Great Unsolved Crimes

by Rodney Castleden

  During the years that followed, more of the ‘evidence’ gathered during Operation Edzell emerged. The picture of Colin Stagg that came out tended to reinforce the idea that he was innocent, not that he was guilty. He came out as a rather timid, lonely and sensitive person who was keen to have the companionship of a woman. It was clear that he struggled to understand the (completely fake) persona adopted by the policewoman. He begged her, ‘If I have disappointed you, please don’t dump me. Nothing like this has happened to me before. Please, please tell me what you want in every detail.’ Colin Stagg was a bewildered, lonely man who wanted above all to please this woman. Operation Edzell really showed that Colin Stagg was a very long way from having the personality of a killer; there was nothing aggressive about him at all. It really then looked more remarkable than ever that on the strength of Operation Edzell the police decided they had enough evidence to arrest him. More and more people considered the possibility that someone else must have murdered Rachel.

  Operation Enigma was an imaginative project that explored 200 unsolved murders to see whether there were serial killers at work. April 1998 brought the news that Operation Enigma had identified a cluster of four murders that were committed by one person: the Wimbledon Common murder was one of them. Subsequently, there were more murders that looked as if they might be the work of the same killer. The murder of Margaret Muller at Victoria Park in Hackney in February 2003 was one; the sexual assault and stabbing of Sally Bowman at Blenheim Crescent in Croydon in September 2005 was another.

  But there was one murder in particular that looked very similar indeed to the attack on Rachel and her son. That was the murder of Samantha Bissett and her four year old daughter Jazmine in November 1993. This double murder happened at Samantha’s home near Winn’s Common at Plumstead. Samantha Bissett was sexually assaulted and then stabbed to death; her body was then mutilated by her killer. The little girl was also sexually abused, then suffocated to death. The mutilation inflicted after death was so grisly that the police photographer, who must have seen some very gruesome sights, was off work for months afterwards.

  A mentally ill man was arrested and charged with the Bissett double murder in May 1994. He was Robert Napper, and he was (eventually) identified on the evidence of fingerprints found at the crime scene. By a strange coincidence, Napper’s fingerprints were almost identical to those of his victim, so they were very hard to distinguish from one another. There are in fact renewed doubts about the reliability of fingerprint evidence in general after tests have shown that different fingerprint experts reach different conclusions on the same evidence, and can also be influenced by police expectations. Even so, Napper’s and Bissett’s fingerprints were almost identical. By another extraordinary coincidence, Napper and Samantha Bissett had the same birthday.

  Once in custody, Napper was identified as the perpetrator of a whole string of violent sex crimes against women. The police identified him as the Green Chain rapist, who over an eight-year period had carried out perhaps forty rapes and other sex attacks on a Thames-side path called the Green Chain Walk. Napper went on trial, and was described by the judge as ‘highly dangerous’; he was too dangerous to be on the loose and was sentenced to an indefinite sentence in Broadmoor.

  There were certainly enough similarities between the murders of Rachel Nickell and Samantha Bissett for the police to conclude that Robert Napper was responsible for killing Rachel. But at the time when Napper was arrested, they had contrived to get Colin Stagg imprisoned on remand. They had someone for the Wimbledon Common murder and did not need the complication of admitting they had the wrong man. While Napper could have killed both Samantha and Rachel, Stagg could not have killed Samantha because he was in prison at the time – the very best of alibis. Napper had no alibi for the time when the Nickell murder took place. Keith Pedder, who was in charge of the Nickell case, later admitted that he and his team had thought of Napper as a possible suspect but ‘there was nothing to tie him to the Rachel Nickell murder’. This was an extraordinary comment to make. There had been nothing to tie Colin Stagg to the Nickell murder either, yet the police were ready enough to pin the Nickell murder on him.

