26 October 2021
Interview: Colin Sutton, the real-life detective who inspired Manhunt
Martin Clunes, who Netflix viewers will recognise as Doc Martin, stars as the former London Metropolitan Police Detective Chief Inspector Colin Sutton in a sequel to the critically acclaimed British crime series Manhunt.
Manhunt II: The Night Stalker, a four-part drama now streaming on BritBox, is the real life story of the police pursuit of a notorious serial burglar and rapist, whose 17-year reign of terror left thousands of elderly people in South East London living in fear. It is based on the diaries of Colin Sutton.
BAFTA-winning actor Martin Clunes will again take the role of DCI Sutton, the detective portrayed in the first series of Manhunt, tenaciously pursuing serial killer Levi Bellfield.
This series is based on the true story of the police investigation of a series of rapes, sexual assaults and burglaries that took place in South East London between 1992 and 2009. A dedicated unit, Operation Minstead, was established to hunt down the man who became known as the Night Stalker.
As the suspect continued to evade capture, Detective Chief Inspector Colin Sutton was asked in 2009 to review the case. Working with Detective Superintendent Simon Morgan and the Minstead team, the tenacious detective proposed a strategy he believed could catch one of Britain’s most prolific rapists, focusing a vast surveillance operation around a key area of South East London.
Scores of additional officers were deployed to invisibly saturate the target area on a nightly basis. The clock was ticking, as the Night Stalker was becoming ever more brazen and prolific.
The man suspected of being the Night Stalker was arrested on 14 November 14 2009. Colin Sutton retired a year later.
This interview with the former DCI reveals the details of the 17-year investigation, fascinating to any British crime series or true-crime fan.
Manhunt: The Night Stalker is again based on your diaries – have you written a book about this case too?
I have written a book about the Night Stalker case. The title of the book is Manhunt The Night Stalker, and it is due to be published at the same time as transmission of the drama.
The story begins when Detective Chief Superintendent Hamish Campbell – who had been the SIO who led the Jill Dando investigation – asked you to conduct an investigative review of Operation Minstead to see if any opportunities to catch the Night Stalker had been missed. This request followed the Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson expressing “deep concern” that Operation Minstead had failed to track down the Night Stalker.
That’s how I came to be involved. Sir Paul Stephenson took over as Commissioner. Someone highlighted Operation Minstead to him and he said we need to make this a priority to do something about it. Hamish Campbell’s view of things was although Bellfield was a rapist he was a long-time sexual offender, or motivated by sex in some ways, and it might be worth getting me to have a look at the Night Stalker because I had that recent experience (with the Bellfield case). So that it is how I came to be doing it.
How did you feel to be asked to take on the review as you were approaching the end of your career in the police force, after nearly 30 years of service?
I was quite happy to do it, but in some ways it kind of crept up on me. At first it was very clearly no, you’re not taking over the case. I want you just to go and have a look at it and then come back and tell me what you think could be done by the other team to try to get it working. So I did, and I expected that would be the end of my involvement.
Gradually, I got sucked into it in some ways. That sounds like I was doing it kicking and screaming – I wasn’t. I was quite happy to be sucked into it because it is human nature and the mind you have to have to do that sort of job anyway, when you see something and you have some ideas, I would have found it quite difficult in some ways to say ‘there you go then you lot get on with that and I will go back and do something else’. You want to be there to see it through. The plan at the beginning wasn’t for me to stay.
You describe yourself as like an ageing heavyweight “who everyone thinks is past it but I’m pretty sure I’ve still got one more fight left in me?”
That was it really. That is in the context of people were saying to me, people I trusted were saying ‘it’s a real shame you couldn’t just do Bellfield, do the lectures afterwards for six months and then retire’, because that would be a nice way to finish.
So when this came up they were saying ‘why do you need to do this, you can say no. What is the point of doing this, there is so little chance of succeeding’. I still genuinely felt I had more to offer and that there was one more fight in me, and more success in me.
One colleague said it was a poisoned chalice. He said that there was no way I could come out of it successfully. Thankfully he was wrong!
Did this investigation affect you personally?
There was one victim, a wonderfully dignified, well spoken lady, who took my hand and confided to me that she had been indecently assaulted.
It was so poignant and really upsetting. It was as much as I could do not to burst into tears there and then, holding onto her hand. She died six weeks later. She didn’t eat again. She just gave up. Moments like that are pretty rare – probably a handful I can think of in 30 years, and that was certainly the last one and probably the most impactful one.
She somehow represented, or embodied all the spirit of stoicism that these old people, the victims, all displayed. They came from a completely different generation and had gone through all sorts of difficulties and privations during the war, and rationing afterwards. They had seen tough times and had had to be quite stoic about things, and they carried that forward into being victims of the Night Stalker. This lady, just sitting there holding my hand, just brought all that into sharp focus. It was a really memorable, tough moment.
During your career were you able to switch off from work?
Very, very rarely would I take things home. I have always said there were two Colins: a work persona and a personal persona. I accepted that things happened in other people’s lives that impacted on me because I had to deal with the fall out from them or the consequences. I had become somewhat immune to the idea that people out there can do the most ridiculous, sick, unthinkable things. But things like that didn’t happen in my life so it didn’t worry me too much. I am very lucky that I was able to switch off.
The huge surveillance operation you implemented began on Wednesday, 28 October 2009. The briefing you gave to the team before it began you have said was the most important briefing you would ever give?
I was nervous because it was so vital that everything had to be redone properly to make the surveillance work to catch the Night Stalker.
The Night Stalker was arrested on the 17th night of the surveillance, after a 17-year investigation. How did you hear he had been apprehended?
It was the first night I had not been at work. I was in bed. I had been working literally 18 hours every day for two weeks. Nathan, the DI who had been on a course for two weeks, offered to work the weekend to give me a break.
At one a.m on Sunday the phone rang, and Nathan said ‘I think we’ve got him’. I said to him, ‘you’re joking’, and he replied, ‘do you think I’d call you at one a.m to have a joke with you?’. I’d like to have been there when they got him, of course, but the important thing was that he was spotted, as it were. I knew I wouldn’t sleep. So I got up, had a shower and went into the police station where they were holding the suspect.
When I met the suspect for the first time I had a conversation about cricket with him. It was bizarre. It fitted in with what everyone told us about him – he was the life and soul of the party, of the cricket team, played dominoes and darts in the pub. ‘You must have the wrong man,’ they said.
He knew he was just about to have a swab taken inside his cheek that was going to send him to prison until he was a very old man, if not until he died. And he was so relaxed, so calm and so cool about it. He was just a chilling sort of bloke you might have had a beer in a bar with after a cricket match. He was just so ordinary. A great contrast to Bellfield, who was just pugnacious and repulsive all the time.
With the Night Stalker it was hard to reconcile it with yourself when you look at him and talk to him and think ‘I know what you have been doing for the last 17 years’. He was quite clever, he was good at making sure he didn’t leave a trail and didn’t leave evidence that would lead to him being identified. He was quite happy to leave his DNA because he knew we had that but it didn’t matter because we had nothing to match it to.
How did you feel about retiring from a job you loved?
I did love the job, but I thought it was time to do something else. I definitely subscribe to theory that I had these two wonderful cases that we’d succeeded in, I wasn’t going to get a third one. I’d struggled in the immediate aftermath of the Bellfield case to come back down to earth. But I did, and I got back into it. I wasn’t sure I wanted to or needed to do that again.
