Authors: Paul Britton
Lizzie James first wrote to Colin Stagg on 19 January, 1993, saying that she was an old friend of Julie Pines who she described as being, ‘a little old fashioned’. She mentioned having accidentally stumbled upon a letter that Stagg had written to Julie.
This letter has been on my mind and interests me greatly. I find myself thinking of you a lot, I would be very interested in getting to know you more and writing to you again.
I will tell you a little bit about myself. I am divorced (like Julie) and quite frankly have had my fill of shallow one way relationships, as I have had my fingers burnt too many times. I am 5′8″, blonde, aged 30 and I have been called attractive in the past, my interests may sound boring, but I don’t socialise much and prefer my own company, I read a lot and have often contemplated writing a book.
I have an odd taste in music, my favourite record being, ‘ Walk on the Wild Side’ by Lou Reed. I am a bit cautious but not paranoid, I would appreciate
it if you didn’t let Julie know that I have written to you as our friendship has dwindled. I have taken an accommodation address in London so you can contact me there. I am in the process of moving flats and I don’t want any letters going missing, I am in central London about twice a week. I hope you are not upset by this letter and I look forward to hearing from you soon.
Lizzie.
X
PS.
My name is Lizzie James.
Stagg replied immediately and showed great caution, saying that he couldn’t recall writing to someone called ‘Julie’. He went on to say that he was interested in writing to Lizzie because he felt they were alike. He didn’t socialize and led a quiet, comfortable life. His pastimes included walking regularly in the local parks, relaxing in front of the TV and listening to music. He also liked to do some nude sunbathing in the park during the summer but some small-minded people felt this was perverted.
Describing himself as being ‘painfully lonely’ sometimes, he said that he didn’t like ‘close-minded’ people. Life was too short, he said, to let anyone else dictate how you should live.
Asking Lizzie to send him a photograph of herself, Stagg said he hoped she would write soon so they could get to know each other intimately.
Keith Pedder showed me the letter and I advised that Lizzie’s reply should be warm in tone, like a typical lonely hearts letter. I set out the guidelines, saying what the letter ought to contain or reflect and it was up to the police to find the words and construct the sentences.
When Stagg’s next letter arrived early in February, he remembered sending a letter to Julie and admitted it was rather explicit. He wanted to send Lizzie similar letters that revealed his fantasies about them being together. At the same time, he encouraged Lizzie to do the same and reveal her inner desires and fantasies.
Attached to the letter was a story that Stagg had written about having sex in his back garden. He described lying naked as Lizzie stripped off in front of him, wanting to make love in every possible way. Then he led her by the hand to the lawn and they lay on the damp grass as he slowly masturbated while stroking her hair. The thought that his neighbours might be watching excited him.
I didn’t read the letter until I next saw Pedder on 15 February at Arnold Lodge when he looked very pleased with things.
‘It’s happened so quickly,’ he said. ‘His second letter and he’s already writing fantasies.’
‘An unexceptional fantasy,’ I reminded him. ‘It’s a long way short of implication.’
Pedder said, ‘But it doesn’t eliminate him.’
‘No.’
Stagg obviously remembered what he wrote to Julie Pines, so his first letter to Lizzie had been to test her reliability. And he’d quickly moved towards eliciting sexual fantasies from Lizzie without prompting. The only other points of interest seemed to be a preference for outdoor sex, an excitement at the thought of being seen and a slight indication of a dominant sexual attitude towards the female participant.
By this time, Lizzie and Stagg had exchanged valentines and another fantasy letter had arrived. He revealed a little more about himself, admitting to getting ‘very randy’ living on his own and masturbating while he read men’s magazines. He hoped that Lizzie wasn’t offended and that they would soon meet and have an exciting relationship.
The fantasy was very similar to the sort found in one of his pornographic magazines, but it reinforced the explicit sexual nature of his correspondence and what he wanted from the relationship with Lizzie.
Her return letter couldn’t significantly raise the intensity of sexual expression, I advised, nor could she introduce sexual themes that were predicted of the offender. She couldn’t shape him and he had to make the running.
