At about 7am on 9 July 1982, Michael Fagan, a painter and decorator from London, broke into Buckingham Palace and startled Queen Elizabeth as she lay in her bedroom.
Exactly what unfolded within those private walls has since become clouded by myth and legend.
The now-74-year-old later claimed the Queen simply asked “what are you doing here?” before bolting from her chambers, but whatever the truth of the encounter, it remains one of the most famous breaches of royal security in British history.
Fagan was not unique. The challenge posed by individuals infatuated with the royal family and other public figures is so significant that a little-known and elite unit was formed more than 15 years ago to tackle them.
The death of the Queen last Thursday is expected to put this specialist team of police officers, nurses and forensic psychologists under increased pressure as her funeral and associated events expose the royal family to an intense and prolonged period in the public eye.
The Fixated Threat Assessment Centre (FTAC) is a joint police and mental health unit set up by the Home Office, the Department of Health and the Metropolitan police in October 2006 to assess and manage the risk to public figures from obsessive individuals
The unit is staffed by 10 Met officers, three full-time senior forensic nurses, a full-time senior social worker and a number of senior forensic psychiatrists and psychologists from the Barnet Enfield and Haringey NHS Trust.
It receives about 1,000 referrals a year of people who have engaged in threatening or harassing communications towards the royal family or politicians, of which about half go on to be investigated. They may then be referred to local health services.
“As is the case for any high-profile major public event, we will be drawing upon all relevant intelligence and information available to us to make sure that our policing operation is the best it can be,” a FTAC spokesperson said.
Andrew Wolfe Murray is a former FTAC investigator and now a director of Theseus, a private firm that specialises in dealing with the threat from fixated individuals on the private sector, with clients including celebrities and CEOs of major companies.
“The fixated tend to be individuals who are often isolated and who have developed an obsessive or pathological preoccupation with a particular cause or quest or a grudge,” Murray said.
“This happens just as frequently in the private sector, whether it’s a senior executive or employee at a bank or a high-profile sporting, literary or musical celebrity, or those that represent them. All sectors and industries can and do attract risks associated with intrusive behaviour from the fixated.
“Not all pose a risk of violence or physical disruption, and that’s the main difference for us. We are concerned with all sorts of risk, including those of persistence, psychosocial harm, legal or reputational damage, for example.”
Murray said therewas often an established relationship between a private-sector target and the fixated individual, such as a disgruntled customer, but in the case of public figures such as the royals they are usually strangers.
Research suggests that a significant proportion of people who engage in the intrusive pursuit of public figures and other high-profile individuals may have an underlying mental health issue, he added.
Fixated individuals have targeted the royal family in a series of attacks. From Alfred Adcock, a serial sex offender who lunged at Diana, Princess of Wales, and was later committed to a secure psychiatric hospital, to Ian Ball, who attempted to kidnap Princess Anne for a complex mixture of reasons including ransom and wanting his parking fines excused. He was committed to Broadmoor psychiatric hospital.
Others were resentful. Marcus Sarjeant, who was 17 in 1981 and feeling bitter about his failings and being unemployed, fired blanks at the Queen on Horseguards’ Parade. He too was committed to a psychiatric hospital.
Murray said: “The majority of fixated individuals communicate their intent, what they want, what they want the recipient to do about it, and they tend not to do so anonymously. Because they communicate, it provides an opportunity to assess risk and so reduce the likelihood of the worst happening.
“There’s an array of motivations why people might fixate on a celebrity or a business leader or a member of the royal family. It could be people seeking help for their own personal cause. It could be people in love, wanting love or with an intimate infatuation. It could be people who believe they’re part of the royal family or at least that they should be.”
Asked about the risk to the Queen’s funeral, Philip Allen, the founding director of Theseus and a former security liaison manager for the royal household, said it was the same for “any big set-piece event, such as a sporting event”.
“Some people are fixed on those they know will be attending, the intensity of a period of intrusion tending to fluctuate depending on whether the event and attendant media exposure is imminent, in progress or ended,” he said.
“Of course, you don’t have to be fixated to threaten or intrude. A minority of our work is social media-led, in that people are concerned about what they’re receiving.
“However, while it can be distressing to receive, such communication is more often designed to shock, to upset or to get someone to do something they don’t want to do, and is usually short-term and event-driven.
“The longer the intrusion goes on the more likely it is that state of mind might be playing a role in it. So recognising persistence when you see it is important.”
