Where is ‘Lizzie James’ now? Why identity of ‘honeytrap’ officer in Rachel Nickell case will never be revealed and her ‘disgusting’ payout
Her role in the investigation took a 'traumatic' toll
The Murder of Rachel Nickell, a new Netflix documentary, briefly explores one of the most controversial chapters of her case: the “honeytrap” operation with Lizzie James.
Nickell died in July 1992. The 23-year-old was attacked (stabbed almost 50 times and sexually assaulted) and killed in Wimbledon Common, London, with her two-year-old son, Alex, the only eyewitness.
The culprit, Robert Napper, wouldn’t be convicted for over 15 years. This was due to several factors – police failings chiefly among them, including multiple situations in which Napper “could and should” have been investigated.
In the two years following Nickell’s death, police focused on trying to charge another man: Colin Stagg. For that, they used Lizzie James.
Who was Lizzie James in the Rachel Nickell case?
Lizzie James was an undercover officer in the Metropolitan Police.
Before we get into further detail, the circumstances that led to James’ involvement in the Rachel Nickell investigation are important.
Stagg roughly matched the description of a man seen near the area where Nickell was killed. There wasn’t any forensic evidence to link Stagg to her death, so police tasked a criminal psychologist, Paul Britton, with creating an offender profile.
“What they got from me is a point-by-point psychological analysis,” he explains in the doc.
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From Britton’s perspective, the killer had to be under 30, live locally, have few friends and solitary hobbies, and be interested in martial arts and pornography.
When the police spoke to Stagg, not only did he admit to being around the Common, but his apartment also had “strange” pagan and zodiac imagery.
There still wasn’t enough evidence to charge him – and this is where Lizzie James comes in.
Lizzie James’ role in Operation Edzell
Police received a call from a woman who’d conversed with Stagg via a lonely hearts column. This paved the way for a covert operation, code-named Operation Edzell.
Lizzie James, an undercover operative with the Met Police’s Special Operations Group, got in touch with Stagg, pretending to be a friend of the woman to whom he’d written letters.
According to Stagg’s defence barrister, William Clegg KC, James would “promise intimacy with Colin Stagg… but said she could really only do it if he’d killed Rachel Nickell”.
“I remember reading the transcripts of the undercover operation, all of which were taped, and I was completely and utterly astonished. I couldn’t believe what I was reading – that the police had behaved in this way.”
In one conversation, James told Stagg: “If only you had done the Wimbledon Common murder, if only you had killed her, it would be all right.” However, Stagg insisted he had nothing to do with Nickell’s death.
Despite his adamant responses, Stagg was charged with Nickell’s murder.
However, when his case finally reached the Old Bailey in September 1994, the case was thrown out. Mr Justice Ognall scolded the police for “deceptive conduct of the grossest kind”, and Stagg was entirely acquitted.
What is Lizzie James’ real name?
Lizzie James isn’t the undercover officer’s real name. That was the alias she used during Operation Edzell.
However, there’s a lifetime anonymity order protecting her, so we’ll never find out her true identity (unless she speaks out, of course).
What happened to Lizzie James after Colin Stagg’s acquittal?
James took 18 months off in the wake of Operation Edzell and Stagg’s acquittal, due to struggles with post-traumatic stress disorder.
She took early retirement in June 1998, before suing Scotland Yard for failing to provide adequate support following her “traumatic” role in the investigation.
“She was not offered sufficient support in dealing with the difficult experiences she went through,” a spokesman for the Metropolitan Police Federation said (via The Independent).
In 2001, it was reported that James had been paid £125,000 in compensation. According to her solicitor, Liz Dux, such a large payout “must indicate their recognition that she sustained serious psychiatric injury” (as reported by BBC News).
A spokeswoman for the federation also said: “Her career and health have been wrecked as a consequence of a police operation where she was a junior officer simply obeying the orders of her superiors.”
By contrast, Nickell’s son – who witnessed his mother’s brutal murder – only received £22,000 in compensation.
Lyn Costello, co-founder of Mothers Against Murder and Aggression, described the payout as “disgusting”.
“The taxpayer is paying this money out and as a taxpayer I know where I’d rather have my money going to, and that is to a victim of crime rather than someone doing their job,” she added.
You can watch a Channel 4 drama about Lizzie James
Deceit, a Channel 4 drama centred on Lizzie James, was released in 2021. It starred Niamh Algar as Lizzie (also with the fictional name Sadie Byrne) and followed her efforts to pursue and entrap Colin Stagg.
Bizarrely, it isn’t available to stream via Channel 4’s website. The only legal way to watch it is to buy or rent it digitally from Amazon or other on-demand services, or buy it on DVD.
Speaking to Channel 4, Algar explained: “The real identity of the undercover officer is protected and that was always maintained, so I was just given the ingredients of how to create this character of Sadie.
“We haven’t specified which parts are verbatim and which parts aren’t, and that’s important because [writer Emilia di Girolamo] isn’t trying to show who she actually was.
“I was shocked about how the real Sadie was treated, the position she was put in. How Colin was treated was horrific as well, and it really continued for 15 years until Robert Napper was finally convicted.”
Read more: New documentaries and true crime on TV and streaming this month
