Diksha Sundriyal
In Netflix’s ‘The Witness,’ the investigation into the murder of Rachel Nickell leads the cops to resort to unorthodox ways to nail a suspect. Nickell was assaulted and stabbed to death while she was on a walk in the park with her two-year-old son, Alex. The boy was the sole witness to the crime, so the cops had to rely on evidence from the crime scene to catch the culprit. One of the things that they did was send an officer, known as “Lizzie James,” undercover to talk to a suspect and get him to confess to the murder. However, things didn’t turn out as expected. SPOILERS AHEAD.
Lizzie James was the Alias for the Real Met Police Officer
During their investigation into the murder of Rachel Nickell, the cops found that several people had reported a suspicious man. The description given by the witnesses pointed them towards Colin Stagg. While there was no forensic evidence to link Stagg to the crime scene, several witnesses claimed to have seen him in the park around the same time. Stagg admitted that he did go to the park that morning, but stated that he wasn’t around the time Nickell was murdered. Still, he became a strong suspect, and the cops became convinced that he was their guy because he matched the profile drawn up by Professor Paul Britton.
Britton was a criminal psychologist whose services had been used to profile dangerous criminals. After studying Nickell’s case, he came to the conclusion that the murderer had to be under 30 years old, living close to the park, and have a solitary lifestyle. He also theorized that the murderer would have peculiar sexual tendencies, and he would also be into stuff like satanism. Stagg seemed to fit this profile to the T, along with the books and other stuff related to satanic symbols found in his house.
And then, they received a call in which a woman claimed that she had conversed with Stagg through letters in which he had expressed his deviant sexual desires. The investigating team decided they needed Stagg to incriminate himself this way, but this time to an undercover cop. The operation was named Edzell, and a female was sent to talk with Stagg under the name of Lizzie James. They corresponded with each other for months, in which the cops hoped that Stagg would say something to prove that he was the murderer. Eventually, a meeting was set up between him and Lizzie, with the hopes that he would finally confess to his crimes.
Lizzie James Sought Compensation For Her Trauma
Despite their time and efforts to get Colin Stagg to confess, Lizzie James and the cops never got the confirmation. When they presented the case in the court, the defense lawyer countered that Stagg was being prodded towards a false confession with the “promise [of] intimacy [that Lizzie James] could really only do it if he’d killed Rachel Nickell”. Sure enough, Lizzie did tell Stagg that it would have been “all right” if he had done the Wimbledon Common murder. Still, he repeated that he had nothing to do with that. Eventually, the judge threw out the case against Stagg, calling the sting operation the “deceptive conduct of the grossest kind.”
For her privacy and protection, the real name of “Lizzie James” was never revealed to the public. However, it later turned out that she went on an 18-month sabbatical after the conclusion of Operation Edzell, citing her struggle with PTSD. In June 1998, she retired early from the force. Later, she sued Scotland Yard for not being offered sufficient support in the aftermath of her difficult and traumatic experience during the sting operation. She received the support of the Police Federation in this matter and, in 2001, reportedly received £125,000 in compensation.
In a statement made by a representative of the federation, Lizzie’s “career and health have been wrecked as a consequence of a police operation where she was a junior officer simply obeying the orders of her superiors.” Her lawyer stated that the compensation indicated the organization’s recognition “that she sustained serious psychiatric injury.” The lawyer revealed that Lizzie now wanted to put the whole thing behind her and rebuild her life. This was the last anyone heard of “Lizzie James,” who has since receded into complete anonymity.
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