He was charged thanks to a 'honey-trap' sting that led to the whole case being thrown out of court, but Stagg says he remained the prime suspect for the police and public for the next 15 years18:49, 04 Jun 2026The man who was falsely suspected of murdering Rachel Nickell in front of her two-year-old son has claimed his ordeal blighted his life for 15 years and left him “sick of the whole thing”‌Colin Stagg was arrested and charged over Rachel’s brutal death on Wimbledon Common in July 1992. But when he finally got to court after 13 months in custody, the case was thrown out by the judge who was horrified by the “honey-trap” investigation used to extract information from him, calling it “deceptive conduct of the grossest kind”.‌More than three decades later, Stagg - who was later paid £700,000 in compensation by the Home Office but spent it all and ended up homeless - claims he is still paying the price for those police mistakes. Speaking in a new documentary Stagg, 62, recalls how he found out that Robert Napper was the killer from two journalists on his doorstep, who told him there was DNA evidence to prove it.‌“I was sick of the whole thing, it dragged on for about 15 years,” he tells a new Netflix film. “People were shouting out stuff like ‘guilty’, ‘hang him’ stuff like that. Basically it was still in people’s minds - ‘we know we got the right man but he got off on a technicality’. I had to live with that.”In the wake of Rachel’s shocking murder, which was witnessed by her two-year-old son Alex, Stagg’s name was put forward after an E-fit was shown on the BBC’s Crimewatch programme. Officers searching Stagg’s home discovered knives and found him to be “odd” - so when a woman revealed she’d been sharing lonely hearts letters with him that had left her feeling disturbed, they decided to write to him themselves.‌Under the pseudonym Lizzie James, a female police officer exchanged messages with Stagg who was subsequently charged with murder in August 1993. But after he spent more than a year in custody, trial judge Mr Justice Ognall ruled that the undercover evidence was inadmissible, the case was thrown out and Stagg was acquitted.It was not until November 2007 that rapist and murderer Robert Napper was officially charged with Rachel's death, following a breakthrough with DNA profiling. Napper was already inside Broadmoor psychiatric hospital having been found guilty of killing Samantha Bissett and her four-year-old daughter Jazmine in 1995.‌Speaking now, Stagg says it was not the police who informed him that he was no longer the prime suspect, but the media. Two journalists on his doorstep informed him that Napper had been arrested - and that there was DNA evidence to prove he’d killed Rachel.He explained how he was flattered into unwittingly incriminating himself. “I’d never had a proper girlfriend up to the age of 29, so when I received a letter from Lizzie James I just felt really happy that a woman had shown some interest in me,” he explains in the documentary, which also features Rachel’s partner Andre Hanscombe and her son Alex, now 36.“I’m very low on self esteem anyway, before this even started, so this knocked me back even further, and deeper and deeper. It did make me feel very paranoid, if I accidentally watched a woman crossing the road or something, I’d think ‘look away’ because someone could be watching me thinking ‘hang on, he’s stalking that woman.’ I just thought this is your life now, don’t trust anybody.”‌Stagg received a public apology in 2008 from assistant commissioner of the Met Police John Yates who said it was now clear he was “completely innocent of any involvement” in Rachel’s murder.Part of the blame lay with forensic psychologist Paul Britton, who advised the police that Stagg fitted the offender's profile and suffered from the same "sexually deviant-based personality disturbance" as the real killer. It was Britton who masterminded the honeytrap plan, known officially as Operation Edzell, which was designed to elicit a confession.Mr Justice Ognall famously threw out the prosecution's case against Stagg, ruling that it was "not merely an excess of zeal, but a blatant attempt to incriminate a suspect by positive and deceptive conduct of the grossest kind”.Article continues belowAfter Napper confessed in 2008, Sir Harry Ognall stated he was "quietly satisfied" with the conviction, which he said proved his original decision to dismiss the flawed case against Stagg was "conclusively right”- The Murder of Rachel Nickell is streaming now on NetflixLike this story? For more of the latest showbiz news and gossip, follow Mirror Celebs on TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Threads.