Authors: Paul Britton
‘He will never admit that he’s lying but unwittingly he will give you the details that you can put before a jury. Then they can decide how this man has all this intimate knowledge.’
I warned that Sams would try to control the interview by acknowledging that he abducted Stephanie Slater and talking of his remorse, while at the same time repudiating entirely that he had anything to do with Julie’s murder. They had to keep him on track but not with aggression or anger.
‘Status is important to Sams. He has to believe the people on the other side of the table have the intellect to understand and play the game. If he thinks you’re worthy of him, he’ll be far more forthcoming but if he feels you lack confidence or are simply going through the motions, he won’t play.’
For any of this to work the preparation was of almost exquisite importance. It was the single factor that would determine whether Sams would convict himself or not. The interviewers needed to have an intimate knowledge of the crimes and the inquiry; they had to prepare themselves not just in rough outline terms, but with the actual questions they were going to ask. And then for each of his likely answers they had to have more questions and so on, and so on. They were collecting a web of detail that would eventually snare their suspect.
In the meantime, forensic experts were tying up every loose-end. Reconstructions were filmed to show that the motor scooter could fit in the back of Sams’ Austin Metro, as could the large wheelie bin used for transporting Julie’s body. Traces of paint were found that confirmed the scooter had been in the car.
Sams wrote his later letters to the police and Shipways on a word processor rather than an old Olivetti typewriter. He had deleted the files but failed to realize that they could still be retrieved from a ‘limbo’ section of the computer’s memory. He had also tried to create an alibi for himself for the day Julie disappeared, claiming he was trainspotting at a rail marshalling yard near Nottingham and cataloguing photographs to support this. However, a check of rail timetables showed that the trains he’d photographed were not in the yard that day.
Three days after being transferred to Leeds, Michael Sams was charged with the kidnap and murder of Julie Dart. One final mystery remained: where had he hidden the ransom money?
On the morning of 28 July, 1992, I found a message on my desk. ‘Paul Britton, Please call Superintendent John Bassett, Wimbledon police station.’ Underneath, my secretary Diane had written: ‘Does this mean I clear your diary for tomorrow?’
I slid the note into my jacket pocket and bemoaned my crowded life. How would I find time to go to London? Already my day-to-day NHS work had backed up and it would take a month of weekends to clear. I also had two court reports to finish for the Crown, a solicitor waiting on a psychological analysis of his client and a particularly distressed young woman who needed treatment.
‘If you want something done, give it to a busy man,’ is how the saying goes. Somehow, I had to try and squeeze a few extra hours out of most days.
When I met John Bassett, I was immediately struck by his quiet voice and gentle face. His hair had long ago turned silver, leaving his eyebrows a bushy black. Typically, he wore a dark suit and plain white shirt with a wide floral tie that might have been a Father’s Day present.
The incident room at Wimbledon Police Station was barely larger than an average sitting room, crammed with telexes, phones and computer terminals. White boards lined the walls, listing the names of investigating officers and the computer codes that showed what leads they were following up. Nearby, a large pictorial map of Wimbledon Common was covered with sticky yellow notes.
The first seventy-two hours of a murder investigation are usually the most important, but when the killer is a stranger, or the planning is particularly complex, the search is destined to be far more difficult. Thirteen days had now passed yet there was still an amazing sense of purpose in the room. Stained coffee cups competed for space with well-used ashtrays and take-away sandwich wrappers. No-one seemed to want to go home.
Bassett led me down a hallway, stopping to pick up a cup of tea. Detective Chief Inspector Mick Wickerson appeared at his shoulder. Younger and less careworn, he was one of the first officers to arrive at the murder scene and wasn’t likely to forget it. There are some bodies that you never get out of your mind.
John Bassett set down his tea and leaned against a desk. Wickerson found a chair near the window.
‘The victim was a twenty-three-year-old woman, Rachel Nickell,’ Bassett said, toying with his tie. ‘She’s a very beautiful girl, murdered in a horrible way. The public response to this is something I haven’t seen before. I’m surprised you haven’t seen the papers.
