Authors: Paul Britton
Slowly Lizzie began to expand on her own particular history without introducing anything new. On 14 April, she wrote:
I have only ever met one man who could make me feel complete. These were due to the experiences we shared, these experiences have shaped me into the woman I am today… I believe I will only ever feel fulfilled again if I meet a man who has the same history as me. The things that happened when I was with this man were not what normal people would like, these involved upsetting and often hurting people and even though these things are bad and I feel guilty I can never forget how exhilarating they made me feel I am keen to feel the same way but not by hurting others…
Stagg wanted to move the relationship forward quickly and on 28 April they spoke to each other on the telephone for the first time. As expected, with the new level of contact came an increased degree of caution.
During the conversation Stagg referred to people in his neighbourhood spreading rumours about him.
‘Oh why?’ asked Lizzie.
‘Well, I, I won’t tell you on the phone, but I’ll tell you in the next letter.’
‘Oh yeah.’
‘Mainly something that happened last year.’
‘Oh yeah. Oh all right then.’
‘Yeah.’
‘People just can’t keep themselves to themselves. I know what it’s like, I mean it’s …’
‘Yeah.’
‘It’s even worse up north. You know what people are like up north, they just love to gossip about ya.’
‘That’s right, yeah. Well this is more than gossip you know.’
‘Is it?’
‘It’s all about, you know, character assassination, you know.’
Stagg promises to write and explain what happened but, as advised, Lizzie shows little if any interest in the subject and concentrates on her own life and history.
‘Do you think… would you prefer to do that?’ she says.
‘Yeah, it would be best I think, yeah,’ he replied.
‘All right then.’
‘It’s just that something terrible happened around here, you know.’
‘Mmm.’
‘You probably read about it in the news, like.’
‘I don’t really pay much attention to the papers, I haven’t got a TV really.’
‘I’m up … I mean … the thing is I was suspected of it.’
‘Uh hum.’
‘But I want to tell you like I told everybody you know I never done anything, you know.’
‘Mmm.’
When asked what she thought of his letters, she answers him carefully, saying, ‘They don’t offend me, I don’t mind in the slightest’, thus avoiding saying that she likes them.
During their second call on the following day, Lizzie suggested they finally meet face to face and mentions the possibility of having a picnic in Hyde Park. In the same conversation, Stagg begins relating a fantasy that he had posted to her that day. It featured Lizzie being beaten and having her head yanked back with a belt as he enters her from behind and causes her pain.
I told Pedder that the violence described was more extreme than that found in the symbolic enactments of control and submission that sometimes arouse individuals or couples, and that this was a clear positive indication of the deviant sexuality predicted of Rachel’s killer.
In the same letter, Stagg wrote of his past, describing how at the age of seventeen, he watched a pornographic movie and several days afterwards went nude sunbathing on his local common. Lying naked in the long grass he became aroused and began to masturbate. A man appeared from out of the bushes and asked to join him.
Stagg admitted to the homosexual encounter but insisted he wasn’t gay. All forms of sex turned him on, he said, but right now he was only interested in women. He wanted to ‘fuck the arse off Lizzie and leave her helpless and in pain. He invited her to stay with him over the summer at Roehampton so they could take long walks on the common ‘indulging in carnal lusts every five minutes’.
The covert operation had been running for more than three and a half months when Pedder asked me to a meeting at Norbury Police Station in London on 7 May. It was important, he said, without elaborating, and I understood what he meant when I arrived to find a room full of senior Scotland Yard officers, including the Deputy Assistant Commissioner and commander of the undercover squad SO10. The covert operation was under review and these men had the power to let it continue or to pull the plug immediately.
Pedder and Wickerson gave a presentation using slides, interviews, letters and transcripts from the operation. My role was small in terms of floor-holding and I simply answered occasional questions.
There was no question or uncertainty about the legality of the operation - that was taken for granted by everyone. Instead, the senior officers were more concerned with the practicalities and the operational issues such as viability, risk to the public of disengaging too early and money.
How much and how long were the questions that echoed loudest. Eventually, Pedder told me he had the green light to continue.
