I watched my mum Rachel Nickell savagely murdered 30 years ago – ‘racist’ cops bungled the case now they must pay
THE family of 1992 Wimbledon Common murder victim Rachel Nickell are considering taking landmark legal action against the Met Police, The Sun can reveal.
Her son Alex Hanscombe — not even three when he was the only witness to his mum being savagely stabbed to death — and her partner Andre believe new developments make it time to act following a “catalogue of errors” in the original investigation.
In an exclusive interview marking 30 years since the dancer’s death in South West London, the pair say police could have jailed killer Robert Napper YEARS before he murdered Rachel.
They claim that if bungling cops had acted on a tip-off from the killer’s own mother in 1989 then Rachel would still be here today.
Alex, 33, said: “Things don’t go away just because you sweep them under the rug.
“In 2008 the police admitted they made mistakes and should have sent Napper to prison before he killed my mother but they were not held accountable.
READ MORE ON RACHEL NICKELL
“We’ve had our lives turned upside down but never been compensated with a penny for her life. That is why we are exploring reopening legal action against them. We want to put pressure on them.
“We want them to see that this is still an injustice, it still hasn’t been put right, and ask them what can be done about it. And that could absolutely take the form of a legal claim against them.
“If they hadn’t made the mistakes they did then we feel my mother would still be alive. It is not about the money for us, it is about a recognition of accountability.
Andre, 59, added: “The Met is an organisation that holds everyone else to account but they are not holding themselves up to the same standards.
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Preying on women
“Legal action is definitely something we have been talking over. We have a lot of contacts from the past and have been gathering information.
“We see there could be a window of opportunity for legal action. There is a new commissioner, Mark Rowley, who appears to be trying to sweep out the bad old culture.
“There are new developments about their failings back then and a public appetite which we believe should see us compensated for losing Rachel.”
Alex also revealed he would be happy to meet other victims of serial killer and rapist Napper, 56, who is believed to have attacked up to 90 women.
And he accused the Met of racism against them, saying: “If my father and me had looked like Hugh Grant, we think detectives would have treated us differently.”
Rachel was 23 when she was walking with Alex and their dog on Wimbledon Common on July 15, 1992. Napper lurched from the bushes and stabbed her 49 times.
He calmly washed the blood from his hands and knife before strolling off, leaving tiny Alex begging, “Wake up, Mummy”.
It was a case that shocked the nation yet the police investigation rapidly descended into a fiasco.
Alex has told how detectives did not question him about his mum’s attacker for three weeks.
Eventually, cops quizzed 32 men before attention focused on jobless local Colin Stagg, who often walked his dog on the common.
Although there was no forensic evidence linking him to the scene, in August 1993 police charged him with Rachel’s murder.
An Old Bailey trial the following year heard that Colin had been the victim of police entrapment and he was acquitted. He had wrongly spent 13 months in prison. It was not until 2006 — 14 years after the attack and following several cold case reviews — that police interviewed Napper, who was serving time in Broadmoor psychiatric hospital following his conviction for the murder of a mother and her four-year-old daughter.
Colin Stagg was wrongly accused and rightly compensated. But why has my mother’s life not been compensated for?
ALEX HANSCOMBE
In 2008 he admitted killing Rachel at trial and was told it was unlikely he would ever be released from the high-security unit.
It came 19 years after his own mother looked to tip off police in 1989 after he apparently confessed to raping a woman on Plumstead Common, South East London. But local officers did not match the allegation with the rape of a victim in a house in the vicinity, allowing him to continue preying on women.
Colin was compensated with more than £700,000 for his wrongful arrest. Yet despite a police report concluding there had been a “catalogue of bad decisions and errors” in the investigation, Rachel’s family received no financial payout.
A Met Police statement in 2010 said: “Failings in the investigation have been publicly acknowledged and the Metropolitan Police Service has apologised unreservedly to the Hans- combes for this.
“After careful and detailed consideration, the decision has been made not to offer any compensation to the Hanscombes.”
Alex said: “It was a really difficult time for us as we could see serious mistake after serious mistake was being made by the Met. It was unfortunate that someone innocent like Colin Stagg had to go through what he did. He was wrongly accused and he was rightly compensated. But mistakes were made in the lead-up to my mother’s death, so why has her life not been compensated for?
“After all, if the police had caught Napper in 1989 and jailed him, ourselves, Colin Stagg and around 90 other women would not have gone through what we have.”
As The Sun reported last month, Colin Stagg met Professor Paul Britton — the Met’s psychologist in the case — for a TV documentary in which the former shrink revealed he was encouraged by detectives to keep quiet his views that Colin was not Rachel’s killer. But Alex insists the family do not hold individuals such as Prof Britton responsible for the failings, saying: “It is the institution that is rotten.”
Alex added: “We also feel that we now have a platform that can be used for good. We would be interested in meeting others affected by Napper’s attacks and would even welcome meeting Colin Stagg or some of the officers in the case.
“For us, we believe that individuals are prone to mistakes under pressure.”
Alex and Andre now live together in Barcelona, Spain. They said they have intentionally “tried not to make our home a shrine” to Rachel but instead have select pictures around the house and take moments to think about her every day.
Andre said: “I’ve always had a very strong feeling of what Rachel would want for Alex and how she would respond to things. She wanted him to be one of the good guys when he grows up.
“Every time I look at Alex I see Rachel. They have a lot of similarities. Rachel had a spectacular smile that lit up the room and they have a certain grace in the way she moved and Alex definitely has that.
“She had a real spark. She was a smart cookie like Alex.”
Ahead of this year’s 30th anniversary of Rachel’s death, Andre and Alex went back to the spot where she was killed. It was the first time since Alex was taken around by police as a three-year-old.
Alex said: “It was an expected soothing experience. It felt like the right thing to do almost 30 years on.
Rachel had a spectacular smile that lit up the room and a certain grace in the way she moved and Alex definitely has that
ANDRE HANSCOMBE
“I felt really calm when I walked back there to the spot it happened, like my mother was there too. It felt natural. It brought a sense of closure. We were moved. We performed a ritual for my mother. We smoked cigars, lay flowers and had a celebration. It was special.”
Andre added: “It helped us to carry on with our lives. It felt like closure. There is a sense of relief about being back on the ground and at that spot.
“It was a beautiful place. Something tragic happened at that place but it was a moment in time. It allows me to think about it in a different, more positive way.
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“Thirty years is a big milestone, we still think about Rachel all the time. But there is one element that hasn’t been settled and that’s the accountability of the police.
“If you don’t address the darkest points of your past, how can you move on in the future? The Met Police must do this too.”