Lizzie wrote back praising Stagg as a ‘brilliant storyteller’ but saying that he’d have to wait for a letter like that from her because she was a bit slow to start. She described living on the outskirts of Slough and planning to move out in a couple of weeks.
Meanwhile, the operation hit an unforeseen snag. A TV documentary on offender profiling was being planned, with the participation of David Canter, and the producers wanted to focus in particular on the Rachel Nickell inquiry. Canter had already told journalists that he believed he could help the investigators but had not been asked. The documentary was potentially disastrous for the covert operation because much of its usefulness depended on Colin Stagg believing that the investigation had gone quiet and was getting nowhere.
Pedder tried his best to have the programme shelved and when this failed he prevailed on me to cooperate, rather than let them just interview Canter who had no direct knowledge of the investigation. The idea was to hopefully deflect comment from the case and to talk in general terms about offender profiling.
Highly reluctantly, I agreed. The result was the biggest catch of red herrings and waffle I could possibly come up with. I felt sorry for anyone watching the show.
On 25 February, Pedder told me about the next letter. Again it was in two parts, the first designed to build the relationship and the second consisting of another fantasy, this one written under the heading, ‘A Special Treat for my Beautiful Lizzie’.
He described how on a hot sunny day, they went walking over to a local park for a picnic. Coming across a small clearing with just a few trees to give some privacy, they chose a space under a fallen tree.
As he prepares the food and puts the wine in a nearby stream to cool, Lizzie strips down to a bikini and they sit side by side on a blanket. They begin fondling each other and undressing until Lizzie is lying naked on her back.
Stagg leads her to the fallen tree and bends her over the trunk so he can penetrate her from behind. She gives a stifled moan and he asks if she’s all right. ‘Yes, that’s wonderful,’ she says.
Stagg finished by promising to continue the fantasy in his next letter. For Pedder it was a revelation. He circled his office, clutching a photocopy and occasionally stopping to reread passages aloud.
‘Look he’s there - he’s in the woods. It’s just like it was - the fallen tree, the stream, he’s talking about entering her from behind. He’s recreating the scene.’
I tried to temper his enthusiasm. ‘Yes, but that’s all he’s done. Nothing directly links him to the murder and from a psychological viewpoint, the fantasy is no different from what you might read in a men’s magazine.’
It was easy to get carried away by the geographical features and the dominant male behaviour, but for the covert operation to have any real importance it had to move over time from being generally consistent with what I expected of the killer to being narrowly and specifically predictive of him.
‘You shouldn’t reply immediately,’ I said.
‘Why?’
‘Give him time to reflect and withdraw from the relationship. It’s up to him to determine the direction of the operation.’
‘What if he doesn’t go on with it?’
‘Then he eliminates himself.’
It wasn’t a case of wanting Colin Stagg to be guilty or minimizing details in his letters that were positive. I appraised each letter on its merits and indicated when I saw evidence in his fantasies of more female agency within sexual relationships - a factor that wasn’t predictive of the killer. When Lizzie did write again she didn’t reject Stagg and she indicated a preference for truthfulness rather than fantasy. At the same time she had to indicate her openness to dominant male behaviour, without making any suggestion of extreme violence or any characteristics drawn from the murder of Rachel Nickell.
Your lovely fantasy letter was absorbing, I only hope these were your genuine thoughts and what you really think about us. I want it to be private and true, not the kind of usual story that everyone reads in magazines. My fantasies hold no bounds. My imagination runs riot. Sometimes this worries me and it would be nice if sometimes you have the same unusual dreams as me.
Over the next fortnight, letters were exchanged regularly. Stagg wrote of his loneliness and his history of poor relationships with women. He couldn’t believe how lucky he was to have a beautiful woman interested in him who had the same exciting outlook on sex. Normally the women he met looked at him as if they’d just wiped him off the bottom of their shoes.
