A witness and a survivor
Alex Hanscombe was only two when his mum was murdered in front of him. On Wednesday, C4 revisit the tragic events...
It’s unthinkable that anyone could take the life of a beautiful young mother, sexually assaulting her and stabbing her 49 times. Even more unimaginable is that her two-year-old son witnessed the awful attack and was beaten up.
‘It may be hard to believe, but my mother looked like she was lying there peacefully, like in one of our imaginary games,’ Alex Hanscombe said on Lorraine last week.
‘I stepped towards her and I said, “Get up, Mummy,” and she didn’t respond and I said it once again and she didn’t respond and I said it for the third time, “Get up, Mummy,” – and in that split second, no matter how young I was, I knew my mother was gone and that she was never coming back,’ he told Lorraine Kelly.
Rachel Nickell was just 23 when she’d taken her little boy, Alex, to walk their dog on Wimbledon Common in London in July 1992. She’d been happy and had adored her son and her partner, André Hanscombe, before her life was brutally cut short.
‘Somehow, it felt like there was a guiding hand on my shoulders,’ Alex, now 32, said. ‘I made my way out of the trees, back into the open spaces where families were sharing picnics, and they immediately came running towards me to help – they must have noticed the blood on my clothes, my battered face.’ While the family struggled to come to terms with their grief, all eyes were on the little boy.
But André, now 58, was understandably desperate to protect his son from the attention – and the killer, who was still at large. They went abroad, later settling in Barcelona. Meanwhile, Colin Stagg was arrested for Rachel’s murder. But when it went to court, without evidence, he was aquitted and it was deemed he’d been a victim of police entrapment and was later awarded compensation, an infamous saga explored in Channel 4’s Deceit.
It wasn’t until December 2008 that Robert Napper pleaded guilty to Rachel’s murder on the grounds of diminished responsibility. He was known to the police and suffered from paranoid schizophrenia. He was detained indefinitely at
Broadmoor. Remarkably, Alex has forgiven the man who took his mother from him. ‘I didn’t want to allow negativity into my life,’ he explained.
Almost 30 years on, Alex and André – who have remained incredibly close – returned to Britain to revisit the tragedy for a Channel 4 documentary.
During the trip, Alex spoke to the child psychologist tasked by the police with extracting anything from Alex’s memory that might help catch the killer,
‘My mother was gone and never coming back’
a crime scene investigator who met the then-two-year-old at the scene, and a journalist.
The CSI remembered seeing a piece of paper near Rachel’s body, then realising that Alex had used it to dab his mother’s head to try and help make her better. ‘It gives me a lump in my throat,’ he said.
Alex, remarkably, maintains a positive outlook on life.
‘I still feel my mother’s spirit and love every day, and for that I’ll always be grateful,’ he said.
Death On The Common: My Mother’s Murder, Weds, 11.05pm, C4 or On Demand