RedHanded - Episode 285 - The Murder of Rachel Nickell

Episode Date: February 16, 2023

Rachel Nickell’s brutalised body was found on Wimbledon Common with her two-year-old son Alex wiping her bloodied face and begging her to 'wake up'. The nature of the broad daylight attack and the horrific injuries put enormous pressure on the Met to get the case solved and fast. However, none of that justifies the shoddy police work, cut corners, and tunnel vision that allowed a serial rapist to go unchecked for years. GET YOUR NORTH AMERICAN TOUR TICKETS: https://redhandedpodcast.com/ Become a patron: Patreon Order a copy of the book here (US & Canada): Order on Wellesley Books Order on Amazon.com Order a copy of the book here (UK, Ireland, Europe, NZ, Aus): Order on Amazon.co.uk Order on Foyles Follow us on social media: Instagram Twitter Visit our website: Website Sources available on redhandedpodcast.com See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to Red Handed early and ad-free. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. They say Hollywood is where dreams are made. A seductive city where many flock to get rich, be adored, and capture America's heart. But when the spotlight turns off, fame, fortune, and lives can disappear in an instant. Follow Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Hannah.

I'm Suruti. And welcome to Red Handed, episode 755. One day it actually will be that. Oh, my dead body. I'm kidding, I 755. One day it actually will be that. Oh, my dead body. I'm kidding, I'm kidding. One day it will. One day it will. One day it will, but today is not that day. I'm a liar and a bounder and a cad. We've actually got a very sad story for you today, and very specifically one that would have...

I mean, at least for me, I was very aware of this always. Oh, me too, me too. So it's about time we covered it. But before we do, make sure you get your North American tour tickets. Toronto, New York, LA, I'm looking at you. Please get over to redhandedpodcast.com to get your tour tickets and we will see you in a terrifyingly short amount of time. Literally exactly a month.

Today that we are recording this this we shall be on the plane we'll be heading to the airport to go to the dublin show that we haven't announced yet dublin we're coming we decided that since we had such a good time last time and also you can clear us customs in dublin airport we're coming back to liberty hall on the 10th of march and you can find tickets at redhandedpodcast.com probably by the time this goes out, we'll figure it out. I don't know how some of you have done it, but quite a few of them have already gone. There's some sort of like underground movement. What we will say, it is the same show that we did in Dublin at the end of last year. So we are

bringing it back to Dublin one last time so if you are anywhere in Dublin in Europe wherever and you want one last chance to see the Confessions tour this is your last chance so there's probably only like 200 tickets left maybe less by the time this goes out so if there are any go get them and we'll see you there. Right okay we'll leave Ireland behind and we'll see them in exactly a month. We are actually in Bonny, England today. Often perceived as a brutalist concrete jungle, London is actually the greenest city in Europe. We have 3,000 parks and green spaces. Richmond Park is a whopping 2,500 acres. And they've got deer and stuff.

Yeah, I mean, if you go stand in the middle of Richmond Park, you feel like you are in the countryside. But it's fucking far from here. So far. Sometimes on a Sunday I'll be like, should we go to Richmond Park? And then I look up how far it is and I'm like, nah. I don't think I've actually ever been.

I've been once. It is so far. I'll just go stand in Epping Forest instead. Kind of feels similar. There are cows in Epping Forest. Are there? I've never seen a cow. Big ones with big horns.

Really? I don't know if they're highland, but they're like shaggy with big horns. Oh, fun. I think they're called like longhorns, but they're there. They're there in Epping. Oh, I'll go and find them. But if you're more interested in wambles than cows or deer, the 1,100 acres of Wimbledon Common might be more your speed.

There are very, very few podcasts on this case, which I was surprised by. The amount of people who don't know what a womble is. What? Terrifies me. Who doesn't know what a womble is? Who doesn't know what a womble is? Fucking. I know.

Uncle Bulgaria. Keep Britain tidy. If you don't know what a womble is, I can't help you. I used to have a lunchbox with the Womble. Did you? I still have a T-shirt that has Great Uncle Bulgaria on it that says Keep Britain Tidy. It's a good message. Good wholesome message.

It is because all they do is live on the common and tidy up. Something that's adorable. Southwest London home to tennis and Great Uncle Bulgaria, Wimbledon has never been particularly rough. Traditionally speaking, the air in West London was always a lot cleaner, so that's where all the rich people lived and all the poor people lived in the east in the slums, because that's where all of the air was much dirtier. Wimbledon always been nice. And that's why Rachel Nickell often took her toddler son Alex and her Labrador Molly to Wimbledon Common for walks, rather than some of the other green spaces closer to her home a few miles away. 23-year-old Rachel lived in Ballam with her partner Andre.

They had met a few years before, while Rachel was working as a lifeguard in Richmond. Andre Hanscombe was a former tennis coach, and they were a super attractive couple. I think if you see pictures of Rachel in particular, she is just, she's beautiful. She's beautiful. And not even in a like kind of 90s way where you're like, oh, she was beautiful for the night. No, no. She and Andre are like Love Island material. Like they are timelessly beautiful, both of them.

And a year after they met, they had their son, Alex. Rachel even did a bit of modelling before pursuing an English and history degree. But once little Alex came along, she threw herself into motherhood. She held on to aspirations of being a children's TV presenter. And she kind of does look like a children's TV presenter. And I think with her, Andre, and little Alex, who was probably the fucking cutest baby you could imagine there's a lot of video footage of him doing like when kids get to that age where they're just asking questions about everything there's a lot of very 90s videos because like

in the 90s like everyone had handheld camcorders like what we had yeah Like, so there's a lot of footage of Alex being like, but why? It's adorable. Yeah. So they were the perfect young family. On the 15th of July 1992, Rachel took Alex and their dog for a walk on Wimbledon Common, like she did all the time. But this time, she would never come home. About a mile away, 28-year-old unemployed Colin Stagg also took his dog for

a walk on the common quite early in the morning. He did this often, mostly for hours, but that day Colin Stagg wasn't feeling too hot. So he and his dog returned to their home on the Alton estate in Roehampton at 9.25am. Colin took some painkillers and went back to bed hoping to sleep off his headache. At 9.45, Rachel, Alex and their dog Molly were walking along, minding their own business. They were not off the beaten track. It was broad daylight. They had no reason to be afraid. What they didn't know is that they were being stalked.

Less than 200 yards from a well-frequented green area, Rachel was grabbed and ferociously attacked by a white man, about 5'10", with dark hair. He wrestled Rachel to the ground, and in an attempt to silence the young mother's screams, he cut her throat so violently, he almost decapitated her. Let me just remind you that this is before 10 o'clock in the morning. The frenzied attack continued and Rachel sustained 48 stab wounds to her body.

