Mysterious case indeed.
I haven't read Paul Britton's books but I would probably be a little sceptical of his opinions.
From the Janet Brown Wikipedia page:
"Forensic psychologist Paul Britton assisted police with the investigation. Britton posited that although Brown had not been sexually assaulted, the perpetrator may have become aroused by inflicting fear and dominating his victim, and that this may have been his primary motive rather than burglary."
Britton of course got himself in a spot of bother after helping a different police force, the Met, in the investigation of the Rachel Nickell murder. He later faced a disciplinary hearing.
"Mr Britton, a forensic psychologist for 20 years who is based in Leicestershire, said after clashing with Mr [Colin] Stagg: "I'm very unhappy about what's happened.
"It's not the sort of thing that should have happened and I'm considering whether or not to make a complaint."
Mr Britton's role in numerous high-profile murder cases led to him being dubbed Cracker after the fictional crime TV series featuring Robbie Coltrane.
Honey trap
The preliminary hearing, which is due to finish on Thursday, will decide whether full disciplinary proceedings can be brought against Mr Britton.
It is claimed his part in the police investigation led detectives to using a now discredited "honey trap" ploy.
In the case he conducted a "sexual fantasy analysis" of the offender and concluded that the chief suspect, Mr Stagg, and the killer of Rachel Nickell shared the same "sexually deviant based personality disturbance".
The collapse of the case against Mr Stagg and his complaint over Mr Britton's involvement in the investigation has since called into question the credibility of so-called Cracker psychologists and offender profiling...
If proceedings are brought and he is found guilty, Mr Britton could be struck off. He denies any wrongdoing."
Guess who represented Britton?
"Keir Starmer QC, representing Mr Britton, told the hearing the "exceptional" delay of more than eight years since the first complaint was made would mean his client could not get a fair hearing."
"A criminal profiler who told police the murderer they were seeking would be a loner with an obsession with the occult led detectives to conduct a bizarre 'honey-trap' sting operation against an innocent man...
In a new book, Mr Stagg's defence counsel has shone fresh light on the strange case which left an innocent man in jail for a year, a murderer free to kill again, and a police officer with such extreme PTSD she successfully sued the Met for £125,000.
William Clegg QC has also poured scorn on the practice of criminal profiling, which he described as 'rubbish based on guesswork'.
In his autobiography Under the Wig, the barrister writes: 'Under the relentless gaze of the media, the investigators turned to a new development in police inquiries: criminal profiling.
'A psychologist, Paul Britton, was asked to create a character portrait of the kind of individual who would have committed the crime.
'Britton gave the police a description of the man they should be seeking.
'He would be a sexually repressed loner who lived on his own close to the scene of the crime. He would be in his twenties or thirties, with an interest in the occult and in knives.'...
Lacking a shred of physical evidence linking him to the murder they [the police] turned back to their profiler to design a covert operation to prove or disprove their suspect's guilt.
Mr Clegg wrote: 'Britton suggested that if a woman were to befriend the suspect and feign interest in violent sexual fantasies, he might end up admitting to her that he was the murderer.
'Operation Edzell was duly launched. (Britton has since denied that the sting operation was his idea.)'
A female detective who used the alias Lizzie James was brought in from Scotland Yard's covert operations unit SO10.
Over five months of letters, phone calls and four in-person meetings, she feigned sexual interest in him and he admitted to sexual fantasies involving violence....
At that point, wrote Mr Clegg, profiler Paul Britton...claimed the conversations had satisfied him Mr Stagg was guilty of murder. He was arrested shortly afterwards.
At a lengthy legal hearing over whether the 'honey-trap' exchanges would be presented to the jury at the Old Bailey, according to Mr Clegg: 'I disputed the expertise of Britton, arguing that his opinion was not properly to be admitted as expert evidence. When one analysed what he had done, I argued, one realised he was relying on guesswork and supposition.'"
In July 1992, 23-year-old Rachel Nickell (pictured left) was murdered on Wimbledon Common. Detectives turned to 'profiler' Paul Britton to help solve the gruesome case.
www.dailymail.co.uk
Britton comes across as dishonest and slippery in this doc about Rachel Nickell (see from 11 mins 42 secs to 43 mins 25 secs):
Clegg and Britton can be seen in the below video. Not a word of contrition from the latter about his role in the imprisonment of an innocent man or the resulting failure to pin the murder on Robert Napper, thus allowing him to kill again (from 50 mins 30 secs):
Clegg says the police allowed the investigation to be "hijacked" by a psychologist". Britton says "there is nothing that is sustainable in terms of a criticism against the psychological input." Yeah right! In fact he had the gall to complain that his advice had been ignored:
"
Police ignored clues that could have led to Rachel Nickell's killer,
Britain's leading criminal profiler advised detectives to investigate clues linking the murder of Rachel Nickell with the brutal killing of another young mother - but they dismissed any connection, The Independent on Sunday can reveal...
...Paul Britton, who was brought in to help solve all three cases, has told the IoS that the Bisset murders could have been prevented if investigators had acted earlier on the Green Chain rapes.
"Samantha Bisset would never have been killed if my early advice had been acted upon and, if it is the same person, then neither would Rachel Nickell," said Mr Britton, the psychological profiler on whom the television series Cracker was based. "I sometimes wish I'd gone back and banged on their [the police's] door."
Mr Britton was brought in at an early stage to advise on the Green Chain rapes, which began before the murders of Ms Nickell or the Bissets. He gave police three pointers which he said would lead them to the rapist: the attacker would already be on their records for minor offences, he would have been noticed by neighbours, and his suspicious behaviour would have been mentioned at local police briefings.
"To this day I do not understand why this did not happen," said Mr Britton, who advised police in both the Jamie Bulger murder case and the hunt for Michael Sams, who is serving four life sentences for the murder of Julie Dart and the kidnap of Stephanie Slater.
"We were looking at an escalating offender. My advice was to look at the case from a local level"."
Police ignored clues that could have led to Rachel Nickells killer, from Independent on Sunday, The in News & Society provided free by LookSmart Find Articles.
web.archive.org
Talk about a complete lack of self awareness. Arrogant git.
Another doc was made bringing Stagg and Britton together, but I can't find the whole programme on the internet - an extract is shown here:
Stagg (left) and Britton.
"In August 1993, Colin Stagg was arrested, spent 13 months in custody, and endured more than a decade of speculation that he was Rachel's killer before the real culprit, Robert Napper, was brought to justice.
For three decades, the man who has squarely shouldered the blame for the catastrophic failure was the country’s leading forensic psychologist, Professor Britton.
It was Professor Britton’s criminal profile of the killer at the time and an eye witness that later convinced police that Colin was their man.
However, in the new documentary, Professor Britton and Colin come face to face to speak about the Rachel Nickell murder 30 years on."
See:
https://www.express.co.uk/showbiz/t...tain-letter-colin-stagg-rachel-nickell-murder
Britton (right) with a real rogue!
