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No missing or damaged pages, no creases or tears, no underlining or highlighting of text, and no writing in the margins. Whilst Pedder and the other officers working on this case caused a significant amount of damage to an innocent man's life, I can't deny that this was a good read. Mr Pedder claims that Detective Superintendent Brian Tomkins asked him if he was writing a book about the Nickell case and said that if he was he could lose his pension for contravening the official secrets act.
It was during the Satanic Panic of the early 1990s, I think the police walked into Colin’s flat, saw a pentagon on the floor and thought: this guy’s really weird. Colin spent 13 months behind bars after being wrongly charged with the 1992 murder of Rachel on Wimbledon Common – an injustice turned into a new prime-time TV show. Mr Pedder told the Guardian that while he was still a serving officer he openly questioned how the recently promoted assistant commissioner Johnson "could fairly make decisions on a case which he had authorised as a deputy assistant commissioner. I knew I wanted to work with him and I’d enjoyed working with [director] Niall MacCormick about ten years ago, To be on the other side of the police interview table for once was also a thrilling prospect! And the professor, said to be the inspiration for Robbie Coltrane’s criminal psychologist in 1990s ITV drama Cracker, helped to devise the plan, codenamed Operation Edzell.No one could have imagined that when beautiful young Rachel Nickell went for a walk on Wimbledon Common with her little son, it would have resulted in a wicked, sickening crime that appalled a nation; or that the police investigation that follwed would cost over a million pounds. This book is written by one of the detectives involved in the miscarriage of justice that resulted in the arrest of Colin Stag for the murder of Rachel Nickel. That’s part of the reason I wanted this drama to be made, as well for people to know about everything that happened to me. Prof Britton, played by Eddie Marsan in the show, was criticised by Mr Justice Ognall when he threw out the case against Colin.
But he claimed the anti-corruption squad was concerned about his book which attacks several senior officers for their "duplicity" during the political fall out generated by the ignominious collapse of the Nickell case.I am aware that someone else has since admitted killing Rachel Nickell, but at the time of the investigation Colin Stagg was a perfectly valid suspect and why that was thought to be the case should have been put before a jury. It was clear from talking to Dave Nath and Pete Beard [exec producers] that this was looking at police tactics, the world of the ’90s and the way women were essentially used in certain professions – it was coming from an honourable place, which was really important. It contains shocking letters between police and the chief suspect of this terrible crime, that will make you wonder if justice was really done. The evidential spine of his book is the Met's secret report on the undercover aspects of Operation Edzell, which Mr Pedder photocopied and kept hidden away. He really wanted to find the person that did it, but he’s human, we all have egos… The powers-that-be in the Met signed off on a relatively unproven method because they were equally desperate for closure: criminal profiling can give you some focus, but it proved a very dangerous tool here.
Pedder believed he and other officers involved were dropped by the Met, while more senior figures who had approved the undercover strategy emerged with their reputations intact. He is no longer an approved behavioural investigative analyst on the National Police Improvement Agency. It reveals information that has hitherto been withheld, and spectacularly prints letters from the police involved in the operation to the chief suspect that will astonish the reader and bring the details of this terrible case right back into the public eye. This book takes you behind the scenes of a most terrible crime, and reviews the subsequent case against Colin Stagg.In February 1998 Mr Pedder started working as a private investigator for an Iranian businessman living in London. It is also worth remembering that not only was Stagg innocent, the actual killer went on to commit another two murders and countless sexual assaults. After Mr Pedder's arrest and before the trial DC Blackman was investigated by CIB for an allegedly corrupt relationship with a tabloid journalist.
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