Desperate honeytrap that brought shame on the Met
True, jaw-dropping story of how an undercover policewoman tried to sexually entice an innocent man into confessing to murder
DECEIT Friday, Channel 4, 9pm
The idea that the police would use an attractive undercover female officer to befriend a potential murder suspect, tease him with the tantalising possibility of a sexual relationship and entice him into a confession sounds like something Hollywood would dream up for a thriller. But in 1992 the Metropolitan Police was under intense pressure, desperately struggling to solve one of the most awful crimes in British history.
In July the body of 23-year-old Rachel Nickell was found on Wimbledon Common. She had been stabbed dozens of times and sexually assaulted after taking her child and their dog out for a walk.
She was discovered with her two-year-old son holding on to the blood-spattered corpse, whimpering: ‘Wake up, Mummy.’ The boy had witnessed the entire attack and murder. An act of such pure evil demanded a response, but after months the investigation was still nowhere in terms of forensic evidence to identify the killer. Yet the police had a prime suspect: Colin Stagg, a loner who was known to walk his dog where Rachel had been killed.
Though there wasn’t a single clue to tie him directly to the murder, senior detectives put in place an unprecedented secret operation to snare Stagg. There was, though, one problem – Stagg was entirely innocent, and the eventual outcome would be humiliation for the police and a delay of many years until the actual killer was identified and convicted, in 2008.
Now the full, extraordinary story of the bizarre, disastrous investigation is told in a four-part drama told largely from the point of view of the undercover officer involved in the honeytrap scheme, Operation Edzell.
Given the codename ‘Lizzie James’, the policewoman (Niamh Algar) is pushed far beyond the limits of any conceivable duty in her relationship with Stagg (Sion Daniel Young). Scriptwriter Emilia di Girolamo tells a story of a woman exploited in unbelievable ways in the man’s world of the 1990s, and of how wrong things can go when those in charge believe they can break any rules in the pursuit of justice.
With a strong ensemble cast also featuring Eddie Marsan as criminal psychologist Paul Britton and Harry Treadaway as Detective Inspector Keith Pedder, this re-creation of a notorious episode in recent British policing history is packed with jaw-dropping moments.