Authors: Paul Britton
The fantasy goes on to describe both men penetrating Lizzie and the knife teasing her nipples and being held against her cheek. The letter ends with Stagg saying that he hoped Lizzie found it satisfying and reassuring her that no harm would come to her.
Surprisingly, he claims the story is written along the line of what he feels Lizzie is ‘into’, yet at no stage had she ever mentioned knives, pain, verbal abuse, dripping blood, fallen trees, streams or woodland. And this letter couldn’t have been influenced by anything that happened in Hyde Park because Stagg brought it with him, already written.
‘It’s just like you said. It’s amazing,’ said Pedder.
I pulled him up. ‘Why is it amazing?’
‘No offence, Paul, it’s not that I didn’t believe you. You just seem to know so much about Stagg.’
‘No. Not at all. I know things about sexual deviancy.’
‘OK, where does this fantasy put Stagg?’
‘It’s consistent with what I would expect to find in the masturbatory repertoire of the killer. It also has the various elements known to be relevant to the murder of Rachel Nickell
‘Give me the bottom line.’
‘You’re looking at someone with a highly deviant sexuality that’s present in a very small number of men in the general population.’
‘How small?’
‘Well, the chances of there being two such men on Wimbledon Common when Rachel was murdered are incredibly small.’
Colin Stagg had clearly shown himself to be a very lonely young man who was desperate to lose his virginity. To a degree, I knew that he’d say anything to get laid but this didn’t explain why he chose to reveal such violent fantasies. There were endless other sexual liaisons and escapades he could have envisaged and written about, yet he chose this narrow specific pathway of his own accord.
Quite a large number of people in the general population have sex lives that include elements of symbolic coercion, bondage, or sadism. If this is all that Mr Stagg had revealed then he would have eliminated himself from the investigation. Instead, he went beyond this and showed his arousal at a tiny and specific strand of fantasy that featured extreme violence, rape and sexual pain. This had been predicted of the killer months before Stagg ever became a suspect.
Of course, I couldn’t say that Colin Stagg killed Rachel Nickell and, equally, having the same rare deviancy wasn’t proof of murder. The only evidence likely to satisfy a court was if the suspect disclosed details of the murder that only the killer could possibly know. Obviously, if Stagg wasn’t the killer, he had nothing to fear because he had no guilty knowledge.
As June heralded the arrival of summer, the covert operation continued with the pace being carefully monitored. Meanwhile, I had several other cases to concern me.
The trial of Michael Sams had begun at Nottingham Crown Court where he’d pleaded guilty to the kidnap and false imprisonment of Stephanie Slater and blackmailing Shipways Estate Agents. However, he denied murdering Julie Dart or attempting to blackmail West Yorkshire police or British Rail.
Prosecution counsel Richard Wakerley said there was no doubt that Michael Sams had committed all of the offences and listed more than twenty conclusive links between the kidnapper of Stephanie Slater and the killer of Julie Dart.
‘The game is up, Mr Sams,’ he said, looking towards the dock.
I didn’t follow the trial in the daily papers and was surprised to hear from Bob Taylor.
‘Sams is due in the witness box either tomorrow or the next day,’ he said. ‘It’s going to be crucial.’
The trial was perceived as going well for the prosecution but much depended upon how effectively Sams performed. ‘You know him, Paul, I’d be grateful if you could observe him and give counsel your opinion on how Sams is functioning in the witness box.’
I met with Richard Wakerley and Taylor early the next morning, 1 July, and counsel asked me if I thought Sams could be brought to making an admission about killing Julie Dart. I shook my head.
‘Only if he perceives that by doing so he will somehow enhance the Raffles-like image he has of himself; or if he decides he’s definitely going to be convicted. The probability is very small.’
‘Is he still playing the game?’
‘Yes - a game in which he’s invested everything. If he does confess, it won’t be until after he’s convicted.’
Although open to advice, I got the impression that Wakerley thought he could succeed where others had failed and tie Sams into knots under cross examination.
Taylor had to find me a seat in the crowded courtroom, somewhere I could see and hear Sams clearly. The public gallery was crowded and faced in the wrong direction. The press box was also full and I didn’t fancy rubbing shoulders with Fleet Street’s finest because there was always a danger of recognition.
