After the savage murder of Rachel Nickell in July 1992, authorities launched a massive search that turned up a key suspect: Colin Stagg. Unfortunately, the police had no direct physical evidence linking Colin to the murder. Convinced they had their man, the authorities asked undercover cop Lizzie James to fake a relationship with Colin and get him to confess.
Despite Lizzie’s best efforts, Colin refused to confess. However, the police charged him with murder, but after only four days of trial, the judge dismissed the suit, calling the operation “deceptive conduct of the grossest kind.” The operation formed the subject of Channel 4’s Deception.
Colin lives with his wife Diane and their four children in the South East of England.
Colin spent his £706,000 compensation and currently works at Tesco
Rebecca Naden/Getty Images
Perhaps due to the grizzled nature of Rachel’s murder, the authorities felt added pressure to hold someone accountable for it. However, she does not excuse her attempts to coax a confession out of him.
“There will always be people who think I had something to do with the murder, and nothing I can do will convince them otherwise,” Colin lamented. “I got so used to people coming up to me and yelling ‘nonce’ at me that I started living like a fortress in my head.”
In 2008, a DNA breakthrough uncovered Robert Napper as the real killer. Robert was charged with the rape and sexual assault of 70 women and the murder of three people. In 1995, a judge sentenced him to life in prison for his crimes.
“By any measure, you are a very dangerous man,” the judge told Napper. Colin and Napper shared a striking resemblance during Rachel’s murder and the subsequent murder investigation.
Napper’s conviction helped change the public’s perception of Colin. “Now people are also coming up and saying sorry for thinking the worst of me,” Colin said. “But there are still a lot of people who need to apologize. I have been terribly wronged.”
Stagg sued the police for damages totaling £1 million, but was awarded £706,000 by the court. The authorities also apologized for their treatment of Colin.
Stagg wasted no time in reviewing his fortune. By The Daily Mail, Colin spent the money on cars, vacations, clothes, charitable donations, and bad investments. “I spent like there was no tomorrow… and I was earning two or three thousand a month in interest,” Colin said.
“I was making up for lost time by doing something I should have done in my youth if Rachel’s murder hadn’t ruined me.”
Colin works at Tesco Express as a store clerk and cashier in 2021. He lives with his wife and four adult children in the South East of England.
Colin has forgiven the police for trying to frame him for Rachel’s murder
Colin Stagg lives in relative anonymity, but every once in a while a client recognizes him. “Sometimes customers recognize it and don’t know where they’ve seen it,” said a friend. The Daily Mail.
The friend added that Colin has walked away from the case. “He recovered a long time ago,” the friend said. He echoed Stagg’s earlier statements about forgiving the police. Stagg said (by Sun):
“I really don’t hold a grudge against the police anymore. Now I recognize Lizzie and [Det. Insp. Keith] peddler [who led the investigation] they were just doing their job. I was just in the wrong place at the time.”
Lizzie James contacted Colin by letter, claiming to be interested in his sexual desires. Although she was suspicious of James’s intentions, Colin responded and began a correspondence that would last for five months.
Several months later, a frustrated Lizzie admitted to having her best sex after participating in a satanic murder. This desperate attempt to get a confession from Colin failed when Stagg, rebuffed, maintained that all life was sacred.
Thinking he would lose Lizzie, Stagg lied about murdering someone in a forest. Lizzie finally gave an ultimatum: confess or leave. “If only you had committed the murder on Wimbledon Common,” Lizzie said. “If only you had killed her, she would be fine.”
“I’m terribly sorry, but I haven’t,” Colin replied. The police ultimately charged Stagg with woefully insufficient evidence, and with the judge unwilling to accept evidence of Lizzie’s operation, the case collapsed prematurely.
Stagg’s reprieve from the Metropolitan Police is admirable, given that they took advantage of his sexual inexperience and emotional vulnerability to get him.
Categories: Biography
Source: vcmp.edu.vn