Stagg set for £1m payout

The man cleared of murdering Rachel Nickell is in line for a £1million payout.

Stagg, who spent a year in custody before the case was thrown out of court, said he deserved "every penny". Paranoid schizophrenic Robert Napper-38, is at the centre of the new investigation into the murder of Miss Nickell, a 23-year-old model. She was stabbed 49 times in front of her son, aged two, while walking her dog.

Napper is being detained indefinitely at Broadmoor for a similar attack 16 months later. He savagely stabbed Samantha Bisset, 27, a blonde strikingly similar to Miss Nickell, and smothered her fouryearold daughter Jazmine in Plumstead, only 12 miles from the common. Ms Bisset was killed in the hallway of her home.

She was stabbed eight times, sexually assaulted and so badly mutilated that the police photographer who recorded the scene could not work again for months. Her daughter was sexually assaulted in her bed before being suffocated.

In a five-year reign of terror, Napper carried out a string of attacks on women in south London, often stalking his victims as they walked along a Thames path known as the Green Chain Walk.

Napper pleaded not guilty at the Old Bailey in 1995 to the murders of Ms Bisset and her daughter but admitted manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility. Following his conviction, detectives on the Nickell inquiry wanted to re-interview him - but the idea was vetoed on medical advice.

Napper bore a strong physical resemblance to Stagg and matched a photofit of a suspect issued following Miss Nickell's murder. He came to the attention of the Nickell inquiry team because of the similarities of some aspects of his crimes to the Wimbledon murder but was never charged.

Detectives now hope advances in DNA technology will help them trap the real killer.

Stagg, from Roehampton, was charged with the murder but acquitted after a judge poured scorn on a police " honeytrap" operation to get him to confess.

He will now resume his battle for compensation against the Met.

He said yesterday: "I'm entitled to every penny I can get. My life has been ruined by a false accusation which has never been proved by anyone.

" Now it has been proved to be a complete lie. I deserve the chance to try and rebuild my life.

"It doesn't matter that I was cleared in a court of law. People have been pointing the finger at me for 12 years. I said I was innocent from day one but nobody listened."

Legal experts predicted that the extent of Stagg's "suffering" put him in line for a huge compensation payout.

Media lawyer Mark Stephens said: "It is difficult to imagine a more comprehensive annihilation of someone's character than was perpetuated against Colin Stagg.

"He may not have been one of the most savoury characters, but he has been unable to work, has become a pariah and has been turned into a hate figure"

For more than a decade the Nickell inquiry has been impeded by a lack of DNA evidence, but dramatic advances in forensic science mean police can now achieve results from minute samples.