In Coronation year, when a local Salvationist called Louisa Merrifield was suspected of murdering her elderly landlady with rat poison, she held court every day at a backstreet hotel, signing autographs at half-a-crown a time and dispensing afternoon tea to Nicholson and visiting reporters from Fleet Street. He got to know Mrs Merrifield as well as he knew Albert Pierrepoint, who hanged her at Strangeways Jail, Manchester, in September 1953.  After eight years covering crime and courts in Blackpool, he reported George Formby’s funeral in Liverpool in 1961, revealing that the ukulele-strumming Lancashire comedian had left his fortune to the 29-year-old schoolteacher he had been planning to marry before his death. Nicholson’s scoop earned him a job as crime reporter on the old Daily Sketch.  His first big story for the Sketch was the A6 murder case, in which James Hanratty was hanged for the murder of Michael Gregsten and the shooting and rape of his girlfriend Valerie Storie. He covered the Great Train Robbery in 1963 and the Moors Murders trial in 1966. Ian Brady later threatened to take him to the Press Council.  Throughout the 1960s he hobnobbed with London gangsters including the Richardsons and the Krays, and was on Reggie Kray’s Christmas card list. Over the years, as well as for the Sketch, Nicholson worked for the Daily Mail, Daily Express, the newly-launched Daily Star and The People.  Nicholson was a past president of the Crime Reporters’ Association and wore its tie and its insignia of crossed handcuffs and quill pen.  He is survived by his wife, Mavis, whom he married in 1952, and by their daughter and two sons.  James Nicholson, born January 16 1927, died June 12 2016
James Nicholson, who has died aged 89, was the last of the old-school crime reporters and at the height of his Fleet Street fame became celebrated – on account of his black cape – as the “Prince of Darkness”.