Netflix's new three-part true crime series details chilling murder of mom in front of her 2-year-old son
Topics: UK News, Netflix, Film and TV, Crime
Kit Roberts
Featured Image Credit: Netflix
Topics: UK News, Netflix, Film and TV, Crime
Netflix has released a new three-part series about the horrific murder of a mom while her two-year-old son looked on.
Rachel Nickell went for a walk with her two-year-old son Alex on July 15 1992, heading to Wimbleson Common together.
There, the 23-year-old mom was brutally stabbed to death in broad daylight, with her attacker stabbing her 49 times, and Rachel also being sexually assaulted.
Now, Netlflix has released a dramatization of the horrific crime, as well as the subsequent police investigation to find Rachel's killer.
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The new TV drama is called The Witness, starring Jordan Bolger, Max Fincham, and Neil Maskell, which is being released on June.
There is also The Murder of Rachel Nickell, a documentary on the case.
Alex would go on to play a part in the investigation after it emerged that he had witnessed his own mother's killing, with police questioning him multiple times in an effort to find the culprit.
Some 34 years after the tragedy, Alex opened up to UK newspaper The Times about both the trauma of losing his mom in such a sudden and violent way, as well as the repeated questionings by police, which brought back the unimaginably awful memories of that day.
"I was not always protected," he said. "I was able to provide a picture-perfect description of the assailant, the weapon, his movements, so there was little more I could offer the police but I was asked to constantly relive my worst day and there was a cost.
"There was something demonic in taking a child back to it again and again."
The police would go on to question 32 men on Rachel's murder, and initially began to focus on Colin Stagg, who had walked his dog out on the common.
However, there was no forensic evidence for Stagg, and the police instead matched Stagg to a psychological profile created by a criminal psychologist called Paul Britton, before launching an undercover operation.
But it wouldn't be for 10 years that the police would find Rachel's true murderer, with new DNA techniques giving officers the chance to reinvestigate the murder, ruling Stagg out in the process.
Finally, the killer was discovered to be Robert Napper, a patient at high security psychiatric hospital Broadmoor Hospital in the UK who had previously been sentenced for the killings of mom and daughter Samantha and Jazimine Bissett.
Napper had pleaded guilty to manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility due to his having paranoid schizophrenia, as well as admitting rape and attempted rape.
In 2008, Napper was given a sentence of indefinite detention at Broadmoor Hospital for the killing of Rachel.
The Witness will be available to stream on Netflix. from June 4.