Credit: Netflix

The Murder of Rachel Nickell is a Netflix documentary serving as the true-crime counterpart to the three-episode limited series, The Witness, which recounts the immediate aftermath of a shocking 1992 murder case from the perspective of the victim’s partner and son.

The documentary, via exclusive archival footage, insights from police and forensic experts and interviews with family members, revisits the chilling true story of Rachel Nickell, who was murdered in London’s Wimbledon Common on July 15th, 1992, in front of her then-two-year-old son, Alex Hanscombe.

A dog walker ran into Alex when he was reportedly holding onto Nickell’s body. According to investigators, the young mom was sexually assaulted and stabbed 49 times, with Alex being the sole witness. Consequently, police requested permission from Nickell’s partner, André Hanscombe, to interrogate Alex with the assistance of a child psychologist, and possibly get some information about the perpetrator.

Since Alex was incredibly young, all he could recall was what the assailant was wearing. However, when repeated interviews led investigators to a dead end, and the child was further traumatised after a visit to the crime scene, André refused to let his son continue participating in the investigation. A composite sketch was eventually released based on Alex’s description, leading to calls from citizens that the profile indicated a local man, Colin Stagg. But was he the real killer? And where is the killer now?

Where is the killer now from The Murder of Rachel Nickell?

Although Colin Stagg was questioned, due to a lack of physical evidence tying him to the crime scene, the investigators set up an undercover operation, as seen in The Murder of Rachel Nickell, the documentary accompanying The Witness. A woman officer, pretending to belong to a local “lonely hearts club,” where members exchange letters in hopes of building a romantic connection, wrote one to Stagg. Before he knew it, Stagg was already trapped.

So, when the letters grew more violent, 13 months after Rachel Nickell’s death, Stagg was arrested. But as Stagg was waiting for trial in prison, in November 1993, Samantha Bisset and her four-year-old daughter were assaulted and killed in their Southeast London residence. Evidence collected from the crime scene pointed to Robert Napper, a local with a checkered past.

What turned out to be groundbreaking in the Nickell case is the hard-to-overlook similarities between the methodology and the victim type in the Bisset case, suggesting they could be connected.

A miscarriage of justice followed, and a judge gave the verdict that the police attempted to incriminate Stagg by “deceptive conduct of the grossest kind.” He was released, and he received a hefty paycheck in compensation, eventually also releasing a public apology. As for Napper? He was found guilty in 1995 for killing Samantha and Jazmine Bisset. Napper also confessed to three unsolved sexual assaults dating to 1989.

Napper was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and subsequently sentenced to indefinite confinement at Broadmoor. Forensics team re-analysed the Nickell case in 2002, finally leading to the discovery of DNA evidence in 2004. Napper only pleaded guilty to Nickell’s manslaughter in 2008, finding himself with an additional lifetime sentence at Broadmoor. He’s currently serving the sentence at the psychiatric hospital.