the smell. I mean, it is suffocating feeling. And this is the stuff with Knapper. I'm like, okay, look, he's never going to get out of Broadmore so like fine. but I'm like he's so clearly sexually fixated so clearly premeditating his attack. It's not like he just goes out into the streets, sees a woman, loses control and attacks her. L I understand why they give him diminished responsibility because they're saying he like has this thing wrong with him, but I'm also like This man should never be allowed out of prison. No. It should never be allowed out of Broadmore because Naba is a clear cut sexual sadist They are incredibly rare, and you'd think that a profiler would know that But NnaappA was never linked to the green chain rapes And he was never under suspicion for the murder of Rachel Nicel until it was years, years, years too late even though he lived in Plumstead, was known as a stalker and had a murder eight to Z and his own mother called Plumstead Police in nineteen eighty nine and told an officer that her son had confessed to raping a woman Dismiss That's the most mental thing to me. There are rates happening. The green chain rates are happening in eighty nine And this poor woman Brave enough too call the police and be like my son has just confessed to raping a woman and I don't know what to do. Can you imagine the thought process for that mom for that woman that had to go into making that call And then to just be dismissed by the police. And to Yeah buildilt yourself up to making that call. Yeah k out man. Basically she's told that they can't match up what she said with any unsolved rape that they have on file so she's just dismissed was called to give a DNA sample twice by the Plombster pololice, but he never showed up and they never pursued him neither Hey. The police had in nineteen eighty nine, when his m literally told them what Napple was doing, Rachel Niel, and Sam and Jasmine Bisett would still be with us today bet you can understand why Keith Pedder resigned now The whole story that we just told you got a lot of people into a lot of trouble The London Mropolitan police were forced to admit that they'd made grave errors in going after Colin Stag and ignoring all other potential leads, including the phone call made by Robert Nnappers. Do you think that the M just have like a filing box filled with like different categories of apology that they have? I'm sure they do. I've got a template. I mean, I understand like being a police force of a major city like London is going to lead to errors being made. It's a very, very big police force like we've talked about before, five times is that of like an average police force in this country Also London is going to be the place where you're going to deal with a lot of crimes I understand all of those things. and people are also going to fixate on the mistakes that were made rather than like applauding you for the positive work that's done. But Jesus fucking Christ, my God, the metetropolitan police is just so incapable and has been for such a long time. If this case happened today I would believe you if you told me that this case happened not in the fucking nineties but happened today in twenty twenty three I would believe you that the Met would still be capable of fuck upery on this scale So you may be thinking that Robert Nnapper matches all of the same personality profiles that were put forward by Paul Briton And you'd be right He was a loner, he lived with his mum, he had violent sexual fantasies, and he did go on to kill again. but what is truly staggering is that profile are extraordinaire Rumored basis for TV show crracker and author of the Jigsaw Man not only worked on the Rachel Niquel case, he also worked on the Samon Jasmine Bassette case And he was consulted for a profile on the Green chain rapist I am speechless. because Just to be really, really clear in case anybody didn't understand what I just said This man Paul Britain was the consultant, forensic psychologist M Three of these fs And the man did not, seemingly once, seem to understand, connect the dots M maybe they were looking for the same. Isn't that supposed to be his whole job Sexual sladus are so rare. so rare. These are all happening in the same area. Yes, with the same MO and not once at the same time. Does he say maybe we're looking for one guy It's just mind boggling It's mind boggling And that's the thing is you know often with cases like this, you can be like, oh, it's cross jurisdiction. There are too many police forces involved. There's too many different investigators. Nobody was there to connect the dots That's not the case here. You cannot make that argument here. and how this happened is just absolutely horrifying So yes, not once did Paul Britain suggest that all of these crimes had been committed by the same person could be taken as a slight against Paul It's not, well, kind of But it's more us making the point that forensic profiling of a killer or any criminal can't be the only evidence used to charge someone with a crime. And the fact that it got as far as it did omable I know. It feels like, right, with Keith Pedder, he's under all this pressure to solve the Rachel Nicell case. He doesn't have anything to go on. So he's like, right I'm going to be this guy that cracks this case with this brand new because you know, at this point, forensic profiling is still sort of in its early days in