All of this happened in front of her two-year-old son. Alex, just a couple of weeks shy of his third birthday, picked up the keys and money that had fallen out of his mother's pockets and put them back in. Then he took a piece of paper he had found and dabbed his mother's forehead, trying to make her better. There's a lot of documentaries about this case. And there's an interview with one of the police officers

first on the scene. And he was like, through all of my years of policing, that's the one that still makes me cry. Yeah. And it's going to get worse because Alex sat there repeatedly saying, wake up, mummy. In his adult life, Alex would claim that after he said this for a third time, he realised that his mum wasn't coming back. Quickly, because the park was so full of people, a dog walker saw the young boy covered in blood and mud next to a

woman he assumed was sunbathing. As he got closer, the dog walker realised what he was really looking at. Soon, the London Metropolitan Police descended on the common. There were about 500 people there that day. All of them were questioned and the area was cleared. Eventually, only Rachel Nickell's car was left in the car park. And the five foot10 man with dark hair was nowhere to be found. No one had seen a blood-stained man. The horrified Andre was informed and a murder squad was assembled swiftly. Rachel's parents were on holiday in Canada, so two officers flew out there immediately to tell them what had happened before the press could.

Once all of Rachel's family were gathered together, they held a press conference, imploring the public to come forward with any information. Like so many cases we deal with in this fair country of ours, the British press would have a hefty part to play. Can you imagine being on holiday in Canada? I know. And there's just a knock at the door. I know. And it's two British bobbies being like, by the way, your daughter has been stabbed to death in front of your grandson. Yeah. The murder of Rachel Nickell swept the nation. People were terrified. Could women not even walk on Wimbledon Common in broad daylight anymore? And like always, that meant that the Met were under an enormous amount of pressure to find the man who had killed Rachel.

I feel like it happens in Britain way more than it happens in anywhere else. But this like balance of like, we need the press because we have nothing to go on. But the flip side of that is that the Met is then under much more pressure to get it done fast. Yeah, I think it is the trade-off, right, that they've got to make. It's like, how much do you want the press to be involved? And then when you let them in, they're not going to go away. Oh yeah, they ain't going anywhere. No. And then they're there. And the Met really don't have much to go on at all, despite the hundreds of people on the common two-year-old Alex was the only witness. He was questioned by a child

psychologist and he gave a description of the man who killed his mum. Alex told the child psychologist that the man was wearing dark trousers and a white shirt and he was carrying a black bag that he pulled the knife from. When Alex was asked to draw a picture of the man who hurt mummy, he repeatedly stabbed the paper with a pencil. The murder squad was led by Detective Inspector Keith Pedder. Remember that name? He was newly promoted and he had a lot to prove. But Keith Pedder had a problem when it came to the Rachel Nickell case. He had literally no evidence. He had also been told, in no uncertain terms, that this investigation was so high profile,

if he fucked it up, his career would be over. And when we say that they had nothing, we mean they had nothing. Forensics found nothing. The 90s were not the CSI evidence kingdom that we live in today, but there was no DNA, no stranger's blood, no murder weapon, no fibers, only the testimony of a two-year-old boy. So samples are taken. Yeah. They just didn't have the technology to test them sufficiently. Yeah. He was hip-hop's biggest mogul, the man who redefined fame, fortune, and the music industry.

The first male rapper to be honored on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Sean Diddy Cone. Diddy built an empire and lived a life most people only dream about. Everybody know ain't no party like a Diddy party, so. Yeah, that's what's up. But just as quickly as his empire rose, it came crashing down. Today I'm announcing the unsealing of a three-count indictment, charging Sean Combs with racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking, interstate transportation for prostitution.

I was f***ed up. I hit rock bottom. But I made no excuses. I'm disgusted. I'm so sorry. Until you're wearing an orange jumpsuit, it's not real. Now it's real. From his meteoric rise to his shocking fall from grace, from law and crime, this is The Rise and Fall of Diddy. Listen to The Rise and Fall of Diddy exclusively with Wondery Plus. They say Hollywood is where dreams are made, a seductive city where many flock to get rich, be adored, and capture America's heart. But when the spotlight turns off, fame, fortune,

and lives can disappear in an instant. When TV producer Roy Radin was found dead in a canyon near L.A. in 1983, there were many questions surrounding his death. The last person seen with him was Lainey Jacobs, a seductive cocaine dealer who desperately wanted to be part of the Hollywood elite. Together, they were trying to break into the movie industry. But things took a dark turn when a million dollars worth of cocaine and cash went missing. From Wondery comes a new season of the hit show Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder. Follow Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes of The Cotton Club Murder early and

ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus. Now, any of the usual suspects known in the area couldn't be placed on the common that morning. The police had absolutely no idea, therefore, where to start. Whoever the assailant was, Peddathor, they'd had the luck of the devil. Hoping that the devil would return to the scene of the crime, the Met set up sensors linked to an alarm and even lay a chemical on the ground that would mark any shoes that lay tread there. The sensors were triggered pretty quickly, but it turned out that it was just some drunk teenagers,

a pretty common occurrence in Britain. And that plan was swiftly abandoned and the surveillance team was withdrawn. I could have told you that. It's a public park. Yeah, and if you cordon it off, then the person's also not going to turn up and just stomp all over it because it's cordoned off. Honestly, like, I think drinking in public parks in London is not like, like everyone does it because nobody has a fucking garden. So like it is much less common in other cities where people have bigger houses and everyone has a garden. But in London, drinking in the park isn't a particularly looked down on thing to do, unless you're Mark Corrigan and you get put on the news.

But make light of things no longer, because Rachel's autopsy brought with it more horror. It revealed that she had been sexually assaulted during the fatal attack, and it was confirmed that she had been stabbed a total of 49 times. Horrible, but nothing forensics could use. So the police turned to a relatively new and much maligned discipline, forensic profiling. They brought in Paul Britton, who seemed to be the only man for the job. He seems to be the only man in Britain that's ever done this. He'd worked on the Wests and the abduction of Stephanie Slater, amongst loads of other cases that you would

recognise the names of. And Paul Britton put together the following profile. Whoever had sexually assaulted and killed Rachel Nacal would be a man who lived within easy walking distance of Wimbledon Common. He would live alone, in a flat or a bedsit, or he'd live with his parents. This man would also have a long history of failed relationships, an interest in the occult, an obsession with knives, and above all, if this man wasn't caught, he would inevitably strike again. With all of this in mind, along with Little Alex's description of the killer and the interviews compiled from the hundreds of people on the Common that day, an artist's impression

of the assailant was made and broadcast on the British institution Crime Watch. So after the programme aired, 800 viewers called in saying that they recognized this man and a few of them, enough to make it notable, said that this man was Colin Stagg. I mean imagine that. Imagine doing a Crimewatch appeal and then getting multiple people calling in and telling you that this is the name of the person. Stagg had actually returned to the common that day that Rachel died. He had woken up feeling better and decided to take his dog out again. When he got to the common, he was stopped by an officer who explained why the park was closed. Colin Stag told this officer that he'd been on the common that morning but hadn't seen anything. He gave the officer his name and then went on his way.