‘Rachel lived with her boyfriend, Andre Hanscombe, in a two-bedroom flat in Elmfield Mansions, Balham. He’s a motorcycle messenger in the City and left for work at eight-thirty a.m. on Wednesday the fifteenth of July.
‘Rachel left the flat fifteen minutes later to take her son Alex and their pet dog for a walk on Wimbledon Common.’ He glanced at Wickerson. ‘How old is the young one?’
‘Barely two.’
He slid a map across the table. ‘The Common is about a thousand acres of open fields and woodland. It’s public parkland - used for walking, golf, picnics, horse-riding, you know the sort of thing.
‘She was an attractive girl,’ pondered Bassett, almost to himself. ‘She only recently started using Wimbledon Common because she’d been approached by men on Clapham Common and Tooting Bec which are closer to her home. She thought Wimbledon would be safer.’ The irony in his voice was obvious. ‘She went there about four times a week; letting Alex play outdoors and giving the dog some exercise. On this morning she was wearing blue jeans, a grey t-shirt and brown boots.’
Using a pen, he pointed to a windmill on the eastern edge of the Common. ‘This is where she parked her silver Volvo estate some time before ten a.m. At some point she began walking along this path. We have a witness who says he saw Rachel and Alex at exactly ten twenty a.m. walking between the carpark and Windmill Wood. That’s where the attack occurred, about five hundred yards from the carpark - where the pathway runs through a lightly wooded area. It’s not exactly hidden but it does provide privacy from long-range view.
‘Her body was found about twelve feet from the path…’
Mick Wickerson interrupted, ‘He went berserk … he must have thought he almost took her head clean off. What sort of… ?’ He didn’t finish.
Bassett glanced at the photographs. ‘As you can see, there was no attempt to hide the body. The next person on the path found her.’
‘What about the little boy?’
Bassett replied, ‘He wasn’t hurt but we think he witnessed the attack. He’s barely uttered a word since they found him at ten thirty-five a.m. trying to wake his mother up.’
‘He’s going to need help,’ I said.
‘Yeah. He’s getting it.’
A ring-bound set of photographs slid across the desk towards me. The colour prints ran in a sequence of wide-angle shots starting with long range views of the woodland copse. Rachel’s body was barely visible -showing up as a splash of white amongst the trees that could have been a discarded shopping bag.
Finally the lens moved closer, zeroing in and revealing it from every conceivable angle. There could be no dignity or privacy about the process. Rachel Nickell, lifeless and near naked, was captured by the camera. No matter how much was done later to restore her dignity, for the next few days or weeks she became the most important piece of evidence in the investigation.
I knew the procedure. Every square inch would be photographed, scraped, swabbed or cut open. Body fluids, fingernail dirt and pubic hair would be sealed in plastic or glass and then be passed, hand to hand, along the evidential chain; from pathologist to the laboratory, to the prosecution, to the court and to the jury. Violent death becomes a very public event.
‘What’s this?’ I asked, pointing to a close-up photograph of Rachel’s face. A piece of paper, folded once, was lying on her right temple.
‘I was hoping you could tell us that,’ said Bassett. ‘It’s a bank notification giving the PIN (Personal Identification Number) for Rachel’s account. Maybe she was carrying it with her, but we can’t work out how it finished up where it did. We don’t know what it means.’
It didn’t make sense. Even if the note had fallen out of Rachel’s jeans during the struggle, how did it get on her face? The attack was so swift and violent, it was almost impossible for it to have fluttered there accidentally. It stood out as a deliberate act, but why?
‘SOCO (the Scene of Crime Officer responsible for logging any physical clues) found nothing that the lab could work with,’ said Bassett. ‘No blood, semen, saliva, hair samples … nothing. The murder weapon was probably a single-edged sheath knife with a brass hilt. We haven’t found it.’
‘So he left no evidence of himself?’
Wickerson replied, ‘There was a shoe-print in the mud that could be important; also a few interesting witness statements. There were about a hundred people in the general area at the time. We’re working through them and so far two people recall seeing a man washing his hands in a stream about a hundred and fifty yards from the scene.’
‘Tell me about him?’
