DNA Solved Rachel Nickell Case After Wrong Arrest

Wimbledon Common, July 1992

Rachel Nickell was 23 years old when she was attacked on a path at Wimbledon Common in southwest London on a summer morning in 1992. She was walking with her partner Andre Hanscombe and their two-year-old son, Alex. Hanscombe was briefly ahead on the path. Alex was beside her.

By the time help arrived, Nickell had been stabbed 49 times. Alex, still two years old, was found clinging to her body.

Netflix’s drama series ‘The Witness,’ which premiered on June 4, 2026, follows what came next for Andre and Alex Hanscombe across the decades that followed. A companion documentary, ‘The Murder of Rachel Nickell,’ premiered the same day.

The Wrong Man

London Metropolitan Police focused their investigation on Colin Stagg, a local man with no violent criminal history. In 1993, working with forensic psychologist Paul Britton, police ran an undercover operation in which a female officer posed as a romantic interest and attempted to draw Stagg into making incriminating statements about the case.

Stagg was arrested and charged. But at trial in 1994, the judge dismissed the evidence gathered through the undercover operation as an abuse of process. Stagg was acquitted and released after spending 13 months on remand.

He was cleared of all involvement. He was not, however, treated that way by the public or the press for years afterward. It was not until 2007 - long after the real killer had been identified - that Stagg received nearly $1 million in compensation from the UK Home Office for wrongful arrest.

The Real Killer

Robert Napper had a documented history of violent offenses. Seven weeks before Nickell’s murder, he had attacked another woman. In November 1993, he murdered Samantha Bisset, 27, and her four-year-old daughter Jazmine in southeast London.

Investigators working the Bisset case noted similarities to the Nickell murder and began looking at Napper - but the technology of the early 1990s could not confirm the connection. It took advances in DNA forensic science and years of re-examination for investigators to finally link Napper definitively to Wimbledon Common in 2004.

At the time of that identification, Napper was already confined to Broadmoor secure psychiatric hospital for the Bisset murders. In December 2008, he pleaded guilty to the manslaughter of Rachel Nickell on grounds of diminished responsibility.

Alex Hanscombe, Now

Alex Hanscombe was two years old in 1992. He is now in his mid-30s and works as a yoga teacher. He told The Sun in 2017 that he had ‘forgiven’ his mother’s killer long before he knew who was responsible - and that when he eventually saw a photograph of Napper, he ‘felt nothing.’

‘He had a tough upbringing and childhood,’ Alex told The Sun. ‘He was a schizophrenic. He tried to commit suicide after his first attack on a woman before my mum, so he knew what he was doing was wrong.’

Alex served as a consultant on ‘The Witness,’ which is based on his 2017 memoir ‘Letting Go.’ His father, Andre, also contributed to the production. In a statement to Netflix, both said: ‘Our journey has all been by the grace of God and a promise to go on together, and we feel incredibly blessed to be able to share our story in this way.’

What the Netflix Series Gets Right

People magazine’s recent ‘fact vs. fiction’ examination of the series confirms that ‘The Witness’ prioritizes the emotional truth of the case over procedural detail - focusing on the father-son story and the long aftermath rather than the crime itself. The documentary companion, ‘The Murder of Rachel Nickell,’ carries the factual weight of the case.

The series was the second most-watched show on Netflix in the United States as of June 6, 2026. Time magazine noted in a June 1 piece that the show’s most significant achievement is its focus on what happens to a family in the decades after a public tragedy - not on the mechanics of crime.

The Case That Changed Policing

An Independent Police Complaints Commission investigation later found that the Metropolitan Police had committed ‘bad errors’ and ‘missed opportunities’ to identify Napper before the Nickell murder. The IPCC found evidence suggesting Napper had been identified as a threat to women in the mid-1980s.

Alex Hanscombe has said he hopes his mother’s legacy becomes one of police reform - not of the crime itself. The Netflix series, which he helped shape, carries that intent.

Napper remains confined to Broadmoor. For a case that began on a public footpath in 1992, the full accounting of what went wrong - and how a family survived it - has taken more than 30 years to reach a screen.

References: The Witness fact vs fiction | Rachel Nickell true story The Witness Netflix