  At Scotland Yard, there is a Murder Review Group, an elite squad that has the task of investigating cold case murders, murders that have remained unsolved for a long time. It has been known since 2002 that the Murder Review Group considered Robert Napper as a suspect for the Wimbledon Common murder. In 2003 the Group announced they had made a breakthrough in the Nickell case. Using a new DNA technique (DNA Low Copy Number) on Rachel Nickell’s clothing taken from the scene of the murder, fragmentary human DNA had been recovered that could belong to the killer. Colin Stagg offered to give a DNA sample, knowing that it would prove his innocence, but his offer was significantly declined, which implied that the investigators were no longer trying to pin the murder on him. A year later it was announced that the analysis had yielded DNA details suggesting a match with Robert Napper. Unfortunately the match was not sufficiently well-defined to amount to proof; it was not going to stand up in a courtroom. Robert Napper could not have been convicted on this DNA evidence. After the Operation Edzell fiasco, the Murder Review Group were treading very cautiously.

  The Murder Review Group were keen to interview Napper about the Nickell murder, but they were barred by the Broadmoor psychiatrists. Eventually the psychiatrists relented. In June 2006, detectives from the Murder Review Group questioned ‘a forty year old man’ at Broadmoor regarding the Nickell murder. It began to look then as if Napper might be charged and tried for the Nickell murder.

  For Colin Stagg, this was of paramount importance. If someone else was convicted of Rachel’s murder the cloud of suspicion and gossip that still hung over him would disperse. There might even be compensation. Stagg is aware that he has never been able to shake off his association with the Wimbledon Common murder. ‘You will always have people who will always believe I had something to do with it in some way. They’ll just think there’s no smoke without fire, and the police had every reason to arrest me.’

  The fragmentary DNA evidence points towards Robert Napper as the murderer, a serial offender now imprisoned in Broadmoor for two other murders. Colin Stagg’s situation has changed, and it looks as if he is in line for a large sum in compensation for, among other things, wrongful imprisonment. Stagg’s life was irretrievably damaged by his arrest and imprisonment, and by the press campaign against him. The Daily Mail described him as ‘the violent oddball with a taste for kinky sex and knives.’ He was clearly the victim of prejudice. He was a loner with an interest in wicca; he had a picture of the Cerne Giant in his home. These, the police considered, were more than adequate reasons for treating him as a suspect. Then, when they were unable to find any other suspect, he became the prime suspect. But for the probity of Mr Justice Ognall, police and press prejudice would have sent Stagg back to prison – by the law of the lynch mob.

  Stagg was unable to get a job for twelve years, unable to go out without fear of abuse and threats, and was virtually a prisoner in his own apartment. And Colin Stagg is not the only victim of the police’s determination to pin the Wimbledon Common murder on him. If they had not had a fixation about Colin Stagg, the police might have connected the murder with Robert Napper, and taken Napper into custody before he had the opportunity to kill Samantha Bissett and her daughter.

  I’m a Celebrity: O. J. Simpson

  The O. J. Simpson murder case is one of the most highly publicized crime cases of the last few decades. The reason is that the man charged with double murder was a high-profile American football star. He had retired from football in 1979, long before the murders, and since then had pursued a modest career as a sports commentator and a minor film actor. It is one of those unusual cases where the chief suspect is a celebrity, and this ensures saturation coverage by the media.

  At the end of a long trial, Simpson was acquitted. The verdict was blurred when afterwards, in a civil court hearing, Simpson was found
liable for the wrongful killing of Ronald Goldman. There were therefore two conflicting verdicts on the case, one saying that he didn’t do it and one saying that he did.

  Just before midnight on 12 June 1994, one of O. J. Simpson’s former wives, Nicole Brown Simpson, was found dead outside her home in the Brentwood area of Los Angeles. Beside her body was a second body, that of her boyfriend, Ronald Goldman. Nicole Brown’s children was asleep in an upstairs bedroom. The evidence found at the scene by police investigators led the police to think that O. J. Simpson, who had divorced Nicole Brown two years earlier, might have been the murderer.

  Simpson’s lawyers persuaded the Los Angeles Police Department to let him turn himself in to the police at eleven o’clock in the morning on 17 June. The charge of double murder meant that he would get no bail and, if convicted, the death sentence. In California, double homicide is a capital offence. As events turned out, the prosecution decided to seek a life sentence, not the death penalty.

  The case was very large in scale, because of Simpson’s celebrity status. He had eleven lawyers working on his defence; another twenty-five lawyers worked for the prosecution. One hundred and fifty witnesses were called. The nine-month trial became the longest running trial in California’s history, accumulating costs of more than $20 million. The presiding judge felt sorry for the marathon hearing to which the jurors were subjected, and laid on some diversions for them, including a theatre trip, a sightseeing trip in an airship and a boat trip to Catalania Island. The murder trial attracted more media coverage that any previous criminal trial since the Lindbergh kidnapping case way back in the 1930s.

