『Rachel Nickell: The Detective's Trap』のカバーアート

Rachel Nickell: The Detective's Trap

Rachel Nickell: The Detective's Trap

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10月19日まで。※適用条件あり
If I look back over the murders that have shaped modern Britain, few victims are as immediately recognisable as Rachel Nickell.As I write this, I immediately picture that image of a happy, loving mother.More than three decades have passed since Rachel was murdered. In that time, tens of thousands of other people have lost their lives to homicide in the UK. Yet Rachel’s case remains one of the few almost everyone remembers.So, what is it about Rachel and her murder that has made it remain such a part of our nation’s psyche?Part of the answer is undoubtedly that familiar image of Rachel smiling into the camera. But I suspect an even bigger reason lies in what happened after her death.On the morning of her murder, 23-year-old Rachel was walking the family golden retriever, Molly, on Wimbledon Common with her two-year-old son, Alex. A route they regularly took to exercise the dog.What should have been nothing more than a routine walk in the park became one of Britain’s most notorious murders.Rachel was subjected to a sustained and frenzied knife attack, suffering 49 stab wounds to her upper body and neck. She was also sexually assaulted.Perhaps the most heartbreaking aspect of the case was that Alex witnessed the attack. When he was found, he was still clinging to his mother’s body, pleading with her to wake up.When the police arrived, it would have been immediately obvious they were dealing with an exceptionally unusual murder scene. I doubt many, if any, of those officers had witnessed anything like it.This wasn’t the sort of place where you expected to find such a brutal attack. Wimbledon Common was somewhere people went to walk their dogs, take their children or go for a run. An attack of this nature was almost unimaginable.That all of this happened in front of a young child would also have made the scene emotionally difficult for those first responders. I mean, what do they say to Alex in those circumstances? How do they comfort him? Even if those officers were parents themselves, that would have been incredibly tough.In fact, this would have been emotionally challenging for all involved, even the detectives, many of whom would have witnessed sights most people can’t comprehend.But there’s something about crimes involving children, that can affect the most hardened of us.Having seen the injuries sustained by Rachel and knowing what was witnessed by Alex, I have no doubt they were resolved to do everything they could to catch and convict her killer.When those detectives first arrived, they would have realised how difficult that task was going to be. This had happened in a huge park, with countless ways in and out.In 1992, CCTV was far less prevalent than it is today. In an area such as this? It would have been almost non-existent.DNA profiling was still in its early years and nowhere near as sensitive as it is today. I vividly remember how limited it was compared with the end of my career, when simply touching someone could leave an identifiable trace.At that early stage, the only apparent witness to the attack was a traumatised two-year-old boy. It would be incredibly unlikely that he would be able to identify whoever was responsible.For the detectives leading the enquiry, the immediate question wasn’t, “How are we going to solve this murder?” It was simply, “Where do we begin?”Something I see regularly is people misunderstanding how murder investigations work. Now, that probably stems from how they’re portrayed on screen, which is nearly always wrong.Contrary to what television dramas would have you believe, they don’t simply tell officers to go out and solve the murder. That would be chaos. Every line of enquiry needs to have a purpose.To give the enquiry direction, detectives begin by asking what is most likely to have happened. Those scenarios could revolve around a suspect, a motive or both. How detailed they are will depend on how much information you have at the time.The best way to demonstrate that principle is to apply it to Rachel’s murder.In those initial stages there was little evidence available to detectives or clear motive for the attack.It was the responsibility of the senior investigating officer to formulate hypotheses, which is police jargon for what I think of as working scenarios.At that early stage, there simply wasn’t enough information to form detailed hypotheses, so I would expect them to have looked something like this:1. Rachel was killed by someone known to her2. Rachel was killed by someone unknown to herWhatever the circumstances of her murder, the offender had to fall into one of those two broad categories. Conducting the investigation in this way would avoid focusing too narrowly on one explanation at such an early stage.It also gives every detective a clear purpose. Instead of carrying out random enquiries, each officer knows exactly what they’re trying to establish or eliminate.For the hypothesis that Rachel was killed by someone she ...
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