World's Most Evil Killers - Season 4, Episode 5 - Robert Napper - Full Episode | Forensic Files

- MALE NARRATOR: 15th of July, 1992. London, England. On a summer morning, 23-year-old Rachel Nickell
was walking her dog, Molly, across Wimbledon Common with her 2-year-old son, Alex.
- What started off as such a normal day had become an incredible human tragedy. - NARRATOR: A man appeared from the undergrowth,
stabbing Rachel nearly 50 times, then sexually assaulting her. - GEOFFREY: It's an act of most unspeakable violence.
He's doing it to desecrate her body, and he's doing it in front of her son. It takes the breath away.
- NARRATOR: Rachel's young son, Alex, was left alone, clinging to his mother's blood-soaked body.
- The level of violence he used is absolutely horrific, and it's something that really did shock the nation
to the core. - NARRATOR: The depraved killer was 26-year-old Robert Napper. Sixteen months later, he would strike again,
killing a four-year-old child, Jazmine Bissett, and her twenty-seven-year-old mother, Samantha,
who was brutally dismembered. - NAME: Leaving a woman posed in a way that robbed her of dignity, that is...
beyond simply wanting to be rid of somebody. That is truly evil. - NARRATOR: Robert Napper was a rapist
who sadistically attacked mothers in front of their children. He brutally killed two women,
then desecrated their bodies, making Robert Napper one of the world's most evil killers.
- ♪ ♪♪ - NARRATOR: When Rachel Nickell's murder hit the news, the public were appalled.
Her toddler, Alex, was found alone by a passerby, pleading with his dead mother to, "Get up, Mommy."
- GEOFFREY: This was a killing of a young woman in front of her infant son, broad daylight,
a sunny day in July, on Wimbledon Common, not far from the tennis, I mean, this is...
desecration of everything that people in Britain hold dear. It literally hypnotized the nation.
- DR. YARDLEY: This was a murder that really did shock because it's that stranger violence that when it happens,
it makes us all question our own daily activities, it makes us think about our own level of risk,
and while somebody is out there who was preying on strangers, everybody has something to fear.
- NARRATOR: In the desperate hunt to find Rachel's murderer, police became fixated on an innocent man
called Colin Stagg. Meanwhile, the real killer, Robert Napper, slipped under their radar.
Just over a year later, he brutally killed and sexually assaulted Samantha Bissett
and her four-year-old daughter, Jazmine. Forensic psychologist Laurence Alison was part of Colin Stagg's defense counsel.
- LAURENCE: A real human tragedy in the sense that whilst all the attention was being allocated to Stagg,
right on the very doorstep of this was another very similar offense. The horrific, mutilation attack of a young woman.
- ALAN: The scene was something out of Dante's "Inferno." Her body was cut completely open,
the--the ribcage had been taken out and the legs had been severed at the knees. The internal organs had been pulled about
and repeatedly stabbed, it was beyond belief. - NARRATOR: Fingerprints left at the scene
identified Robert Napper as the depraved killer, but it wasn't until a cold case review
of Rachel Nickell's murder that DNA evidence finally led to Napper's conviction in 2008
for one of Britain's most notorious crimes. - GEOFFREY: There is something about Napper
that, still to this day, sends a shiver down my spine. In that sense, he is a Satanic figure.
- NARRATOR: This killer's story began on the 25th of February, 1966. Robert Clive Napper
was born in Erith, Southeast London, and grew up on the nearby Abbey Wood estate.
He was the eldest of four, with two brothers and a sister. - ALAN: His parents had a violent relationship.
His mother was terrified of the father, and this so upset the children that they were all subjected
to some counseling through some children psychiatrists. The other children seemed to have gotten over it quite well,
but, uh, Robert Napper continued to display behavior which was unusual for a child of his age.
- GEOFFREY: At one point, he turned to his father and said, "They think I'm mad."
His father thought it was a joke, but the awful truth, the reality, is that Napper probably realized,
even at a very young age, that he had the capacity for something quite extraordinary.
- NARRATOR: At the age of 12, his parents divorced, and his father left the home.
Young Napper found it difficult making friends and preferred to spend time on his own.
Eventually, he was diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome. - Asperger's syndrome, you know, is a social disorder,
very difficult to make connections with people. He was very isolated at school, a very remote figure,
and that seemed to carry forward all the way through his life. - NARRATOR: As Napper entered adolescence,
his isolation continued. The young loner was mercilessly bullied at secondary school.
- He was despised at school, there's no question about that. People wouldn't play with him, they wouldn't sit with him,
he was... the archetypal outsider. - LOUIS: Napper was teased and bullied a lot in school,
which is always devastating for people. These types of things that go on in early childhood
are very impactful for how somebody develops later on in life. - DR. YARDLEY: He spent quite a lot of time in and out
of foster care, and what tends to happen when children come from those kind of backgrounds is they develop
this very defensive attitude and outlook. "Nobody is going to be there to look out for me,
"so I have to retaliate first, I have to always be on the attack." - NARRATOR: Young Napper's anger at the world
escalated following a trauma he suffered at the age of 12. He was sexually assaulted by a family friend
on a camping holiday. - Now, that may have given him a distorted view of sexuality.