But after the crime watch showing, police now wanted a word with him again. The Met searched Colin's house and they found books on the occult and allegedly a hooded cowl and a pentagram. I don't believe that, but that is what they say. Colin had been described by those who knew him as a loner and by the police as, quote, a very unusual individual. So far then, he's ticking all of Paul Britton's boxes. And based on that alone, Colin Stagg would very quickly become the Met's prime suspect. Colin freely told the police what we already know,

that he had been on the Common, but he left at 9.15. And he was at home at the time Rachel was murdered. But Colin's neighbour told the police that she had seen Colin head to the common at 9.25, which would, if she didn't have her days mixed up, place him on the common exactly at the time when Rachel was attacked. So Colin was held for three days at Wimbledon Police Station and questioned at length. During these interrogations, Colin was shown a crime scene photo of Rachel Nakel as she laid dead. Remember this, it's very, very important. This photo was taken from the back.

It did not show Rachel's face or, crucially, her hands. Colin was also picked out of an identity parade by a woman who claimed to have seen a man acting suspiciously on the common on the day of Rachel's murder. Yeah, this lady is like one of the hundreds, right? And she's said, I was pushing a pram and I saw this man and I was a bit worried because I thought he was following a woman and then I lost track of him, basically. And then she picks him out of an identity parade. So the police looked through any previous disturbances

on the common in the past few years and they found a complaint of a woman who said that a man had exposed himself to her. And that man was Colin Stagg. He claimed that he'd been sunbathing naked, which a lot of people did in the area of the Common in the 90s, apparently. I tried to look into this, right? We are not a body-positive nation. We don't like nakedness.

Not very many people do it. When Colin Stagg talks about this, he was like there was a particular area of in the common where people would do that i tried to look it up and i came across this article about something called the secret swimming club that is apparently a group of people who swim naked on wimbledon common specifically so maybe we're more german than i thought who knew it's all underground though secret yeah yeah i mean it's probably like those fucking house buying whatsapp groups Maybe we're more German than I thought. Who knew? It's all underground, though. It's secret. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, it's probably like those fucking house-buying WhatsApp groups that you have to know somebody knows.

Gah! So this man was Colin Stagg, and like he said, apparently he was just sunbathing naked. But the police were having none of it, and Colin Stagg was charged with indecent exposure. His solicitor advised him to plead guilty. And he got a 200 quid fine. I think I've made it quite clear I'm very much on Colin's side.

This is a fair cop. He deserves this. You are not allowed to be publicly naked in this country. And I don't believe he aggressively exposed himself to this woman. I do believe he was nakedly sunbathing. But the problem is that's against the law. Colin said that he pleaded guilty because he thought it would just all go away. And I understand why his solicitor is saying, plead guilty, you'll get a 200 quid fine, it'll all be over. But it didn't.

Yes. Colin Stagg was now on a sex pervert list. This is the problem, isn't it? Is that the sex offenders register. There's many ways you can end up on there. Let's just say that. Public urination. Public urination, public nudity,

and obviously sliding a little bit along the scale of like if you're 18 and have sex with your like 16-year-old girlfriend, something like that. Like there's a lot of different ways that people can end up on this list. And then if you are on that list, if something does happen, you become suspect numero uno. Exactly. It becomes very easy to tie you with the same brush. And that's exactly what happens to Colin Stagg because the Met used this indecent exposure charge to tick another Paul Britton box,

violent sexual fantasies. I don't think that's the same thing. But they're like, pervert, done, next, great. And admittedly, Colin Stagg did not help himself by running out of the magistrate's court where he was convicted like a bat out of hell and flipping the Vs to the press in September of 1992. So Rachel's only been dead a couple of months. And he does look menacing. But crucially, the most consistent factor of identification

of the man who killed Rachel McHale is that everyone says he's about 5'10". Colin Stagg is nowhere fucking near 5'10". And we need to remember that. I think it's interesting that the most consistent description is the one that seems to be completely ignored. But an indecent exposure charge was not enough to pin Colin Stagg for the murder of Rachel Nickell.

So the Met got their thinking caps on. Very problematic thinking caps. Now, before we go into all of the very, very problematic things that happened with this case, the only one sentence I'm going to utter in favour of the police, and not even in favour, but in mildest defence, mealy-mouthed defence, is that when you are facing a case like this,

of a young, murdered murdered woman where the child is there like this was such we must have been so young but i remember this case being like full front headline you'll remember the reopening of it yes exactly exactly and i think that when they had nothing to go on and then you get multiple people calling in and telling you that it's colin stack and although they should have exercised the idea that there are many different shades of When they had nothing to go on and then you get multiple people calling in and telling you that it's Colin Stagg. And although they should have exercised the idea that there are many different shades of wrong on the sex offenders register, when you have nothing else, following this line of inquiry into Colin Stagg, yes. But how they do it, no, no, no, no, no. And also no, no, no to the fact that they ignore a lot of things that come in and a lot of connections are not made.

They go after him and they do not pursue any other lines of inquiry. It's one of the most blinkered cases that we've come across. So finally, they get a couple of years previously she had exchanged a series of letters with Colin Stagg after he replied to her Lonely Hearts ad in the paper. Julie Pines explained to the police that she was concerned because one of these letters from Colin Stagg had contained a sexual fantasy. D.I. Keith Pedder, with his job on the line, remember, came up with a plan.

A honey trap. A sticky, sticky honey trap. Sticky, sticky, very illegal. Yes. So Pedder enlisted the help of an undercover copper who had worked on the gang scene for a long time. So she was very well practised in getting information out of people trying to hide it.