its infancy. And it feels like he was just like, I'll be the one to crack this case and I'll do it with this forensic psychologist with his profiler. and then people will write books about me and'll I'll be I'll be the jigaw man. I'll be the jigsw. He has to write his own book. Exactly It's just so problematic The good thing is, while we are railing against Paul Britain and Keith Pedder, we do have to say that it is very rare that the forensic psychological profile of a killer is the only evidence used to pursue Beuse it's dangerous. Becauseuse it's dangerous and stupid and illogical and it makes no fucking sense So in two thousand eight, the Met formally apologized to Colinstag ruined this man's life completely destroyed him. And Keith Pd in particular, made it very known Yeah that he was just like, oh well, he just got away with it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's what he was known as. The fact that they came out and gave a public statement after the hearing and said We're not looking for anybody else in connection with this crime. just put a target on Colin Stack's back There was no humility in that No like taking anything away from what the judge had said to them. They're just like, no, it was him. We just can't prove it So yes, in two thousand eight, they formally apologizeed. probably pulling their fucking, you know decades long overdue apology thing out of their fucking file effacts and apologiz to Stag with a public statement of regret and an independent commission Hoay, we need an independent commission Claxon produced a report damning the Met and confirming that they had missed multiple opportunities to get Robert Knapper off the streets and save lives An independent report, I'm sure that the Met just shredded because that's all they seem to do with independent reports and all of the, you know suggestions that they make. for how to improve So because Robert Knapper is still in Broadmore and he's still alive We don't actually know too much about him All we know is that it's pretty likely that he was sexually abused as a child by someone very close to him in an outdoor area. His mum, concerned by his rape confession, did send him to a psychiatrist in ' eighty nine, but all that happened was that he went home and told his mum, quote, The psychiatrist thinks I'm mad Nava also has autism and a lot of the literature describes him as having aspergerss but Hans Asperger was responsible for the deaths of loads of children under the Third Reich and was a firm believer in eugenics. We'll definitely shorthand it Perhaps theerm Aspergers needs rethinking Robertnaapper's condition, so his paranoid schizophrenia and his autism didn't stop him from getting a job as a warehouseman. Forget this, the Ministry of Fucking Defence. What are they warehousing The lost ar. The Hindterbg Walt Disney's frozen court's like, Wh whyy does the Ministry of Defense need a wear I don't know. Aliens. Aliens Yeah Of course, the In summary, nobody connected the dots For years, Colin Stag was portrayed as the man who got away with murder through a legal loophole. And it ruined his life If it weren't for the advancements in forensic technology and the cold case review in two thousand two and the fact that than fuck they kept those samples He may have stayed that way Coolllin has amazingly never blamed the police Not publicly anyway He says that he knows that they were just doing their job Colin, I think you're be very, very gracious. I know because they weren't doing their job. I really like him. I think he calms down a lot as he gets older, but I do think he probably was a bit of a misfit and a bit of a hell raiser. but You know, he's middle aged now and he's so just like, you know. Yeah. and just being like A weird guy in your thirties is a far cry from being somebody who's gonna stab a woman to death and rape her in front of their two year old child He has, however, blamed Paul Britain because Colin thought that he was responsible for the undercover operation So the whole honey trap situation. Until that is, the two of them made a documentary together in the two thousands, where Colin decided that Paul Britton was actually quite a nice man. Por Britain, on the other hand, has never blamed himself for Colin's plight He denies that he had anything to do with the Lizzie James letters. and as she says that had the police listened to him when he consulted on the Green Chain rapes, neither Samantha Bissette, nor Rachel Nickeel would have died. Okay. I don't want to turn this into a poor Britain bashing. No But I don't know how to kn He basically says, all I was doing was my job and They didn't listen to me anyway and I didn't write the letters. I only saw them after they had been sent probablyably true I do think he has been villainized because it's easier than the met being like, we're bad at our jole. Yeah, I think the problem with this case is that it's Paul Britain doing his isolated part. Yeah. Yeah yeah. And then there just seemingly being no checks and balances in place for people being like, okay, we have this piece of evidence, we have these eyewitnesses, we have this testimony, we have X, Y, Z.. What is the corroborating evidence that points to it being this, man, that we are going to go full force behind? And this bat shit crazy fucking undercover operation, if you can even call it that It's a stitcher. That's what it is, pure and