‘It was by Curling Pond,’ he said, pointing to the map. ‘He’s in his twenties or thirties, something like five feet ten inches tall, with short brown hair
I interrupted, ‘Don’t worry about the physical details, they’re your department. I want to know how he looked? Was he running, was he frightened, was he anxious?’
‘I’d say agitated,’ said Bassett. ‘He was carrying a bag and washing his hands. Another witness saw a man running towards a council estate in Norstead Place, in Wandsworth. The description is different - he might have been a jogger.’
‘Tell me about the shoe-prints?’
Wickerson said, ‘We took a single print from the path.’
‘Do you have anything matching Rachel or Alex?’
‘No.’
‘What about elsewhere - in the grass - are there any other prints that don’t show up in the photographs that take us from the path to the body?’
Wickerson shook his head.
‘OK. You said Alex wasn’t hurt. No bruises or scratches
‘He was covered in mud. We think he may have been pushed to the ground.’
I began flicking through the postmortem records.
‘The bastard left us bugger all,’ said Bassett.
‘Sweet F.A.,’ echoed his colleague.
I understood their dilemma. They had a killer who had left very few clues behind and a crime that had outraged the country. The newspaper stories were florid in detail and not always correct. Women were terrified to use Wimbledon Common and other public parks. So much so that one local women’s group had actually offered a donation of Ł400,000 to help fund the investigation. The money could have been well spent but, of course, the police had to turn it down.
The investigation team had, however, enlisted the help of HOLMES (Home Office Large Major Enquiry System) a computer facility for classifying, storing and cross-referencing the tens of thousands of pieces of information collected during such an inquiry. The system had only been available since 1987 when the hunt for the Yorkshire Ripper had exposed the dangers of important information being buried under a mountain of paperwork. It became clear that the Ripper, Peter Sutcliffe, would have emerged as a strong suspect much earlier if there had been a computer system that highlighted the numerous points at which his name appeared in relation to the murders.
‘Tell me about Wimbledon Common?’ I asked Bassett.
‘What can I say? We get flashers and nuisances, but nothing like this … not until now. We’re looking at the usual categories - sex assaults, voyeurism, flashing. Also any complaints from the Common, and sex offenders with a history of using the park who might recently have been released from prison.’
‘What about the surrounding area?’
Wickerson raised an eyebrow.
‘I need as much detail as possible - not just from the Common but outside it. Look for odd events or strange complaints.’
Bassett said, ‘We’ll do that for you.’
Over the next hour I listened to a day-by-day account of the investigation and collected copies of statements, photographs, the postmortem, maps and a home video of Rachel. These I would study later. John Bassett was clearly fascinated by the principles of psychological profiling. I learned that his interest dated back to an earlier case when he led the hunt for a baby abducted from St Thomas’s Hospital in London. He had reasoned that the abductor would have a link with the hospital - either as a nurse or an outpatient. The assumption proved correct and the baby had been found safe and well.
That was one of the happier cases. Although he’d handled dozens of investigations over thirty years, few were as brutal as Rachel Nickell’s murder. Now only a year away from retirement, Bassett badly wanted to close the file on this one. There were no promotions on offer or points to be scored - he simply wanted a killer off the streets.
He cleared his throat. ‘I’m always optimistic, Paul, but my pool of suspects is seventeen and a half million - every male over twelve. We have to narrow the field.’
‘All right,’ I said. ‘Firstly, I need to learn everything I can about Rachel, herself. What sort of person was she? Did she have a job? What were her routines? Was she streetwise and perceptive or was she naive? When confronted by a stranger would she tend to be reserved or would she smile and make eye contact? Was she likely to resist if threatened or attacked? Was she aggressive and likely to ridicule people? What relationships did she have? Did she have any other boyfriends? Did any previous affairs end badly? Did she ever work as a prostitute or was she sexually promiscuous … ?’
These were routine questions.
‘She was a lovely girl,’ said Bassett, a little defensively.
‘What difference does it make?’ asked Wickerson. ‘She’s dead. Haven’t we got enough in the statements we’ve already taken?’
‘No. I need to know Rachel as though she were sitting in the chair opposite. What’s she going to say; what’s she going to think; how’s she going to respond to any given situation? Only when I know her, do I move a step closer to knowing her killer.