Now, we've never found out this officer's real name. She's only ever been known as Lizzie James. And this honey trap would be called Operation Edsel. Which is apparently a village in Scotland. Well, we did find out from our conversation with former detective Colin Sutton a long time ago that they just apparently pick names for these operations alphabetically. So if it comes back to E, what's an E word? Let's go. So under this fake name, Lizzie James wrote to Colin Stack saying that she hoped that he didn't mind her intrusion, but that she'd been given his address by a good friend, Julie Pines, and that

she wanted to get to know him as she was much more open-minded than Julie was. Naturally, nearly 30 and extremely single, Colin Stagg wrote back and a pen pal relationship began. Colin Stagg, if you believe him, is a virgin at this stage in his life. What followed the initial contact from Lizzie James was a series of letters, each one more explicit than the last. Lizzie James would introduce more and more violent fantasies into the letters, telling Colin that she wanted a real man. And when Colin didn't respond in a violent enough way, Lizzie James would keep pushing him, saying that she felt like he was being restrained and that she wanted him to, quote, burst and that she wanted to be completely in his power, quote, defenceless and humiliated.

Can we make up a siren for entrapment? What does entrapment sound like? I think that covers it for honey trap and entrapment. Thank you, Hannah. If people haven't come across this, they actually did turn this story into a TV show. I don't know if you've seen this. Deceit. Deceit.

Deceit on Channel 4. It's actually got like 6.9 out of 10 on IMDb. I started watching the first episode and I think I just wasn't in the right headspace for it and I gave up. But it's basically all about the honey trap situation. It follows Lizzie James and it's got that actor out of Coronation Street or EastEnders. She's very good, but maybe I'll come back to watching it because this is all sorts of fucked up. This made this story absolutely insane. So the inexperienced Colin, in his own words, just trying to get a shag,

wrote back to Lizzie James with the type of fantasies he thought that she wanted. This is like fucking the most basic shit. But even still, so he would give her what he thought she wanted because he's desperate for a shag, right? But even still, he would follow up these like, oh, I'll sort you out kind of things, being like, but please don't think I'm violent. Oh, God. He says things like, I think I have an idea of what you want. Is it this, but I really don't want you to think that I'm going to hurt you. Like, that's a very consistent theme in the letters.

Eventually, after a series of escalating correspondence, including an audio recorded sexual fantasy by Lizzie James delivered to Colin Stagg on cassette tape. Colin wrote her a letter describing an open-air sexual experience between the two of them on Wimbledon Common that included a knife, cutting of flesh and the flowing of blood. Till this very day, Keith Pedder will swear up and down

that the violent themes were only introduced by Colin and never by the elusive Lizzie James. But that, my friends, is bollocks. It's also fucking provable. Yeah. Because the letters are there. Yeah.

And you can piece them together in which fucking order they go in. Yeah, exactly. How stupid do you think we are, Keith Pedder? I mean, he really gets his comeuppance, but, like, the whole Lizzie James thing is some of the most fucked stuff I've ever read. Oh, it truly, truly is. So after a few months of steamy letter writing and

steamier cassette recordings, Lizzie James arranged to meet Colin Stagg in Hyde Park. She was surrounded by more undercover officers, and she gave Colin a black hat that she said was a present. But it was actually, so he could be more easily identified by the officers at a distance. Maybe give him a high-vis hat, wear a black hat. Yeah, I feel like

a lot of people are wearing black hats, you know. So during this in-person meeting, Lizzie told Colin that she had a dark secret. She said that she had been abducted as a child and inducted into a satanic sect. What's our satanic panic noise? You're going to make a cat now, isn't it? I just saw it in your face. You can't help yourself. Satanic cat, satanic kitty. Okay, fine. Thank you. So whilst in this devil worship phase of her life there you go lizzie said that she had assisted in the sacrifice of a pregnant woman and an unborn baby then she said she had taken part in a massive orgy and was under the control of a man who she described to colin as quote the best man ever colin gave very little reaction. Presumably Colin is standing

in Hyde Park wearing this black hat, confused out of his fucking mind about what is going on. And the police took this lack of reaction from Colin to mean that he was completely unfazed by all of this stuff that Lizzie was telling him and that he did things like this all the time. So that's why he's not running away, right? But according to Colin, he thought that she was, quote, off her head. But he still wanted to get his end away. Men will ignore a lot.

Just because she's crazy. So after the satanic panic meeting, the pair met a few more times and Lizzie James eventually brought up the murder of Rachel Nickell and how she wished that Colin had done it. Fucking hell. She even said that she could only be with a man who had committed a murder, specifically the murder of Rachel Nickell. Colin, still trying to get his leg over, explained that he was actually on the common on the day that Rachel died, but he

was very sorry he hadn't killed her. But he's still trying to impress Lizzie James, so he tells her that he had actually seen a crime scene photo. And then Colin imitated the way Rachel's body had been in the picture he was shown when he was interrogated, I told you to remember it. He placed his hands flat on the ground to lower himself into the fetal position he had seen in that crime scene photograph during questioning the years before. And as he pushed himself back up off the ground, he dusted his hands off as he would. Lizzie James reported back to the Met that Colin had crossed his wrists and placed his palms together, which just so happened to be how Rachel's hands were when she was found. Which, considering Colin had never been shown her hands in the photo, means that he must have killed her.

How else would he know? They got him. They thought they were like, great, this is it. But in reality, they weren't even close. Soon after this exchange, the press interviewed Colin Stagg about his involvement in the case, and he gave a very strong denial. Shit, Keith Pedder thought, there was no way after such a public denial

that he would confide in Lizzie James. So they had to reel it in. I don't understand the, I mean, I don't understand a lot of things about Keith Pedder, but I don't understand this idea of like, oh, because he's denied it in the press, he's never going to tell anyone that he actually did it. I don't get that. For me, I feel like there's something that Pedder isn't saying. I think it's because he watched that denial and he's like,

fuck, he didn't do this. I think that's what it is. And he's like, we better just fucking cut and shut this. Yeah, I bet, yeah. But cut and shut this in the worst way, which is... And then take it to the CPS. Yeah, take it to the C... But I cut and shut this. He's like, cut and shut this, boys. And they're like, do you mean cut and shot this in the worst way, which is... And then take it to the CPS. Yeah, take it to the C... But I cut and shot this.

He's like, cut and shot this, boys. And they're like, do you mean stop going after this man who clearly didn't do it? No, I mean take it to the CPS. Jesus Christ. So for the murder squad, this point felt like it had been five months worth of work down the drain with no evidence to show for it. They were running out of time. But Keith Pedder and his team had to chance their luck with the CPS. So they arrested Colin once again and brought

him in for even more questioning, bearing in mind that between the time that they originally questioned him and now, they have no new evidence, besides some bizarre conversations with Lizzie James. And some Crimewatch calls. Yes. So this time, Colin was a lot less amiable and no commented his way through everything for hours. So, Keith Pedder played his last ace. Lizzie James walked into the interrogation room and revealed herself to her former pen pal. It's like they think they're making a 90s thriller.