Finally they found me a special chair next to the press box and no-one seemed to notice when I sat down and began scribbling notes. Michael Sams entered the witness box at 11.45 a.m. wearing a blue suit and gold-rimmed spectacles.
I jotted: ‘Calm. Rehearsed story. Relaxed, leaning on box. He copes well with friendly questions. He has established a regimented construction which he is able to refer to as though it were memory. To do this he must hold the offence sequence to one side … Some notions are weak - developed post-arrest rather than part of the original scheme - so he’s thinking on his feet.’
Sams admitted to planning the kidnap from as early as February 1991 when he built a box using four sheets of eight foot by four foot chip-board. This was later used to imprison Stephanie Slater but not, he said, Julie Dart.
Initially, he planned to kidnap an estate agent in Crewe, hoping to extort enough money to buy his wife Teena a house in Birmingham. He said that he made arrangements to view a house suitable for his plan and had disguised his appearance by putting two warts on the side of his nose. However, the plan was aborted because a builder in the house next door had started talking to him and he decided it wasn’t safe to continue.
Two weeks later, he said he was watching TV with a friend in his workshop when the lunchtime news bulletin told of a body being found in Lincolnshire. His friend said to him, ‘It was an accident. She ran away and I hit her.’
His friend encouraged him to write two letters to throw the police off the scent. ‘He said he wanted something in somebody else’s handwriting.’ Sams said he agreed because of the parlous state of his marriage and at the time, ‘I could not have cared less about anything.’
I was writing furiously and the chap sitting next to me in the press box assumed I was another journalist. During a lull in proceedings, he said, ‘Don’t I know you from somewhere? I’m so-and-so from BBC Radio, Birmingham.’
I’d been in and out of the incident room at Nechells Green station, that’s where he’d probably seen me.
‘Do you work around the Midlands?’ he asked.
‘I get about.’
I didn’t want to be recognized or to be asked any questions. The incident stuck in my mind because when the trial was over, I had a call from the same radio reporter asking me to comment and when he heard the sound of my voice there was an ‘Oh God’ and a sigh down the line.
During Sams’ evidence it was clear that he was still striving to present a positive image for the jury. I wrote, ‘For Stephanie he’s presenting himself as a kindly kidnapper, the negative being the callous brutal murderer of Julie Dart and the would-be killer of Stephanie Slater.’
I suggested to counsel that he explore the image Sams had of himself and the image of his friend. How did he account for nice people doing evil? How did he explain the totally unacceptable behaviour of others?
It was important, I said, to use a soft tone and incisive questions. Sams could cope with and gain resilience from hostile confrontation because it made him raise his defences.
Richard Wakerley was brilliant as he took Sams through each stage of his planning, letting the defendant revel in the richness of his strategy and how clever he’d been. He only claimed ownership of the good ideas and repudiated the mundane plotting or mistakes that were made.
Wakerley had woven a spell. ‘Can we agree that it was the same man who killed Julie Dart and blackmailed British Rail?’
‘Yes,’ said Sams.
This was important.
Wakerley asked, ‘Then how do we explain the connection between the fibres under the Sellotape in the letter to British Rail matching those of your blue trousers?’
Sams began to struggle. As each piece of forensic evidence confronted him - the bloodstains, carpet fibres, rope strands - his discomfort increased. It was clear that he had a high regard for such evidence and didn’t know how to counter it. Similarly, when he had to think on his feet, without the opportunity to sit and plan, he was vulnerable.
Wakerley changed tack slightly and used my words, ‘callous, brutal, killer and failure’ with respect to Sams. Using the full vocal range, soft and hard, he picked up on the defendant’s dwindling confidence.
Sams sobbed as he recalled the moment he snatched Stephanie Slater but the tears were for his wounded self-esteem and not for his terrified hostage. He never intended harming her, he said, provided she didn’t remove the blindfold.
‘And what would you have done if she had removed it?’ Wakerley asked.
Sams sobbed and said he’d never hurt a woman. Wakerley then held up a board spiked with nails which Sams had designed to cripple Stephanie if she had tried to run. Sams squirmed. Wakerley softly and repeatedly used the phrase, ‘killer of Julie Dart’ and watched as each time the defendant recoiled in the witness box.
