True crime fans have a new story to dig into on Netflix this week, with the release of the three-part drama series “The Witness.”
The show takes viewers back to the early ’90s, after Rachel Nickell was killed on Wimbledon Common in London. The story stunned people everywhere, as Nickell was killed in broad daylight in front of her 2-year-old son. What stunned people more was that it took 16 years for that killer to finally be brought to justice.
As always, the question with dramatized versions of real events remains: how much of “The Witness” is true?
Who was Rachel Nickell?
By all accounts, Rachel Nickell wasn’t anyone especially prominent, though she was a model. She was just a 23-year-old woman, who was walking in the park with her son and her dog on July 15, 1992.
Unfortunately, during that walk, she was attacked. Nickell was stabbed 49 times, and sexually assaulted. Her son, Alex, was left mostly unharmed, but saw everything.
Is “The Witness” a true story, or based on a book?
Actually, it’s both. In 2017, Alex Hanscombe released a book called “Letting Go,” which detailed what he remembered from the morning of the attack, the aftermath of it and the effect it all had on his family and community. The book goes into detail about the resulting media storm around trying to find his mother’s killer, including the arrest of the wrong man.
“The Witness” is based on that book, as well as input from those directly involved with the case.
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Were Rachel’s partner and son involved in making “The Witness?”
Yes, both men served as consultants on the series, to help with its accuracy and depiction. According to André Hanscombe, the series is “not a home video,” but the creators of it “worked incredibly hard to make sure that everything felt true in spirit to us, as we lived it.”
Both men are played by actors in “The Witness,” but they spoke directly in Netflix’s accompanying documentary, “The Murder of Rachel Nickell,” which also released on Thursday, for those who want to hear their account firsthand.
“This is the first time we’ve had a team so committed and so caring in our corner, willing to go beneath the surface and narrate our story in a way that does justice to it,” Alex Hanscombe told Tudum.
What happened to the killer?
Eventually, police figured out that Robert Napper was the man behind the attack of Nickell. He was a serial killer and rapist, who targeted more than 70 women over several years, many of whom had young children.
Napper was already in custody at Broadmoor high-security psychiatric hospital, having admitted to the 1993 murder of another woman and her 4-year-old daughter. When his DNA was linked to Nickell, Napper pleaded guilty to manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility (in layman’s terms, the case was made that Napper’s mental illnesses were the reason for his actions).
Napper is still alive, and still currently in prison at Broadmoor.
“The Witness” is now streaming on Netflix.