Literally. She was not his maybe girlfriend. She was definitely never going to have sex with him. She was an undercover cover. However, this bombshell didn't have the desired effect. I think they thought they was going to crack him wide open. But the big reveal didn't break Colin. He was visibly shocked,

but he continued to no comment. He was thinking to himself, all I've done is write some sexily letters, this is utterly absurd. But somehow, with not one witness apart from a toddler, no forensics, no confession, no murder weapon, and a man significantly shorter than the assailant described, this case made it all the way to the Old Bailey, and Colin Stagg was officially charged with the rape and murder of Rachel Nickell,

and was held on remand for 13 months. When basically all the police had was forensic psychologist Paul Britton saying that Colin Stagg fit the personality type of someone who was capable of such a brutal murder and some Crimewatch calls. So while Colin Stagg was inside police dug up colin's garden and the papers were filled with images of items being pulled from the ground and taken away in bin liners nothing ever came of those items we don't even know what they were like honestly such a press stunt like they never show up again yeah yeah it's just to be like look we better be seen to be doing something. Yeah, totally. Just like dig up a bunch of shit, put some bricks in some bags and carry it out of his front door. But it was all pointless anyway, because the real murderer of Rachel Nickell was still very much out there.

And by August 1993, he was preparing to strike again. But no one was looking for him. No other leads were followed on the Rachel Nickell case, because as far as the Met were concerned, they had their man. So when an unidentified knife showed up on Wimbledon Common, it was squirrelled away in an evidence locker and forgotten about. When Colin Stagg got his day at the Old Bailey, the Met were on trial just as much as he was. Collins' defence counsel made the very logical case that all he had done was give Lizzie James what he thought she wanted. He wanted to satisfy her.

He had never actually had a sexual relationship before. And in light of the fact that the only evidence the police actually had was Collins' dad being a slightly odd guy, the case was eventually thrown out of court. Judge Harry Ognall dismissed the case on two counts. Firstly, that using a psychological profile to prove identity was inherently dangerous. Completely agree. And secondly, that Operation Edsel had used deception of the grossest kind.

Also agree. Yes. It's also not even that it's just gross and like immoral and like unethical it's the fact that it is dangerously unsafe yeah because it is completely debunked it's like beating a confession out of him and being like well there you go yeah and just like that the Mets case against Colin Stagg collapsed Judge Ognor declared it to be improper unfair and inadmissible and in a matter of moments Colin Stagg was a free Ognor declared it to be improper, unfair and inadmissible. And in a matter of moments, Colin Stagg was a free man. In one of the documentaries, he talks about this and he was

like, no one explained to me what would happen. I thought it was going to be like, send him down or you're a free man. He's like, none of that happened. They were just talking in this legal jargon that I didn't understand. I was just sitting there waiting and then my lawyer turned around and winked at me and then I realised that I was okay. I think he expected it to be more of an event, like there to be more drama, but the judge was just like, this is fucked, like absolutely not. But free, yes, but Colin Stagg's ordeal was far from over. Colin walked out of the Old Bailey to be met with screams of guilty and hang him from the people outside. But still, he gave a prepared statement to the press, which basically says, they never had anything against me. They

never had any evidence. And the judge has confirmed that. And the Met gave a statement afterwards, declaring that they would not be looking at anyone else for the murder of Rachel McHale, which is just as good as saying they still believe that they had the right man, he'd just got away with it. Rachel's father told news cameras that the law may have been upheld, but justice certainly was not. And DI Keith Pedder later said in interview, I do not believe that justice was served to anyone on that particular day. Pedder was forced to resign, and we're about to find out why. Harvard is the oldest and richest university in America.

But when a social media-fueled fight over Harvard and its new president broke out last fall, that was no protection. Claudine Gay is now gone. We've exposed the DEI regime, and there's much more to come. This is The Harvard Plan, a special series from the Boston Globe and WNYC's On The Media. To listen, subscribe to On The Media wherever you get your podcasts. Lots of people don't. I didn't either, until I came face to face with them. Ever since that moment, hauntings, spirits, and the unexplained have consumed my entire life. I'm Nadine Bailey. I've been a ghost tour guide for the past 20 years. I've taken people along with me into the shadows,

uncovering the macabre tales that linger in the darkness, and inside some of the most haunted houses, hospitals, prisons, and more. Join me every week on my podcast, Haunted Canada, as we journey through terrifying and bone-chilling stories of the unexplained. Search for Haunted Canada on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you find your favourite podcasts. In 2002, the murder of Rachel Nickell, Investigation Cold Case, was reopened. Technology had come a long way since the early 90s and the DNA samples taken from Rachel's body were thankfully kept, firstly,

because we don't always see that happen. Yes, that's very true. And they were re-examined. And this time they turned up a match. And guess what? It was most definitely not Colin Stagg. These samples were a match for a then 55-year-old Robert Knapper,

a paranoid schizophrenic who was already being held indefinitely in Broadmoor. In 1993, Knapper had pleaded guilty to manslaughter of Sam Bissette and her four-year-old daughter, Jasmine, in Plumstead. He killed them 16 months after Rachel Nickell's death. The only reason he was given a manslaughter charge rather than murder was his paranoid psychosis meeting the threshold for diminished responsibility. In order for you to be getting diminished responsibility, there has to be something really fucking wrong with you. It doesn't necessarily mean that you don't know right from

wrong. It means that your ability to understand the nature of what you're doing and form rational judgment and exercise self-control is substantially impaired. And I do think that is true in the case of Robert Knapper, but it's very rare that that happens. So strap in, because what you're about to hear now is pretty horrible. So Jasmine, who was this four-year-old, remember, and Sam, her mum, were discovered stabbed to death by Sam's partner, Conrad Ellum. One evening, Sam had answered the door to Napa and he had immediately attacked her. And what he did to her was so horrific that one of the police officers attending the scene said that it was the most gruesome sight he'd ever seen. Robert Napper had been stalking Sam for quite some time.

She had no curtains in her ground floor flat and she had seen him looking in on her just days before she was killed. Once Napper made his way into Sam's flat, he continued his frenzied attack on the young mum. Napper severed her spinal cord. He cut her open from her genitals to her chest, pulled her ribcage apart and exposed her internal organs and then stabbed every single one of them. A piece of her abdomen had been taken as a trophy and Napa had also attempted to cut off her left leg. The crime scene photographer present was never able to work again. Napa was identified by a fingerprint that he left on an external windowsill and sent down for life.

