Rachel Nickell’s murder shocked the nation; a young mother stabbed to death in a frenzied attack in broad daylight on Wimbledon Common in front of her two-year-old son. For years, Colin Stagg, an innocent man, was accused of the killing, set up to take the rap in a shameful “honeytrap” orchestrated by the Metropolitan Police.
Now 30 years on from the murder, Paul Britton, the forensic psychologist who assisted detectives in the inquiry, has finally come face to face with the man wrongly identified and vilified as her killer.
Their extraordinary meeting, filmed by documentary makers, shows two men who had been on opposite sides of the criminal investigation shaking hands. Mr Stagg tells Mr Britton that “it feels a bit strange” to finally be meeting the psychologist who had been involved in the highly criticised police investigation.
Mr Britton, 76, responds by way of explanation: “You must have heard some stories. You must have been told various yarns that end up giving you a particular way of seeing events… Well it caused both you and me some difficulty.”
Mr Britton said he wanted to meet Mr Stagg and break his silence, deciding that “it was time to put it straight”.
After the meeting, Mr Stagg, aged 59 and a registered carer, told the Telegraph he now saw the psychologist, once his adversary, as “more of a human being”. But he lamented the fact that Mr Britton had taken so long to jump to his defence after years of being wrongly under suspicion. Mr Britton explained that he had been prevented from commenting at the time at the request of the police.
