What did you say? It is striking that, for all the darkness and pain, he is also a happy presence, quick and funny and charming. Alex never asked about the case, or what had happened to the “bad man”, but Rachel’s presence remained close. Alex Hanscombe, just a month short of … Those shadows are compounded by a police investigation that lasted for the next 15 years, and, we now know, by its terrible consequences: Colin Stagg spent only a year on remand, but for the next decade was assumed guilty, harassed, denied work, received death threats. A young mother ambling across Wimbledon Common with her dog and her young son on a perfect July morning in 1992. I've done everything I wish to do towards respecting Rachel's wishes, and setting an example for Alex, and using the voice [I have] to try and make sure that all those other people who have been affected, that their suffering hasn't been in vain. “It was mind-bending the whole time,” says André, “and there wasn’t anybody I could go to for help because it was one of those extreme experiences that very few people had encountered.”, Rachel was his reference point. Initially he thought she was about 15 and offered her an ice cream; when he discovered she was 19 he asked her out for a drink. Andre Hanscombe boyfriend of murder victim Rachel Nickell carrying their son Alex in 1992 "I saw the stranger’s blank face, the clothes he wore and the knife he took from his bag. And to do that he couldn't have a bitter and angry father who was distracted, with his mind on other things.". 'My son was in danger. On the morning of 15th July 1992, She took her young son and her dog for a walk around Wimbledon Common. Two males. "I think I said, 'That's your job, to find that kind of conviction. I couldn't stand it. Of him finding a scrap of paper, and placing it carefully on her forehead, like a sticking plaster. Me setting boundaries and him trying to break them.”, It was only after Alex left home to study music in London that their relationship recovered. “It was soothing, a balm. We had fighting between members of the family, we had the detectives doing their job, well or badly or whatever, we had social workers in the house, we had cameras in the house, microphones." When she became pregnant, partway through a degree in English and history, they felt the news was a disaster, but she researched, read, and thought, and they decided to keep the baby. So was I' | Rachel ... - the Guardian On the face of it Hanscombe has a contradictory attitude to privacy: he is understandably furious with the media's treatment of him, yet some years after Nickell's death he wrote a book full of private details, and has begun another one (which the Met, worried he would prejudice their investigations, persuaded him not to publish). We just talked and talked for hours. Becoming a single father would have been hard enough; becoming one in such circumstances drove him to consider killing himself. “His nightmares had started very shortly after the attack and went on for years. The couple - who film their segment from inside their home in Wiltshire - have been married for over three decades Prince Harry's new mental … But he answers most, even quite private questions fully, thoughtfully; even when snagging on a phrase or a memory brings him close to tears, he insists on finishing, on doing it properly. ", From both sets of grandparents he also learned that secrets kept and explanations withheld were corrosive, so he has tried to give Alex "the opportunity to say whatever he likes – and also to not say what is too difficult for him to say. Numb." The police had wired their home in case Alex revealed a crucial detail. However, their relationship with Alex continued, with Alex visiting until the age of eight, when contact ceased. It's one reason why he wants this investigation to happen, even if it prolongs his involvement with the case a while longer. "My son was in danger. ", In an impact statement Nickell's parents read to the court in December, they mentioned that they had lost contact with their grandson. He is an intense presence, restless, very fast-talking, in long paragraphs that loop and tumble over themselves in their need to get their point across. The picture is attractive – pale skin, a drift of blonde hair, a wide, imperfect smile that makes her approachable and young, fragile – but it is very ordinary, too; a picture to be flipped past, privately, in an album, perhaps with an answering smile – do you remember that day? “It’s not like it happens in the movies,” says Alex. Miss Nickell, who lived in south London with Alex and her partner Andre Hanscombe, was described as being full of life and having everything to live for. The plan was to sell up, leave the UK and live somewhere rural – France was top of the list. They told no one about their past. “It was a completely different dynamic by then, both adults, no obligation,” says André. Andre Hanscombe's lawyers wrote to the MPS seeking compensation but have accepted that there is no basis for a civil claim against the MPS. The relief, over time, was seeing them dropping in intensity, becoming more spread out. Rachel and I were always going to leave the country – again, it was being true to her values.”. Because this has been his world, his preoccupation, for so long, and because he is so keen not to simplify issues, or blame unnecessarily, it's tricky, initially, to tune in – at first it seems all trees and no wood. That love and affection keeps you afloat.”. And at the centre of it all a small boy who "cried himself awake, for months and months and months. “When we told people the story, it was amazing how moved people were,” says Alex. Heartbroken Andre Hanscombe broke his silence to condemn the failure to bring serial killer and sex offender Robert Napper to justice. Alex's teenage years were different. Yet it has joined a small handful of photographs that tell a particular story of late 20th-century Britain because of the shadows it contains: a mental picture of that same woman stabbed at random, in daylight, 49 times, of her small son circling her body, crying, 'Mummy, mummy, wake up!' Everyone has challenges and obstacles and fears. On the morning of 15th June 1992, she and her son took their dog for a walk on the Common when she was attacked in a secluded area. Rachel was tall and elegant – a dancer. The police had quickly identified Colin Stagg as the attacker, a loner who fitted Alex’s description. You have to try to understand why they do things. “People from completely different walks of life who knew nothing about us were inspired. They need something firm underneath them, and that is a routine – sleep, play, food, entertainment, love and affection, all in the right dose and all at the right time. And I'd never had this experience in my life, where you just clicked with someone on every single level." Rachel and Andre never married, and there is no indication that they were even thinking about it. A botched police investigation. "My first commitment was to Rachel, and to what she would have wanted. “Nobody does everything right – and I don’t know how I did anything, looking back on it,” André continues. But I can look at Alex now and think: ‘I’m in clear water.’ Mission accomplished. he picture is attractive – pale skin, a drift of blonde hair, a wide, imperfect smile that makes her approachable and young, fragile – but it is very ordinary, too; a picture to be flipped past, privately, in an album, perhaps with an answering smile – do you remember that day? Alex hasn't said much, apparently, although when he was much younger, "I asked could he see her and everything that happened and he said: 'Yes.' Alex had also been transfixed by the children’s film The Land Before Time just days before the attack, where the mummy dinosaur dies in an earthquake and the baby pleads for her to get up, before carrying on without her. The intensity of seeking a recovery from these events has meant that we've seen sunsets, we've swum in the sea, we've skied and ridden bikes and laughed and met wonderful people. He sees Rachel in his son every day. Yet it has joined a small handful of photographs that tell a particular story of late 20th-century Britain because of the shadows it contains: a mental picture of that same woman stabbed at random, in daylight, 49 times, of her small son circling her body, crying, 'Mummy, mummy, wake up!' “I can’t expect Alex to behave in a certain way if I wasn’t prepared to do it myself. The two were a unit, a circle, and I was on the outside, controlling the perimeter. "For years Alex picked them up and threw them in the bin." “The journey across town to the common has kind of disappeared, but I remember walking along the path in the woodland.”. “As a parent, you have to set an example,” he says. And so he did what he was told, and co-operated as far as he was able, and especially after Stagg was charged, and then, after a judge threw out evidence obtained in a honey-trap operation, released, tried to forget that the man who he thought had killed Nickell was free – free to be recognised by his son Alex at any point, free to kill again. Then, circling back later, "almost as bad as the day that Rachel was killed. In July 1992 Rachel Nickell was sexually assaulted and stabbed 49 times while out walking on Wimbledon Common with her three-year-old son Alex Hanscombe and their rescue dog Molly. Andre Hanscombe, the author, was the partner of Rachel Nickell who was brutally murdered in the summer of 1992 on Wimbledon Common in the presence of her 3-yr. old son, Alex. A frenzied attack from an unknown assailant. It's very difficult to be with someone when this is hanging over your head like a bombshell, and somebody else is still in your life and in your heart." It seems extraordinary that Alex never asked for Rachel again, or wanted an explanation for where she was or what had happened. In his little world, he’d already formed an understanding of death. Because one of the big pressures – again, life is all paradoxes – was the fact that I'd taken him somewhere where everyone was healthy and happy and living in a kind of fairy story with their grandparents and brothers and sisters and cousins – it became even more apparent to him that he didn't have those things." Rachel Nickell lived in Balham, south London with her partner, André Hanscombe, their son Alex and their rescue dog, Molly. Neither had therapy; no one supported them. Alex, 27, has written his own account of his mother’s murder, its impact and aftermath. Alex later described him to police: his loping walk, his strange, blank face, his black bag, white shirt. You know – in a way it's like a second chance. Updated: 17th May 2017, 8:35 am. One of the things he understood was that children like Alex "don't need more toys, they don't need more love and affection, they don't need more hugs, they need stability. I've learnt to enjoy life through my son, in a way I thought I never would do. His gamble, he says, paid off: surrounded by people who knew nothing of his history, and thus treated him normally, Alex became a joyous, if headstrong, child who differed from others only in his reaction to physical hurt and blood. He is training to be a tennis coach, like his father, Andre Hanscombe, was at the time of Ms Nickell's killing. With no evidence, their attempt to “trick” Stagg into a confession using an undercover female police officer as bait was thrown out of court. Anna Moore … I put the phone down and thought: ‘I’m dealing with a grownup.’”. There was all the usual stuff – such as trouble at school – but also "he became, clearly, much more angry with me. But ‘normality’ for a three-year-old means getting the toast right, the showers at the right time, the juice in the right cup. Though there have been other relationships, André is single and he and Alex now live in Barcelona. I mean, we're talking about an incredible set of coincidences – two people wearing the same clothes, same description, identified by adult witnesses, in the same place at the same time. “Alex might draw a picture and say, ‘Mummy would have liked that.’ He had the scent she wore in his drawer with his favourite things and he’d get that out. It was also discovering, from psychiatric reports, that police had been failing to investigate Napper ever since his mother told them he had confessed to raping a woman in Plumstead, south London, in 1989; that if they had followed things up properly, neither Nickell nor Bissett and her daughter need have died. Alex Hanscombe … Of him finding a scrap of paper, and placing it carefully on her forehead, like a sticking plaster. It was a case that shocked the nation. THE son of murdered model Rachell Nickell has FORGIVEN the killer who butchered his mum in front of him as a baby. 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