  One major problem in the case was that Orenthal James Simpson was black. There was a presumption within the black community that he would not receive justice, simply because of his colour. There was also a presumption among whites that he would not be found guilty by a jury composed mostly of representatives of minority groups; they would be unlikely to convict a black celebrity, regardless of the weight of evidence against him. It was an insoluble problem. The lost lives of Nicole Brown and Ronald Goodman seemed to dwindle into insignificance as O. J. Simpson took the centre of the stage; his right to justice and his right to be free of bigotry seemed to override the need for justice for the victims.

  On 17 June 1994, a thousand journalists waited to see Simpson give himself up to the police and give a media statement. But he failed to appear. At two o’clock the police began to search for him as Robert Kardashian, one of Simpson’s lawyers, read out a rambling letter from him that sounded like a suicide note. ‘First everyone understand I had nothing to do with Nicole’s murder . . . Don’t feel sorry for me. I’ve had a great life.’ The journalists joined in the hunt for Simpson.

  In the early evening, at a quarter to seven, a police patrol car spotted a white Ford Bronco travelling north on Interstate 405. The car belonged to one of Simpson’s friends, Al Cowlings. The officer approached Cowlings, who was driving, and Cowlings shouted that Simpson was naked inside the car and holding a gun to his head. The office backed away and a low-speed chase began. The chase was filmed from helicopters and it was reported live on the media. Many people watched from bridges crossing the highway. Eventually Cowlings drove Simpson back to his home, 360 North Rockingham Avenue, Brentwood. Simpson did not emerge from the vehicle for another forty-five minutes. When he did, police took from him $8,000 in cash, a passport, a false moustache and beard, and a loaded gun (a Smith and Wesson .357). In spite of the numerous infringements of the law involved in this escapade, Simpson was never charged for any of them.

  When Simpson first appeared in court on 20 June he pleaded not guilty to the two murders. Two days later the grand jury was dismissed because of the excessive media coverage, which could have affected the jury’s objectivity and so produced a false verdict. At a second court appearance, a month later, Simpson claimed confidently that he was ‘one hundred per cent not guilty’.

  The trial began on 24 January 1995. The prosecution case, led by Marcia Clark, opened with the assertion that Simpson killed his ex-wife in a jealous rage. Evidence was produced in the form of an emergency phone call made by Nicole Brown Simpson in 1989; she said she was frightened that Simpson would do her physical harm. There were also expert witnesses who gave evidence from fingerprints, shoe prints and DNA that placed Simpson at the crime scene. They also presented a picture of the relationship that gave him a motive for murder.

  Allan Park, a limousine driver, said he was unable to contact anyone at Simpson’s gate at a quarter to eleven on 12 June, when he was due to pick Simpson up. At ten to eleven he saw a large figure go into the house, some lights were switched on and then Simpson answered Park on the intercom. The two men loaded baggage into the car and left for the airport at a quarter past eleven.

  Simpson’s expensive defence lawyers argued that Simpson was the victim of police fraud and sloppy handling of evidence which had led to DNA contamination. His lawyers went so far as to accuse LAPD detective Mark Fuhrman of planting evidence at the crime scene. Fuhrman found himself on the stand, having to defence himself against charges of racist language. He denied he had used the word ‘nigger’ to describe black people during the ten years beforehand, but the defence team had found nine-year-old audio tapes on which he could be heard using the word repeatedly. The tape had been made by a screenwriter gathering background material for a story she was writing on policewomen. The notorious Fuhrman tapes became a cornerstone of the defence case. They showed that some of the testimony at least was biased, and helped Simpson towards acquittal. As a result of his testimony, Fuhrman was later tried for perjury; he did not contest the charge.