For me one of the most important confirming comments came when Sams said, ‘I wouldn’t be able to face it if I had killed Julie Dart.’ Unwittingly he had admitted why he fought so hard against admitting he was a cold brutal killer.
Sams was asked whether he was still friends with the man he claimed had killed Julie.
‘I haven’t decided yet,’ he said.
Then he suggested that he had assumed her death was accidental. Wakerley looked incredulous. ‘An accident? This girl was beaten over the head and then strangled. How can that be called an accident?’
‘Well that was my interpretation,’ he said.
Wakerley then repeatedly asked him to name this friend.
Each time Sams declined, saying he might eventually do so once he had cleared his own name.
On 8 July, the jury retired to consider the verdicts and returned within two hours. Mr Justice Igor Judge sentenced Sams to four life terms and said, ‘You are an extremely evil man. The jury has convicted you of murdering Julie Dart. This was murder in cold blood, deliberately strangling her to death while she was unconscious, a kidnapping gone wrong because she saw more than she should.’
Referring to Stephanie, he said, ‘I have not the slightest doubt that she was in desperate and mortal danger for the first two or three days of her captivity. If it seemed necessary to you, she, like Julie Dart, would have been murdered in cold blood. Her survival was entirely due to her remarkable moral courage and the unostentatious display of qualities of character …’
Four days later at Full Sutton prison in Yorkshire, Michael Sams sent a message from his cell that he wanted to see West Yorkshire detectives. Bob Taylor made the journey, unsure if it was just another throw of the dice by the games player.
Sams sat at a table opposite him and admitted that there had never been any ‘friend’. He had murdered Julie Dart in his workshop at 6.00 p.m. on 10 July, 1991. He was always going to kill her, he said, whereas Stephanie was always going to be allowed to go home.
Lizzie James had revealed her most intimate secrets to Colin Stagg, admitting her part in the ritual murder of a woman and young child. Now she waited to see how he’d respond.
If the police suspicions were correct, I didn’t expect him to openly confess to killing Rachel at this stage. I told Pedder that he’d probably invent a story about a murder if he thought it would get Lizzie into bed. Equally, it would act as a test. It wouldn’t put him at real risk and if she went to the police, he’d know that he couldn’t trust her.
Within days of their first meeting, Stagg revealed in a phone call how as a teenager he and a cousin had murdered a young girl and concealed her body in the New Forest in Hampshire on the south coast.
Pedder rang me and quipped that Stagg and I must be in league and ‘taking the piss’ out of the police.
We arranged a meeting at Arnold Lodge to talk about this development and to brief Lizzie on her next ‘date’ with Stagg planned for 4 June at Hyde Park.
‘You have to minimize any apparent interest in the Nickell murder,’ I told her, ‘and to emphasize how vulnerable you feel at having revealed your own past. You’ve given him a secret that is very precious and fragile.’
‘What about his story of killing the woman in the New Forest?’
I looked at Pedder who shook his head.
‘We’ve checked it out. It’s an invention.’
‘All right, well, Lizzie, you have to treat it with scepticism. Don’t accuse him of lying. Even if it were true, the incident he describes doesn’t equate in scale with what happened to you. It doesn’t mean he’s automatically the man you want to give yourself to, or who could fulfil you.
‘At the same time, you should ask him questions about the supposed murder. Ask him how he felt when it happened, make him see how you need to know if his experience really does parallel yours. Get him used to talking about the details.’
‘Why?’ asked Pedder, looking puzzled.
‘Because that way he gets used to Lizzie’s questions. If he eventually reveals himself to be Rachel’s killer, he’s not going to be surprised when Lizzie asks him lots of detailed questions, looking for the proof.’
As planned, Lizzie drew out details of the earlier ‘murder’ and stressed that she wanted complete honesty. She didn’t want Colin to say things just to please her. She reiterated this in her letters and phone calls over the next three weeks.
From very early in their correspondence, Stagg had asked Lizzie to write her own fantasies back to him. So far, she had avoided this, letting him make the running, but now his demands grew stronger. She wasn’t contributing to the relationship, according to Stagg, and there were suggestions that he doubted her bona fides.