It may have triggered some kind of reaction in him that identified all sex as somehow abusive.
It's possible he had a completely distorted vision of women. - NARRATOR: As Napper progressed through his teenage years,
the angry victim of abuse emerged as the abuser. - LAURENCE: There were early indications of violence
towards his siblings, I believe he discharged a air gun in the face of one of his siblings.
- GEOFFREY: It's pretty clear that he was a bully. He bullied his brothers and he spied on his sister.
He was a voyeur. He started peeping at his own sister, and emerged from that. And that aspect of voyeurism,
plus a very uncomfortable adolescence, led to Napper becoming effectively a time bomb.
- NARRATOR: The troubled Napper left school at 16 and took a job at a local warehouse.
Soon, he was stalking the streets of Southeast London, spying on women he saw at home alone.
- This was a man who, as he emerged into adulthood, was literally a volcano. - NARRATOR: One day, his peeping Tom behavior
focused on a house next to Wimbs Common, and turned into something more sinister.
- GEOFFREY: In August 1989, a woman was upstairs drying her hair, and her two children were downstairs,
and Napper broke into the house through the rear door, which they'd left open. - He walked past two children who were having breakfast
at the table, went upstairs, raped his victim, and then said to her, "You should keep your door locked,"
walked back downstairs, past the children, out and back over onto the Common. - LOUIS: He blamed the victim:
"You never should've left the door open." Do you know how many times I've heard that
from offenders over the years? They blame the victim, and it's a way to rationalize:
"Well, they're not fully responsible." You hear it time and time again. - NARRATOR: But Napper couldn't keep his dark secret.
A few months later, he confessed to his mother. - ALAN: His mother was so concerned,
she reported it to Plumstead police station, she was told at the time that a rape hadn't happened on Plumstead Common.
- NARRATOR: The police could find no trace of the rape in their records, so Napper's confession
was never followed up. But his mother was so concerned about her son's mental state,
that she sent him back to a psychiatrist. - ALAN: She certainly was worried enough
to refer him again to the Maudsley Hospital for further treatment, which he did go back to,
but discharged himself after a short period of analysis and counseling. - NARRATOR: As Napper's mental health deteriorated,
his mother cut off contact. He continued his stalking behavior, and marked his hunting grounds on an A-Z.
His favorite was the Green Chain network of foot paths that winds its way through park ground
across southeast London. - GEOFFREY: This is a sexual predator on the loose. In the first months of 1992, he commits a series of attacks.
Attacking women chillingly, almost caressing his victims with a knife blade. He's a man out of control
and absolutely consumed by sexual lust. Not for a relationship, but simply for the power.
- NARRATOR: By March, he'd made two attempted rapes. - He really didn't penetrate the victims sexually,
because he was impotent at the crime scene in almost all of the cases. What does that mean?
The violence takes the place of it. - DR. YARDLEY: He was becoming, I think, increasingly frustrated, with feelings of rage
and that violence was bubbling beneath the surface. - NARRATOR: His attacks became progressively more violent.
He changed his target, aiming for a different type of victim. - GEOFFREY: His fantasies rotated around young mothers
with young children. And in May 1992, he ties a ligature around a 22-year-old as she pushes her baby daughter in a buggy.
He pulls her into the undergrowth, strips her, rapes her, beats her. She begs for her life, and he runs off.
- ALAN: He viciously assaulted her. When she arrived at a relative's house, she wasn't recognized initially, she was so badly injured.
- LOUIS: The child was absolutely terrorized, and that was just another level of sadistic gratification
for Napper. - NARRATOR: But soon, sexual assaults and beatings wouldn't be enough to satisfy the depraved urges
of the mentally unstable Robert Napper. Soon, he'd feel the need to carry out the ultimate of his sadistic fantasies: murder.
By now, police have linked these sexual attacks and, in June, established Operation Eccleston
to investigate the so-called Green Chain Rapist. But Robert Napper remained at large,
and on the morning of the 15th of July, 1992, he set his sights on another young mother
walking with her child on Wimbledon Common: 23-year-old ex-model Rachel Nickell.
The events that followed would make an indelible mark on the nation. - LAURENCE: Such as any normal day in July,
it was a nice sunny day, Rachel's walking with her son and their dog across the Common for what should've been
the most normal walk in the world. - DR. YARDLEY: This is a place where she went often,
it was where she felt safe, she felt secure, and it's quite likely that Napper had been stalking Rachel
for--for some time. - GEOFFREY: Napper was lurking in the undergrowth nearby. He was clearly looking for a victim,
but this time it wasn't so much the sexual urge, it was the fantasy of killing a woman
that had come into its fullest. - NARRATOR: Napper waited until Rachel and her young son Alex
came close, and then attacked. - LAURENCE: He prodded her in the back with a knife
to move her to a sort of cops-- slightly more secluded area, forced her to kneel down and attacked her.
