Cops believe it could be at least two years before they are able to charge a suspect with the murder of Rachel Nickell on Wimbledon Common.

According to The Mirror, officers hope to charge a serial rapist who is currently in Broadmoor mental hospital for committing a double murder just 16 months after the model's killing.

Rachel, 23, was stabbed 49 times on the common and sexually assaulted in front of her two-year-old son in July 1992.

Colin Stagg, from Roehampton, spent a year in custody charged with Rachel's murder before an Old Bailey judge ruled in 1994 that prosecution evidence, particularly that involving an undercover woman detective in a honey trap operation, was inadmissible and threw out the case.

In January it was reported that Mr Stagg, who says he is still widely suspected of the murder by the public, was awarded up to £250,000 in compensation from the Home Office.

It was following a multi-million-pound reinvestigation of the case detectives came to question the man they now wish to charge with the Nickell murder.

It is thought officers discovered DNA evidence which police believe links the suspect to Rachel's murder.