  A leather glove was found at the crime scene. It was alleged to belong to Simpson. The prosecution team decided not to ask Simpson to try on the glove in the courtroom, to show that it fitted, because they suspected that soaking in blood, alteration by forensic testing and freezing several times would have shrunk it. But the assistant prosecutor, Darden, was goaded by Cochran into asking Simpson to try it on. The glove was now too tight for Simpson to pull on over his latex-gloved hand. The moment was a gift to the defence. Cochran quipped to the jury, as he had several times earlier in the trial relating to evidence in general, ‘If it doesn’t fit, you must acquit.’ The assistant prosecutor, Christopher Darden, told the judge in desperation that Simpson had arthritis and his failure to take anti-inflammatory drugs that day had caused his hand to swell. The prosecution team also knew that the glove had probably shrunk significantly since the crimes were committed.

  The prosecution maintained that drops of Simpson’s blood found at the crime scene had resulted from cuts on the middle finger of Simpson’s left hand, which he (allegedly) sustained in the struggle with Ronald Goldman. The problem with this is that none of Simpson’s gloves had any cuts. There was blood on the glove found at the crime scene, but none on the glove found back at Simpson’s house. This suggested that someone had fixed the evidence.

  In spite of the several major gaffes in their case, the prosecution team was confident of a conviction. In the United States generally, the case was seen in broad socio-political terms. Many black Americans were convinced that Simpson was innocent and that he should be acquitted; a conviction would encourage further police misconduct. Many white Americans believed Simpson was guilty. As a result, racial tensions intensified. Many in authority feared that a guilty verdict might incite a repeat of the 1992 riots in Los Angeles.

  The jury considered its verdict for three hours before deciding the Simpson was not guilty. The verdict was announced at ten in the morning on 3 October 1995. But was Simpson really not guilty? There was in fact quite a lot of evidence that incriminated him:

  1. Traces of blood belonging to Nicole and Ronald as well as Simpson himself in and on Simpson’s car (DNA analysis).

  2. The bloodstained socks found in Simpson’s bedroom were soaked in Nicole’s blood (DNA analysis).

  3. Hairs on Ronald’s shirt belonged to Simpson, tho
ugh Simpson claimed never to have met Ronald.

  4. Blood on Simpson’s gloves belonged to Nicole, Ronald and Simpson.

  5. The gloves carried fibres from Ronald’s hair and the carpet in Simpson’s car.

  6. There were documents showing that Simpson had earlier been arrested for beating Nicole. The documents included photos showing her battered face. Simpson was sentenced to three years’ community service for this earlier violence.

  7. Nicole had lost a set of house keys. She had told family members she was afraid Simpson had taken them in order to get into her house. The keys were found at Simpson’s house.

  8. Nicole had finally broken with Simpson on the day of the murders; he seemed very disturbed by this.

  9. The left hand glove found at Nicole’s house matched the right hand glove found at Simpson’s house.

  10. Under oath, Simpson claimed he did not own any Aris Isotoner gloves, but media photographs show him wearing some.

  11. The bloody footprints at the crime scene were made by Bruno Magli shoes. These are expensive and rare. The size twelve prints matched Simpson’s shoe size.

  12. Under oath, Simpson claimed he did not own any Bruno Magli shoes, but a photo taken at a football game shows him wearing them. Simpson claimed that the photo had been doctored, but another photo emerged also showing him wearing the shoes.

  13. Nicole’s friends and family were well aware that Simpson was stalking her. Nicole said that Simpson had told her he would kill her if her ever found her with another man.

  14. A store receipt showed that Simpson had purchased a twelve-inch knife six weeks before the murders. The type of knife purchased exactly matched the wounds on Ronald and Nicole.

  Whether O. J. Simpson was actually guilty of the double murder or not is still not known, but this is an impressive list of evidence for the prosecution. If the accused had been less well-known, if he had been unable to pay for expensive defence lawyers, there can be little doubt that in a routine court hearing he would have been found guilty on this evidence. The team for the prosecution was in fact profoundly shocked at the not guilty verdict, which it had genuinely not expected. Some observers who did not approve of the verdict blamed it on bias or ignorance on the part of the jurors. Apparently only two of the jurors had received a college education, which was cited as an indication of their intelligence (which of course it is not). On the other hand, their lack of education may account for the jurors’ lack of awareness of the significance of the DNA evidence. Some of them evidently thought they were being given old-fashioned blood-group information and had no idea of the uniqueness of a DNA profile. Prosecutors heard more than one juror making comments such as, ‘Well, lots of people have the same blood type.’