As promised, Stagg’s next letter explained how he was arrested for Rachel’s murder and stressed that he wasn’t responsible. A number of single men had been pulled in for questioning, he said. His neighbours and other locals had told the police a load of rubbish and the police had believed them.
‘I am not a murderer, as my belief is that all life from the smallest insect to plant, animal and man is sacred and unique…’
Stagg also mentioned being charged with indecent exposure, claiming it was the result of being victimized by neighbours who had seen his name in the newspapers. They’d also called him names in the street and children had thrown eggs at his kitchen window. He said the latest rumour doing the rounds was that he ran naked around his back garden masturbating at midnight.
At Lizzie’s next telephone call on 13 May, it was already clear that the operation would move to the next phase of face to face contact. Up until now, she had revealed very little of her own history but now she promised that she was almost ready to reveal her dark secret to him. She began laying the foundations for her story about having been drawn into an occult group as a teenager and becoming involved in the sexual murders of a young woman and child. By opening up her heart to him, she hoped he would do the same in return.
Lizzie had said, ‘You know I know you told me in one of the letters that you met this man in the park when you were seventeen and …’
Stagg replied, ‘Yeah.’
‘And I know what it must be like to sort of confess to something like that but…’
‘Yeah.’
‘…but don’t worry about it, I don’t think you’re gay or anything like that I just think …’
‘No, I know.’
‘.. . you’re just lonely, that’s all it was.’
‘Yeah, that’s right, yeah.’
‘So I wouldn’t worry.’
‘No, I don’t. It happened such a long time ago anyway, you know.’
‘Yeah, but I wouldn’t worry about it and you know what you were saying about that woman, quite frankly, Colin, it wouldn’t matter to me if you had murdered her. I’m not bothered, in fact in certain ways it would make it easier for me because I’ve got something to tell you. I’ll tell you on Thursday that, you know, it just makes me realize that it’s fate that has brought us together.’
‘Yeah, I think so.’
‘I don’t want to talk about it now but I’ll tell you on Thursday.’
‘Right. You know I’m innocent of everything. I haven’t done anything, you know.’
‘Yeah, well, I don’t want to talk about that but I’ve got something I want to say to you …’
They planned to meet on 20 May at 2.00 p.m. in Hyde Park for a picnic lunch. Stagg turned thirty years old that day and Lizzie had promised him a birthday treat. A day earlier, I sat down with Lizzie at the annexe at Arnold Lodge to prepare her. We’d always known that the operation could reach this point if the suspect hadn’t eliminated himself.
Lizzie gave me an enthusiastic smile as she sat down, looking totally relaxed in jeans and a shirt. Her bright, bubbly personality could sometimes disguise her depth of experience and hard edge. It was hard to imagine that she had spent no small part of her working life using a combination of her womanly characteristics and charms to penetrate some very dangerous criminal organizations. She had risked her life and survived on her wits, looks and intelligence.
And each time an undercover operation ended, she had to be trained to repackage all of those things in a slightly different way and then go out and play another role. It was like the ultimate in method acting.
This time Lizzie had to be a damaged and deeply shaken young woman, nursing a dark secret and looking for a man who had shared similar experiences. She had to know how this woman would feel and act and talk - a far different prospect to playing gangsters’ molls and vice girls. She had never done anything like this before and couldn’t make assumptions, instead she had to soak up details and ideas like a sponge.
‘He’ll want to get close and touch you,’ I told her, ‘but you have to manage the physical distance and keep him away without rejecting him or showing disdain. If he sees or infers that you’re not all that you seem, or interprets rejection he’ll see you as another woman saying no to him. It won’t be good for the operation or for you.’
‘How do I manage the distance?’ she asked.
‘Fall back on your own distress. You’re telling him about what happened to you as a teenager; about the ritual murders and the feelings they engendered. These are upsetting and uncomfortable and you can use this pain and hurt to hold him off.
‘He’s going to recognize a lame excuse - he’s heard a lot of them from women. What you say has to be absolutely real.’
