Michelle Diskin Bates goes on:
“This was not paranoia. Barry had been pulled in by the police for the 1992 murder of Rachel Nickell, before the police and the Criminal Profiler Paul Britton set their nets for Colin Stagg.
The Telegraph reported:
“
Paul Britton said Robert Napper, who last week admitted killing the former model on Wimbledon Common in 1992, would have been arrested "within half an hour" if officers had reacted to clues he provided them into earlier offences committed by the killer.
The psychologist advised police on inquiries into other crimes now known to have been committed by Napper, from Plumstead, south-east London, including the 1993 murder of Samantha Bisset and her four-year-old daughter Jazmine, as well as a series of rapes and sex crimes known as the Green Chain Walk attacks, that dated back to the 1980s.
The profiler, who was the inspiration for Robbie Coltrane's "Cracker" character, said that even before Miss Nickell's death, the insights he had provided about the earlier crimes could have led to Napper's swift arrest.
In the hunt for the Green Chain Walk attacker, he said he advised officers to concentrate on local crime records and speak to beat officers in the area, whom he believed would already be familiar with the attacker as a local "nuisance".
"The local beat officers would have given a name within half an hour," Mr Britton said. "If they had done that Napper would have been in custody."
Mr Britton's work has been widely discredited by the Metropolitan Police's bungled investigation into Miss Nickell's death.
He has been blamed by some for the decision to wrongly pursue Colin Stagg, who lived near Wimbledon Common, over the killing, as he matched an offender profile provided by Mr Britton,However, the psychologist insisted that after the murder he had urged police to look for links with the Green Chain Walk attacks but that police had ordered him to concentrate on Mr Stagg.
Told that Scotland Yard's Detective Chief Inspector Tony Nash, who led the latest inquiry, said there was "no evidence" that Mr Britton had urged officers to broaden the scope of their 1992 investigation, the psychologist said: "That is delightful, isn't it? What can I say? I did tell them. It was a matter of regret that it was not followed up.
"I'm not going to make accusations against Mr Nash. But I think he should look a little bit harder. It is not because I feel miffed, it is for the women who died who, in my view, should not have."
He said police prevented him from keeping his own records of the case due to security concerns, and urged Scotland Yard to search its files properly for confirmation of his version of events.
His account contradicts a book he wrote 10 years ago, The Jigsaw Man, in which he said there was no link between Miss Nickell's murder and Green Chain Walk attacks, but he now insists he was guided away from his original views at the insistence of senior detectives.
"I took up with the police the psychological characteristics of the Green Chain rapist," Mr Britton said.
"I told them where they would find him and how they would find him. They did not listen. They did not want to know.
"The people on the Nickell inquiry were profoundly unable to accept the linkage between the Green Chain rapes, the Nickell murder and later the Bisset murders."
The profiler, who also helped in the Fred West murders and in the hunt for the killers of James Bulger, said that following the Nickell murder in July 1992 he was told to concentrate Mr Stagg, who has now been proved completely innocent, and to ignore theories linking Miss Nickell's death with other crimes.
"They said to me that I was wrong. They were absolutely adamant that it would be arrogant of me to continue with that view," said Mr Britton.
"That is one overriding recollection and source of concern."
In fact, he said he was told by officers on the Bisset inquiry that Napper had been "positively ID'd out" of the Wimbledon Common crime on his arrest.
During a press conference last week, Scotland Yard officers were quick to point out that Mr Britton's book specifically stated that the various crimes were unconnected, even citing the page number in the paperback volume.
But the psychologist said that after writing the book there was a "turning point" when the Met began re-examining the evidence against Napper in relation to Miss Nickell's murder.
"I thought 'hang on, it looks as though my original view is the correct one'," he said.
Mr Britton insisted that the covert methods used in the Nickell inquiry, which led to Mr Stagg being wrongly accused of the crime after undercover officer Lizzie James began corresponding with him, were still a "splendid investigative technique" providing officers handled it properly.
He called for a "detached, judicial inquiry" into all the Napper murders and the Green Chain Walk investigations.
A Scotland Yard spokesman said there had been wide-ranging improvements to the way murders and sex crimes are investigated over the last 16 years.
He added: "If any third party wants to launch a further inquiry that is entirely their prerogative, if they have the power to do so."
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/3867783/Criminal-profiler-says-Rachel-Nickells-killer-could-have-been-arrested-within-half-an-hour.html