But when it came to the case of Rachel Nickell, the Met didn't just have Napa's DNA all over their evidence samples. Flecks of paint taken from little Alex's clothes were also found to be a match for a red toolbox belonging to Napa. It really is pretty damning stuff once they reopen it. Yeah. So when Napa was questioned in Broadmoor, he denied the crime. But the similarities and the brutality and all of the evidence were pretty hard to ignore. And so he ended up doing the same thing that he'd done before. Napa pleaded guilty to the crime, but on a basis of diminished responsibility due to his paranoid schizophrenia. Robert Napa was convicted of the manslaughter of Rachel Nickell in 2008. And it's incredibly unlikely that he will ever get out of Broadmoor.

Yeah, he'll die in there, I think. But that is not where our story ends. The fact that Napa was overlooked for so long and allowed to roam free for years is absolutely shocking. And allowed to roam free and murder again. And he is suspected of far more crimes, mainly a series of sexual assaults called the Green Chain rapes. The Green Chain is a 40-mile walk that connects a series of parks in South London.

And in the late 80s and early 90s, there were a series of sexual assaults, some at knife point, along this walk. But Robert Knapper was nowhere on anyone's radar. But the Plumstead local really, really, really should have been, because of the following reasons. In 1986, he was given a conditional discharge for a possession of an air gun. In March 92, he'd attempted to rape a 17-year-old girl

and sexually assaulted another at knife point. Two months after that, he grabbed a 22-year-old mother in broad daylight as she pushed a buggy down the green chain, strangled her and raped her. That is staggeringly similar to what he did to Rachel Nickell. But the link between the two cases was never made. The police know, the police obviously, because we know about it, obviously they know that he jumped out at this poor woman and raped her in front of her child. And it's, you know, months before Rachel Nickell, but no dots are ever connected.

Because they're too busy going after Colin Stack because he's a bit weird. Yeah, because poor Britain told them to look for somebody who was into the occult. So after this attack, Napa's house was searched by police. The house that he lived in with his mother, by the way. And officers found an A to Z. This A to Z was covered in annotations of the local area. A to Z, by the way, for anybody, I don't know, do they do them outside of Britain? I don't know. It's a big book of maps. It's a big map book. It's a map book that's small enough to fit in your car.

Exactly. Everyone who is like our age remembers there was one in the back of their car. Oh yeah, totally. A friend of mine who's only a couple of years older than us, when he went to uni, he had to take an A to Z to go to flat viewings. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. They were like fully, fully ubiquitous. Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. So this A to Z that they found in Napa's house was covered in annotations of the local area,

where someone could find a woman and where to follow them to. The margins were filled with scribbles of stabbings and bloodshed and disturbingly a description of a woman being wrapped in cling film. I hate cling film so much. Yeah. I refuse to have it in my house actually. I can't stand the smell. I mean, it is suffocating feeling and this is the stuff with Napper. I'm like, okay, look, he's never going to get out of Broadmoor, so, like, fine. But I'm like, he's so clearly sexually fixated. He's so clearly premeditating his attacks. It's not like he just goes out into the street,

sees a woman, loses control and attacks her. Like, I understand why they give him diminished responsibility because they're saying he, like, has this thing wrong with him, but I'm also like, this man should never be allowed out of prison. No. He should never be allowed out of Broadmoor. Because Napa is a clear-cut sexual sadist. They are incredibly rare, and you'd think that a profiler would know that.

But Napa was never linked to the Green Chain rapes, and he was never under suspicion for the murder of Rachel Nickell until it was years, years, years too late. Even though he lived in Plumstead, was known as a stalker, and had a murder A to Z, and his own mother called Plumstead police in 1989 and told an officer that her son had confessed to raping a woman.

But she was dismissed. That's the most mental thing to me. There are rapes happening. The green chain rapes are happening in 89. And this poor woman is brave enough to call the police and be like, my son has just confessed to raping a woman and I don't know what to do. Can you imagine the thought process for that woman that had to go into making that call and then to just be dismissed by the police after you've built yourself up to making that call?

Fucking hell, man. But basically she's told that they can't match up what she said with any unsolved rape that they have on file, so she's just dismissed. Napper was called to give a DNA sample twice by the Plumstead police, but he never showed up and they never pursued him neither. If the police had in 1989, when his mum literally told them what Napper was doing, Rachel Nickell and Sam and Jasmine Bissett would still be with us today.

I bet you can understand why Keith Pedder resigned now. The whole story that we just told you got a lot of people into a lot of trouble. The London Metropolitan Police were forced to admit that they'd made grave errors in going after Colin Stagg and ignoring all other potential leads, including the phone call made by Robert Napper's actual mum. Do you think that the Met just have like a filing box filled with like different categories of apology that they have to give? I'm sure they do. I've got a template.

I mean, I understand like being a police force of a major city like London is gonna lead to errors being made. It's a very, very big police force that we've talked about before, five times that of like an average police force of a major city like London is gonna lead to errors being made it's a very very big police force like we've talked about before five times that of like an average police force in this country also London is going to be the place where you're going to deal with a lot of crimes I understand all of those things and people are also going to fixate on the mistakes that were made rather than like applauding you for the positive work that's done but Jesus fucking Christ my god the Metropolitan Police is just so incapable and has been for such a long time. If this case happened today, I would believe you.

If you told me that this case happened not in the fucking 90s, but happened today in 2023, I would believe you that the Met would still be capable of fuck-uppery on this scale. Oh my God, I'm upset. So you may be thinking that Robert Knapper matches all of the same personality profiles that were put forward by Paul Britton. And you'd be right. He was a loner, he lived with his mum,

he had violent sexual fantasies, and he did go on to kill again. Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick. But what is truly staggering is that profiler extraordinaire, rumoured basis for TV show Cracker, and author of The Jigsaw Man, not only worked on the Rachel McHale case, he also worked on the Sam and Jasmine Bissett case, and he was consulted for a profile on the Green Chain Rapist. Can somebody help me? I am speechless.

Because, just to be really, really clear in case anybody didn't understand what I just said, this man, Paul Britton, was the consultant forensic psychologist for all three of these fucking cases. And the man did not seemingly once seem to understand, connect the dots, that maybe they were looking for the same fucking person. Isn't that supposed to be his whole job? Sexual sadists are so rare. So rare. And these are all happening in the same area. Yes.

With the same MO and not once. At the same time. Does he say, maybe we're looking for one guy? It's just mind boggling. It's mind bogboggling. And that's the thing is like, you know, often with cases like this, you can be like, oh, it's cross-jurisdiction. There are too many police forces involved. There's too many different investigators.