Hyde Park had been chosen carefully for the meeting. Lizzie would not only be wired, her every step would be shadowed by a team of undercover officers blending in with the lunchtime crowds. At no stage could anyone forget that she was meeting a murder suspect and, if unmasked, could be at serious risk.
I thought Lizzie should wear clothes that showed she was aware of her sexuality but was not promiscuous. Pedder had other ideas. He raised the issue of a knife-proof vest.
‘I don’t want one,’ said Lizzie. ‘It’s going to affect what I wear and how I move.’
Pedder said, ‘I’d prefer you had one.’
‘And if he gets any hint of it, it’ll compromise the operation.’
Lizzie resisted and settled on a floral dress that was pretty but not provocative.
Shortly before 2.00 p.m. on Thursday, after turning on the tape recorder strapped to her body, Lizzie dodged the puddles on the asphalt pathways and stood self-consciously beside a lamppost outside the Dell Cafe, waiting for her date to arrive.
Colin Stagg had been in Hyde Park for a long while already and now watched her from a distance. Having stepped up the contact to another level, he’d become cautious again. He recognized Lizzie immediately from her photograph and, as promised, she carried an M & S shopping bag.
He approached her from the south side of the lake, through the pouring rain.
‘Lizzie.’
‘You must be Colin.’
‘Yeah.’
‘It’s like Brief Encounter, Colin.’
‘I know, yeah.’
‘You must be soaked, get under [her umbrella]. God, you’re soaked. How are ya?’
‘Oh, I got here a bit early actually.’
‘Did ya?’
‘Yeah, I was waiting round the back there.’
‘Oh, I was here a bit early but not too early. Oh, it’s such a shame we was gonna have a lovely picnic’
‘I know. Typical innit.’
‘Oh, Happy Birthday.’
‘Yeah. Thanks.’
The rain forced them indoors to the Dell Cafe, a self-service cafeteria, where they sat and talked generally about themselves. Lizzie told him the story of the ritual murders, explaining how deeply the experience had affected her. The impact had been so great that she felt she could never become truly intimate with a man again unless he possessed a similar background and could understand her feelings.
As I predicted, Stagg said he didn’t have such a background but was desperately keen to be part of her life because they were so alike. He restated that he had nothing to do with the murder of Rachel Nickell.
The meeting lasted an hour and as they parted, Stagg took a brown envelope out of his jacket and handed it to Lizzie. As the cab pulled away, she looked at her watch and turned off the tape recorder at 3.05 p.m.
That afternoon, Pedder phoned me and couldn’t hide his excitement. ‘He’s mentioned the knife,’ he said eagerly, ‘he’s only gone and mentioned the fucking knife.’
‘At the meeting?’ I asked.
‘No. No. In a letter. He wrote a letter to Lizzie and gave it to her.’
‘What did it say?’
‘Stand by your machine, I’ll fax it to you.’
The letter was flagged with a warning that it had an air of danger about it. Stagg described taking Lizzie to a secluded spot that he knew on the common where they stripped off and lay on a towel in the hot sunshine.
They spy someone watching them from behind a tree and Stagg encourages Lizzie to put on a show for the peeping Tom. ‘Suck me off,’ he says, loud enough for the man to hear and Lizzie drops to her knees and obeys. Then he bends her over the tree trunk and penetrates her from behind, holding her down. Secretly motioning the stranger to come closer, Stagg withdraws his penis and offers Lizzie up to him. Then he grabs her hair, forces her head back and thrusts his penis into her mouth.
Suddenly the stranger suggests they do something dangerous and Lizzie agrees. He goes to his clothing and produces some rope and a knife. The two men grab Lizzie’s arms and tie her spread-eagled on the ground face up.
The man sits astride you, his cock still dripping spunk onto your belly. He gently takes the blade of the knife and draws it down gently from your breasts to your cunt, not cutting you just teasing you. Then I place the blade under his cock, and squeeze a few drops of spunk onto the blade, then he places it to your mouth and makes you lick it clean, which you do, you are now so hot and red you are panting so excitedly. Then the man cuts himself on his arm, just enough to draw blood and he drips it onto your nipples. You massage it into your breasts making you rock your head backwards and sidewards as you go into a massive orgasm.