The oddball who's still an outcast

When police hunting the killer of Rachel Nickell went to Colin Stagg's home they must have been convinced they had got their man.

Sinister images, one of a figure wielding a pair of axes, were drawn on black-painted walls and a collection of knives was on display.

Today, 12 years after that dreadful killing and after the case against him was thrown out of court, Stagg still lives in the same flat on the tough Roehampton estate, not far from Wimbledon Common.

The knives are still there but the walls are now papered in pale blue and his ornaments, mostly figures of stags, are arranged neatly. There are books on history, astronomy and Greek mythology on the shelves.

Stagg, who is jobless and survives on ?45-a-week benefits, continues to walk his dogs on the common each morning - when there are few people about - sometimes passing the spot where Miss Nickell died. His afternoons are spent behind the heavily bolted door of his flat, where he watches comedies - Monty Python, or Carry On films - and listens to classical music.

Stagg, now 41, was the second of five children whose mother left the family for another man when he was 11.

He has never shaken off the stigma of the flawed prosecution: he has few friends and his notoriety means he is unable to find a job. He must deal with public anger and abuse each time he ventures out.

The loner became a suspect two months after the killing when the BBC's Crimewatch broadcast a photofit and numerous callers likened it to Stagg. He admitted he had been on Wimbledon Common that morning but not at the time Miss Nickell was attacked.

A blonde police officer, known by her cover name Lizzie James, was used in a "honeytrap" plot to encourage Stagg to confess and find out where the knife used in the killing had been dumped.

Over several months the pair developed a friendship and he sent her letters in which he fantasised about perverted sex involving knives and bondage. He confessed he had been turned on by thinking about the murder of Miss Nickell, but crucially never admitted responsibility.

Stagg was acquitted in 1994 after a judge refused to allow "Miss James's" evidence to be put before a jury. Since then, he has made a career of sorts out of his notoriety, seeming to refuse to move on.

He was paid a reported £43,000 by a newspaper in 1994 to take a lie detector test - which he passed.

He became a guest on radio shows, protesting his innocence and taking home the usual rate of £100 to £150, and three years ago he was paid £1,500 for controversially playing himself in an ITV documentary on the killing.

After his acquittal he married Diane Beddoes, who began writing to him while he was on remand for 13 months awaiting trial for Miss Nickell's murder. But the marriage fell apart and Ms Beddoes left him in 1997.

Last year he said he had invited a 38-year-old Ukrainian divorcee to Britain. The pair had been corresponding and Stagg said he had found his "soulmate".

But nothing came of it. Today Stagg remains an outcast, still fearful that he will become the victim of a vigilante attack.