Nobody was there to connect the dots. That's not the case here. You cannot make that argument here. And how this happened is just absolutely horrifying. So yes, not once did Paul Britton suggest that all of these crimes had been committed by the same person. Now that could be taken as a slight against Paul. It's not, well kind of, but it's more of us making the point that forensic profiling of a killer or any criminal just can't be the only evidence used to charge someone with a crime and the fact that it got as far as it did is abominable i know it feels like

right with keith pedder he's under all this pressure to solve the rachel nicole case he doesn't have anything to go on so he's like right i'm gonna be this guy that cracks this case with this brand new because you know at this point forensic profiling is still sort of in its early days in its infancy and it feels like he was just like i'll be the one to crack this case and i'll do it with this forensic psychologist with his profiler and then people will write books about me and i'll be i'll be fucking i'll be the jigsaw man i'll be the jigsaw he has to write his own book exactly it's just so problematic the good thing is while we are railing against Paul Britton and Keith Pedder we do have to say that it is very rare that a forensic psychological profile of a killer is the only evidence used to pursue somebody because it's dangerous because it's

dangerous and stupid and illogical and it makes no fucking sense. So in 2008, the Met formally apologised to Colin Stack. 2008. They ruined this man's life. They completely destroyed him. And Keith Pettit in particular made it very known that he was just like, oh, well, he just got away with it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's what he was known as. The fact that they came out and gave a public statement after the hearing and said well we're not looking for anybody else in connection with this crime yeah just put a target on Colin Stagg's back there was no humility in that no like taking anything away from what the judge had said to them they're just like no it was him we just can't prove it so yes in 2008 they formally apologized probably pulling their fucking you know decades long overdue apology thing out of

their fucking file of facts and apologized to stag with a public statement of regret and an independent commission hooray we need an independent commission klax, produced a report damning the Met and confirming that they had missed multiple opportunities to get Robert Knapper off the streets and save lives. An independent report, I'm sure that the Met just shredded because that's all they seem to do with independent reports and all of the, you know, suggestions that they make for how to improve. So because Robert Knapper is still in Broadmoor and he's still alive, we don't actually know too much about him. All we know is that it's pretty likely that he was sexually abused as a child

by someone very close to him in an outdoor area. His mum, concerned by his rape confession, did send him to a psychiatrist in 89, but all that happened was that he went home and told his mum, quote, the psychiatrist thinks I'm mad. Napper also has autism and a lot of the literature describes him as having Asperger's, but Hans Asperger was responsible for the deaths of loads of children under the Third Reich and was a firm believer in eugenics. We'll definitely shorthand it, but perhaps the term Asperger's needs rethinking. Robert Napper's condition, so his paranoid schizophrenia and his autism,

didn't stop him from getting a job as a warehouseman. Forget this, the Ministry of fucking Defence. What are they warehousing? The Lost Ark? The Hindenburg? Walt Disney's Frozen Courts? Like, why did the Ministry of Defence need a warehouse? I don't know.

Aliens. Aliens! Yeah, of course, duh. In summary, nobody connected the dots. For years, Colin Stagg was portrayed as the man who got away with murder through a legal loophole. And it ruined his life. If it weren't for the advancements in forensic technology and the cold case review in 2002 and the fact that thank fuck they kept those samples, he may have stayed that way.

And Colin has amazingly never blamed the police. Not publicly, anyway. He says that he knows that they were just doing their job. Colin, I think you're being very, very gracious there. I know. Because they weren't doing their job. I really like him. I think he calms down a lot as he gets older, but I do think he probably was a bit of a misfit and a bit of a hellraiser. But you know he's middle-aged now and he's so just like ah you know yeah and just being like a weird guy in your 30s is a far cry from being somebody who's going to stab a woman to death and rape her in front of their two-year-old child he has however blamed

Paul Britton because Colin thought that he was responsible for the undercover operation, so the whole honey trap situation. Until, that is, the two of them made a documentary together in the 2000s, where Colin decided that Paul Britton was actually quite a nice man. Paul Britton, on the other hand, has never blamed himself for Colin's plight. He denies that he had anything to do with the Lizzie James letters, and actually says that had the police listened to him when he consulted on the green chain rapes, neither Samantha Bissett nor Rachel Nickell would have died.

OK, I don't want to turn this into a Paul Britton bashing. No. But I don't know how to not. He basically says, all I was doing was my job and they didn't listen to me anyway and I didn't write the letters. I only saw them after they had been sent. That's probably true.

I do think he has been villainised because it's easier than the Met being like, we're bad at our job. Yeah, I think the problem with this case is that it's Paul Britton doing his isolated part and then there just seemingly being no checks and balances in place for people being like, okay, we have this piece of evidence, we have these eyewitnesses, we have this testimony, we have X, Y, Z. Yeah. What is the corroborating evidence that points to it being this man

that we are going to go full force behind? And this batshit crazy fucking undercover operation, if you can even call it that. It's a stitch up. That's what it is. Pure and simple. And the blame, in my opinion, falls firmly at the feet of Keith Pedder. He did not have to use Paul Britton's profile and use that as the only piece of information he had to go after this man that they had nothing else against.

So Paul Britton, he's doing what he's doing. Should he have been able to connect the dots between these three different cases? You would say yes, but also everybody makes mistakes. The blame here, in my opinion, is Keith, because he should have known better and he should have done better. And Paul Britton claims to have told the Met that the green chain rapist would be local, on their records, noticed by neighbours, and would have been mentioned at police briefings. And he claims that they ignored him. But again again like these points that Paul Britton is making are pretty general. Yeah I haven't read his book hands up but the sort of snippets that I have read he seems to use that as a there's like a bit

in his book who's like you know I often wonder whether I should have gone back and knocked down their door and be like no you really need to look at this and he's right Robert Napa is all of those things but you also didn't realize that it was the same guy you know like I think he uses it as a bit of a smokescreen but like you know I'm not a forensic psychologist maybe I'm missing the big picture but like it seems to me a little bit like a well like I got that right like so do you know what I mean? Yeah. I think the more grievous thing is the fact that this woman rings them and tells them that she thinks her son is a rapist and that the police don't look into him. And when they ask him to come in and give a DNA sample and he doesn't, they don't pursue that.

Yeah. Like they should know that for a mother to make that kind of call, they should have taken it a bit more seriously. But who cares what we think? We are morons. Luckily for Britton, he was exonerated in 2002 after an eight-year inquiry by the British Psychological Society, so at least someone somewhere is taking something seriously. Britton still advises the police and maintains to this day

that Pedder and his team were not mavericks disobeying direct orders. Operation Edsel was not a secret. The whole letter-writing operation was approved at the highest possible level. And I don't necessarily think that's not true. No, I think that's true. I think it's very easy to scapegoat either of them. But the fact is that like the Met knew what was happening. This is the thing.