Although his fantasies began to contain phrases such as ‘screaming in ecstasy’ and ‘twitching violently inside you’, I knew that too much could be read into such things. Yet the dominant male behaviour continued in the fantasies and I advised that Lizzie’s next letter could respond in similar tone to his descriptions of control and humiliation. However, it was important that no defining example of these concepts be offered; Stagg had to be given total freedom to respond in his own way.
If this was done, I predicted he’d do one of three things.
1) withdraw from the relationship because the prospect of a sexual liaison based on such fantasies wouldn’t interest him;
2) indicate his enjoyment of such things in a private relationship but this would be at a level no different to that of many consenting adults whose sex life is spiced up with symbolic exchanges of sexual control and submission, even sometimes involving restraints;
3) attempt to develop a relationship with Lizzie that increasingly focused on physically and sexually violent fantasies that included her and would ultimately comprise the most serious kinds of sexual assault.
I knew that anybody who chose the last option, if he had been responsible for the murder of Rachel Nickell, would find the sexual excitement and expectation arising from these violent fantasies so great that, in due course, it would override his caution. Ultimately, he was likely to disclose his responsibility to someone he believed was a confidante, particularly if he felt that such a disclosure would be part of an even greater sexual gratification.
This is the motor that ran beneath the entire covert operation.
If Stagg chose either of the first two options, he would eliminate himself. Only if he chose the last option and indicated that his sexuality was consistent with that predicted of the murderer would the covert operation continue. However, it would not prove that he was guilty of murder.
Lizzie wrote:
You ask me to explain about how I feel when you write your special letters to me. Well, firstly, they excite me greatly but I can’t help but think you are showing great restraint, you are showing control when you feel like bursting. I want you to burst, I want to feel you all powerful and overwhelming so that I am completely in your power, defenceless and humiliated. These thoughts are sending me into paradise already…
The precise wording of the correspondence was outside my role; I advised on the tone and principles behind each outgoing missive and the ways in which each incoming missive could be interpreted or understood. I wouldn’t have chosen the word ‘humiliated’ used in this letter because it hadn’t appeared in any of Stagg’s correspondence. Nevertheless, I felt it just stayed within the guidelines I had set down for the operation.
Stagg’s next letter made it clear that he wasn’t going to withdraw from the relationship. At the same time, his fantasy went way beyond ‘control’ and ‘humiliation’. He introduced pain into the relationship.
After admitting that he was ‘holding back’, he described how he wanted to abuse Lizzie’s body and call her names until she felt ‘humiliated and dirty’. At the same time, he urged her not to regard him as a violent man. He would show her love as well as lust.
You need a damn good fucking by a real man and I’m the one to do it… I am the only man in this world who is going to give it to you. I am going to make sure you are screaming in agony when I abuse you. I am going to destroy your self esteem, you will never look anybody in the eyes again…
The monitoring, caution and testing were obvious, as if he took a step forward and then came back again to make sure everything was all right. At the same time he had turned up the temperature and for the first time I noticed distinct elements of sadism in the letter.
He backtracked quickly when he next wrote, again revealing his loneliness and emptiness when seeing young romantic couples. He seemed concerned that Lizzie shouldn’t recoil from the extreme content of his previous letter.
In reply, Lizzie didn’t reject Stagg or show offence, but also didn’t encourage him to develop more extreme themes. Instead, it was time for her to reveal details of her own history while pretending to be ultra-cautious. She had to indicate a dark secret in her past that she wouldn’t talk about.
In his next letter, Stagg pleaded with Lizzie to tell him her secret and insisted that he couldn’t be shocked by anything she had done in her life, even murder. There was no evidence of extreme sexual violence in the letter but he showed a willingness to pursue the relationship at all costs and regardless of society’s rules and regulations.
Stagg’s next fantasy was again set in open air parkland on a summer’s day and featured verbal abuse and lack of consent as Lizzie was sexually penetrated by more than one man. Stagg also sent her a gift, an eyelet which he said would protect her from ‘rotten, evil, closed-minded people’ and would arouse her when worn.