Colin Stagg is working at Tesco after £700,000 payout for being wrongly accused of Rachel Nickell’s murder
THE man wrongly accused of killing Rachel Nickell is reportedly working at a Tesco store years after picking up a £700,000 payout.
Colin Stagg was falsely charged with murdering the young mum on Wimbledon Common in the summer of 1992.
The former model, 23, was walking with her dog Molly and two-year-old son Alexander when she was attacked and stabbed 49 times.
The young child was later found clinging to his mum's blood-soaked body pleading for her to wake up.
Stagg was later the target of a honey trap operation involving a blonde undercover cop tasked with getting him to "confess" to a murder he did not commit.
He never admitted to killing Rachel, however, and even though there was no worthwhile evidence against him, police still charged him with her murder.
The case was eventually thrown out at the Old Bailey in 1994 by Mr Justice Ognall, who refused to put the undercover officer's evidence before a jury.
He said police had shown "excessive zeal" and had tried to incriminate a suspect by "deceptive conduct of the grossest kind".
However, by that time Stagg, how 57, had spent a year in custody awaiting trial.
In 2008, he was awarded a then-record £706,000 compensation from the Home Office, which he described as "like winning the lottery".
However, nearly a decade later he said he spent most of the money on cars, holidays, charity donations and bad investments, .
He reportedly said at the time: "I spent like there was no tomorrow… and I was earning two or three grand a month in interest.
"I was making up for lost time doing the things I should’ve done in my youth if it hadn’t been blighted by Rachel’s murder."
It's said he now lives in semi-detached house in the South East with his wife and her four grown up children not far from the Tesco Express store where he works on the tills and as a warehouseman.
His colleagues are aware of his false links to the Nickell investigation, reports the Daily Mail.
A friend reportedly said: "Sometimes customers recognise him and can’t figure out where they’ve seen him."
When approached by the Mail for comment, Stagg is said to have "politely declined to answer questions."
The new images of Stagg emerged on the eve of a new four-part Channel 4 drama about how the undercover cop - codenamed Lizzie James - tried to entice him into a "confession."
It's reported Stagg is "understood to have a contract" with the makers of the new documentary.
In 2008 serial rapist and double killer Robert Napper was convicted of the manslaughter of Rachel after a DNA breakthrough.
Napper had been a patient at Broadmoor Hospital for more than ten years suffering from paranoid schizophrenia and Asperger's.
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He had been convicted of killing Samantha Bisset and her four-year-old daughter Jazmine in November 1993 - 16 months after Rachel was slain.
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On 18 December 2008, Napper pleaded guilty to the manslaughter of Rachel on the grounds of diminished responsibility.
After Robert Napper was convicted over the killing, Scotland Yard issued an apology to Stagg.