I think this comes back to being an institutional problem where the Met are just like, look, we're under a lot of pressure to solve this case. Close this case at any cost. That is like the fucking narrative of this story. Which we've seen many a time before, and it would not be a London Met case without an appearance from our ultimate fave, Cressida Dick. Cressida crawled out of the woodwork to make an apology to Alex and Andre Hanscom in 2009. She apologised for the Met not investigating Napa properly after his mum reported him for literally raping someone and then for what was termed as a catalogue of bad decisions. Cressida also made sure to stress that the police are quite different today.

She says that a lot, or she did say when she was Chief Commish. Are they? Don't know. Don't know. And this is fun. No one was ever reprimanded in the police over Operation Edsel because by the time the commission rolled around, most of the major players in operation were either retired or dead, which is quite convenient. Eventually, Colin Stagg was awarded over £700,000 in compensation,

a record at the time, but a small price for what he'd lost. Lizzie James also got £100,000 in compensation for some reason. I've been thinking about this. I was thinking about this in the shower this morning. I think it's because, not that she was put in danger, but that she was ordered by senior people to do something that was completely illegal, I think. And also, it probably ruined her career. And that's why she's got a fake name. And like, I don't know. I don't know. But I'm not sure.

I mean, yeah, all we can do is theorize on that. Because I personally don't really have that much sympathy for her. Because she's not a rookie that they pull out of like the police academy and they're like hey you you hey clarice you yeah yeah you look like rachel niquel yeah because they do they pick her because she looks like rachel niquel and they're like that's obviously his type you're gonna go and seduce him etc etc it's not like they sort of force her into doing this. She was an experienced undercover police officer who should have known. And yes, I'm not saying it's easy to stand up to your boss

or, you know, to more senior people than you, especially in an organisation like the Met, but the compensation strikes me as odd. Yeah. I mean, maybe there's something we don't know. So Robert Knapper is still in Broadmoor and it is thought that he is guilty of at least 106 rapes, exposures and sexual offences. Though he's never admitted anything, his mum has burned every picture of him

that she had. Totally disowned. She's just like, I'm not fucking having any of this. And I do want to stress that I'm not trying to perpetuate this image of paranoid schizophrenic people of being super dangerous, terrifying people jumping out of the bushes. Robert Napper is that, but it's incredibly rare. Incred incredibly, incredibly, incredibly rare. And also it's like, we don't know what treatment he was undergoing for this paranoid schizophrenia, if any. And I think I was listening to like quite an interesting podcast that was talking about, you know, all of the challenges people have, like talking about mental health and like whether, you know, obviously we know that when people are treated for conditions

like paranoid schizophrenia etc they're not any more of a danger to society than anybody else would be the problem is like it's at what stage they're in right and if it's untreated undiagnosed and this man is also experiencing violent sexual fantasies of course he's more of a danger and like we said after his mom finds out that he might rape somebody in 1989 she just sends him to a psychiatrist he's like the psychiatrist thinks i'm mad and that's kind of the only thing we know about any sort of psychiatric treatment that he's receiving either one i'm very glad that he's in broadmoor can he be rehabilitated i don't think sexual sadists can be i hope that he stays in there forever because 106 rapes, exposures and sexual expenses. He's a scary man.

So yes, let's move away from him and let's talk about little Alex Hanscombe because he is little no longer. He's our age and he and his dad actually moved abroad shortly after Rachel's death. I don't blame them at all. This was a case that was absolutely enormous in the UK and who wants to spend their entire life seeing their mum's face on the front page of every newspaper talking about how she was murdered. So it was clear to Andre that Alex would never be able to lead a normal life if he stayed in the UK. Alex has given a few interviews as an adult in which he claims that he remembers everything that happened that awful day but he doesn't want to be labelled as a victim and he doesn't believe in trauma. And he's never let what happened to him and his mum ruin or rule his life. There are a lot of interviews of Alex on YouTube talking about it

and I would recommend going and watching them. He's very composed, clearly a very intelligent guy and I completely understand why they moved abroad. Oh yeah, and again I think Alex is the perfect example, right, of what we talk about on this show all the time, like different people going through different levels of trauma their makeup of themselves and how that can impact you what happened to him and i don't mean this in a crass way it's like dexter level shit right anybody else that that had happened to somebody with a different psychological profile would have

gone on to 100 become somebody incredibly violent and dangerous and there is no inkling of that whatsoever with Alex he's an incredibly as you said composed articulate kind warm man and I'm glad that that's Rachel's legacy me too so sorry if that ruined your day yeah that's fucking miserable really really miserable but do nice stuff don't be afraid of walking in parks no don't be afraid of walking in parks no don't be afraid of walking in the parks like these horrible people are out there but you can't be a victim or see yourself as prey and if you don't know what a womble is dear god look it up and we'll see you next time for something else. We will. Bye. Hi, I'm Lindsey Graham, the host of Wondery Show American Scandal.

We bring to light some of the biggest controversies in U.S. history. Presidential lies, environmental disasters, corporate fraud. In our latest series, NASA embarks on an ambitious program to reinvent space exploration with the launch of its first reusable vehicle, the Space Shuttle. And in 1985, they announced they're sending teacher Krista McAuliffe into space aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger, along with six other astronauts. But less than two minutes after liftoff, the Challenger explodes. And in the tragedy's aftermath, investigators uncover a series of preventable failures by NASA and its contractors that led to the disaster. Follow American Scandal on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. Experience all episodes ad-free and be the first to binge the newest

season only on Wondery+. You can join Wondery in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Start your free trial today. I'm Jake Warren, and in our first season of Finding, I set out on a very personal quest to find the woman who saved my mum's life. You can listen to Finding Natasha right now exclusively on Wondery Plus. In season two, I found myself caught up in a new journey to help someone I've never even met. But a couple of years ago, I came across a social media post by a person named Loti. It read in part,

Three years ago today that I attempted to jump off this bridge, but this wasn't my time to go. A gentleman named Andy saved my life. I still haven't found him. This is a story that I came across purely by chance, but it instantly moved me, and it's taken me to a place where I've had to consider some deeper issues around mental health.

This is season two of Finding, and this time, if all goes to plan, we'll be finding Andy. You can listen to Finding, and this time, if all goes to plan, we'll be finding Andy. You can listen to Finding Andy and Finding Natasha exclusively and ad-free on Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.