How a red TOOLBOX helped catch Rachel Nickell's killer

How a red TOOLBOX helped catch Rachel Nickell’s killer – after flecks of its paint covering were found in her toddler son’s hair

In July 1992 Rachel Nickell was sexually assaulted and stabbed 49 times
The murder of the 23-year-old on Wimbledon Common shocked the nation
READ: Family of Rachel Nickell consider legal action against the Met Police

A new documentary has revealed how a red toolbox helped identify the killer of Wimbledon Common stabbing victim Rachel Nickell.

In July 1992 Rachel was sexually assaulted and stabbed 49 times while out walking with her two-year-old son Alex Hanscombe and their rescue dog Molly.

The murder of the 23-year-old model on Wimbledon Common shocked the nation and put police under enormous pressure to find her killer, Robert Napper.

However, for 16 years he managed to avoid admitting to his crimes against Rachel, with police wrongly accusing jobless local Colin Stagg, who often walked his dog on the common and spent a year in jail for the stabbing.

Napper eventually pleaded guilty to Rachel Nickell’s manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility in December 2008 – and ITV’s new docuseries Cold Case Forensics explores how forensic scientist Dr Angela Gallop and her team helped link him to the killing after four years of intense forensic reinvestigation.

In July 1992 Rachel Nickell was sexually assaulted and stabbed 49 times while out walking with her two-year-old son Alex Hanscombe (pictured together) and their rescue dog Molly

Advancements in DNA evidence led police to Napper, as well as a red toolbox belonging to the killer – after flecks of its paint covering were found in Rachel’s son’s hair.

ITV’s three-part programme delves into the world of Dr Angela as she and her colleagues unlock the clues that finally solved some of Britain’s most controversial murder cases.

In the first episode, The Murder of Rachel Nickell, which airs on ITV1 on Thursday at 9pm, Dr Angela describes how her team helped solve the 1992 murder of Rachel.

Rachel was found stabbed to death with her two-year-old son Alex clinging to her body.

The original investigation focused on Stagg, who had been reported by locals as resembling a photofit of a suspect.

Convinced Stagg was guilty, detectives launched a honeytrap operation, sending an undercover female police officer to start a romantic relationship with him, in the hope he would give himself away.

But Stagg – who was cleared of the charges against him and awarded £750,000 in compensation for the bungled police operation – was wrongly accused of the murder and after his trial collapsed, Dr Gallop’s team were called in to re-examine the evidence.

They found DNA on Rachel’s jeans after using a new process – before looking through all the different people that the ‘police had as people of interest and there was only a match to one individual.

The murder of the 23-year-old model on Wimbledon Common shocked the nation and put police under enormous pressure to find her killer, Robert Napper

‘Everyone else was excluded. And that match was to a man called Robert Napper,’ explains Angela’s forensic profiler Andy McDonald.

By this time, Napper was already banged up in Broadmoor high-security psychiatric hospital for murdering model Samantha Bisset and her four-year-old daughter Jazmine in November 1993.

In order to further cement Napper as the prime suspect in the case, Dr Angela’s team explored other forensic links to back up their DNA evidence, including a link between evidence found at the scene and a toolbox in his flat along with a shoe print.

In Napper’s flat on his arrest, there were various objects which pointed to his guilt – including a red metal toolbox that housed some of those items, which included weapons of offence.

A new documentary has revealed how a red toolbox helped identify the killer of Wimbledon Common stabbing victim Rachel Nickell

Dr Angela says: ‘He was always a little bit twitchy about his tool box and, you know, was keen on having it… close to him.’

Napper’s concern about his red tool box was a give-away; it was to provide an astonishing forensic link to the murder.

‘So we asked to see the tool box,’ says Dr Angela. ‘And when they submitted it, we discovered that it was a steel tool box painted with a thin layer of red paint over the top.

‘And this was interesting to us because April (the team’s lead examiner), in this way she has of looking at things and remembering things she’s seen and then later on connecting it with other things, she remembered that she’d seen a flake of red paint in the hair combings taken from Rachel’s son’s hair.’

In 2008 Robert Napper (pictured) was convicted of manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility

Hair combings had been taken from Alex at the hospital on the request of the first detective at the scene.

April had logged this discovery of red paint in Alex’s hair early in the re-investigation, and the programme notes that it always stayed in her memory.

Former Crime Correspondent Jeff Edwards explains: ‘Robert Napper had probably kept the murder weapon in the tool box. On the day of the murder, he’d opened the tool box.

‘In doing so infinitesimal pieces of paint had come off, had flaked off that tool box, got onto his clothing and at the murder scene some of that red paint was transferred from Napper’s clothing on to Alex’s head and that was sufficient to prove that he had been there that day and he had to be the person that murdered Rachel.’

In December 2008, Robert Napper pleaded guilty to Rachel Nickell’s manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility. Already in Broadmoor Hospital, it was ordered that he should never be released.

Dr Angela said: ‘There was satisfaction in knowing that someone who committed this absolutely horrendous crime had been identified and justice had been done insofar as it ever could be for Rachel and her family.’

Cold Case Forensics: The Murder of Rachel Nickell ITV1 9pm Thursday

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