Murder on the common

Niamh Algar, Harry Treadaway and Eddie Marsan star in a true-crime drama about the police’s notorious honeytrap operation to catch the killer of Rachel Nickell

- STEVEN PERKINNS

NEW DRAMA

Deceit Friday, C4 HD, 9 pm

In July 1992, Rachel Nickell was murdered while walking with her two-year-old son, Alexander, on London’s Wimbledon Common. As the police searched for Nickell’s killer, an appeal on Crimewatch led to several viewers naming Colin Stagg, who often walked his dog on the Common, as a suspect.

Lacking forensic evidence to link Stagg to the crime, the Metropolitan Police took a different approach, devising Operation Edzell, in which a female undercover officer would build an intimate relationship with Stagg and gain his trust, hoping for him to either confess to the killing or to eliminate himself from the enquiry.

HONEYTRAP

C4’s new four-part drama Deceit explores this operation as undercover officer Sadie (whose real name remains classified) poses as ‘Lizzie James’ and makes contact with Stagg, and the series reveals the controversial honeytrap at the heart of the investigation.

‘There are numerous things driving Sadie through the story,’ says Niamh Algar, 29, who plays her. ‘The main one is that she doesn’t want anything like this to happen again – she wants to catch Rachel’s killer.’

With the media covering every detail of the case and demanding justice, the drama reveals how the police became obsessed with convicting Stagg – who, in their eyes, was guilty – before he killed again.