simple, and the blame, in my opinion, falls firmly at the feet of Keith Pedder He did not have to use Paul Britain's profile and use that as the only piece of information he had to go after this man that they had nothing else against. So Paul Britain, he's doing what he's doing. Should he have been able to connect the dots between these three different cases? You would say yes, but also everybody makes mistakes The blame here in my opinion is Keith because he should have known better and he should have done better And poor Britain claims to have told the Met that the green chain rapist would be local on their records, nototiced by neighbourors would have been mentioned at police briefings and he claims that they ignored him But again, like these points that Paul Britain is making are pretty general. Yeah I haven't read his book, Hands up. But the sort of snippets that I have read He seems to use that as a There's like a bit in his book who's like, you know, I often wonder whether I should have gone back and knocked down their door and be like, no, you really need to look at this And he's right, Robert Navill is all of those things But you also didn't realize that it was the same guy, you know? L I think he uses it as a bit of a smokes screen. but like, you know, I'm not a forensic psychologist, mayaybe I'm missing the big picture but like It seems to me a little bit like a Well like I got that right? L so do you know what I mean? Yeah I think the more grievous thing is the fact that this woman rings them and tells them that she thinks her son is a rapist and The police don't look into him. and when they ask him to come in and give a DNA sample and he doesn't, they don't pursue that. Like they should know that for a mother to make that kind of call, they should have taken it a bit more seriously But who cares what we think we are morons. Luckily for Britain, he was exonerated in two thousand two after an eight year inquiry by the British Psychological Society so at least someone somewhere is taking something seriously Britain still advises the police and maintains to this day that Pedet and his team were not mavericks disobeying direct orders. Operation Edzell was not a secret. The whole letter writing operation was approved at the highest possible level. And I don't necessarily think that that's not true. No, I think that's true I think it's very easy to scapegoat either of them is that the Met knew what was happening. This is the thing. I think this comes back to being an institutional problem where the Met are just like, lookook, we're under a lot of pressure to sol this case. cllose this case at any cost. Yeah is like the fucking narrative of this story. whichich we've seen many a time before and it would not be a London M case without an appearance from our ultimate fave for restet a dit Crescit crawled out of the woodwork to make an apology to Alex and Andre Hanscom in two thousand nine. She apologized for the met, not investigating Nappa properly after his mum reported him for literally raping someone And then for what was termed as a catalog of bad decisions Pida also made sure to stress police are quite different today. She says that a lot or she did say when she was chief commiss Doo. And this is fun, no one was ever reprimanded in the police over Operation Ezel because by the time the commission rolled around, most of the major players in Operation were either retired or dead, which is quite. convenient Queen Carvania stood haloed by the morning sun. Army hung on her every word. My champions, I have sold my chariot on Carvana. 'Twas a lovely SUV, an inexplicably queenly offer. They're even coming to the castle to collect it Tonight, we feast An offer you can feast on. seell your car today on Carvana. Pick up fees, many Eventually, Colin Stag was awarded over seven hundred thousand pounds in compensation, a record at the time. a small price for what he'd lost. Lizzy James also got a one hundred thousand pounds in compensation for some reason. I've been thinking about this. I was thinking about this in the shower this morning I think it's because Not that she was put in danger, but that she was ordered by senior people to do something that was completely illegal I think. And also she it probably ruined her career like Yeah. And that's why she's got a fake name and like I don't know, I don't know, but she I'm not sure. I mean, yeah, all we can do is the eyize on that because I personally don't really have that much sympathy for her because she's not a rookie that they pull out of like the police accademy and they're like, Hey, you, you hate Clarice. Yeah, yeah. You look like Rachel Niel because they do. they pick her because she doesn does look like Rachel. She looks like Rachel Nichel and they're like, that's obviously his type. You're going go and sduce etceta, etceter It's not like they sort of force her into doing this. She was an experienced undercover police officer. who should have known. And yes, I'm not saying it's easy to stand up to your boss or, you know to more senior people than you, especially in an organization like the Met sensation strikes me as odd. Yeah. Mbe maybe there's something we don't know. So Robert Nepper is still in Broadmore And it is thought that he is guilty of at least one hundred and six rapes, exposures and sexual offenses So he's never admitted anything. His mom has burned every picture of him