He slit her throat and then stabbed her nearly 50 times in front of her son. A really horrific, disturbing offense.
- ALAN: She was stabbed in the abdomen many times after she had obviously been killed;
she was sexually assaulted, and then left in the company of her child whilst he made good his escape.
- NARRATOR: A witness saw Napper washing Rachel's blood off his hands in a nearby stream.
- GEOFFREY: It was an act of such callousness and such bravura, he didn't run, he walked calmly away from this obscenity
that he committed. Without, apparently, a moment's hesitation or looking back. He just calmly walked away.
- NARRATOR: Two-year-old Alex was left alone holding his mother's dead body until an elderly walker found him
amidst the horrific scene. - DR. YARDLEY: Absolutely heartbreaking stuff. He's thinking that she's asleep or she's unconscious
and she's basically lying there and he's saying, "Wake up, Mommy," you know, this is--this is really horrific.
He wouldn't really know how to make sense of this. - NARRATOR: Soon, the news spread of Rachel's death.
Stories about the abhorrent crime continually hit the headlines in the weeks that followed.
- GEOFFREY: It absolutely captured the public imagination. Unprovoked attack on a young woman and her child...
in broad daylight on Wimbledon Common. And the stories of the boy saying, "Wake up, Mommy,"
or "Get up, Mommy," I mean, tugs the heartstrings of the nation. It occupied everyone's mind.
- WILLIAM: I think there was a huge amount of pressure on the police to solve the crime,
and the difficulty was that the killer had actually left no forensic clue that was capable of being detected
at the scene at all. And the police really had absolutely nothing to go on. - NARRATOR: Pressure to solve the case was mounting.
In an effort to determine the type of individual most likely to be Rachel's killer,
the metropolitan police brought in a psychological profiler. - LAURENCE: Between the police and the profiler,
they constructed a profile of the offender: a guy in his late 20s, early 30s, an individual that didn't have very successful relationships
with women, that may well live on his own and was interested in strange things, such as Satanism and so on.
- NARRATOR: An E-FIT photograph was constructed based on the suspect seen washing his hands,
and this was sent out across the national media. Thirty-year-old local man Colin Stagg
was named in several phone calls to the police. - LAURENCE: Colin lived within about two miles
of the offense, he was also picked out in an identity parade and subsequently was interviewed
by the police, police visited his flat, they felt that the flat was odd, partly because Colin Stagg
had one of the rooms painted black, and on some of the walls there was some seemingly strange
chalk drawings which we now know were part of the Wiccan religion, but were interpreted in more sinister ways
by the police at the time. - ALAN: They had no real evidence apart from identification evidence of one witness
who put him on the Common at the time. So they made a decision to try and draw that evidence
from him by introducing an undercover police officer to get him to confess to the murder.
It was all sanctioned at the very highest level at New Scotland Yard. - NARRATOR: Under Operation Ezdell,
a young, blonde female detective was sent undercover using the pseudonym of Lizzie James.
In a so-called "honeytrap" operation, she approached Colin Stagg through a dating section
in the local newspaper. - LAURENCE: Very risky, very unusual operation, and the idea essentially was to befriend Stagg, uh,
through a series of letters through a Lonely Hearts column, and the intention of the undercover operation
was to establish whether Stagg would know something about the offense that only the offender would know.
And secondly, would he in his dealings with Lizzie James show any of the sexual fantasies or behaviors
that the profiler had predicted that this sort of offender would be interested in.
- NARRATOR: The police now seem fixated on proving Colin Stagg's guilt, using the relatively new trend
in criminal investigation: psychological profiling. - In any case where profiling becomes prominent
in investigation, you're headed for disaster. Profiling behavior can be useful but only as an add-on,
it's just a way to give the police another way to look at things. Profiling should never, ever take the place
of time-tested investigative techniques. - NARRATOR: Meanwhile, Rachel's real killer,
Robert Napper, was still on the loose. - LAURENCE: So obviously part of the problem
with the fixation on Colin Stagg at the time was that Napper must have been thinking, "Wow, this is fantastic,"
you know, "All the heat's off me, no one's looking at me," so I suspect that this emboldened Napper to go on.
- NARRATOR: At the end of August 1992, Napper did, however, come onto the police radar,
but this was under Operation Eccleston-- the team investigating his earlier rapes
along the Green Chain Walk. After publicizing an E-FIT of the suspected rapist, Napper's name had been put forward by two of his neighbors.
- GEOFFREY: Napper is invited to the police station and asked to give a blood sample.
He doesn't turn up. He's invited again, he doesn't turn up again. There are countless occasions in which Napper is identified
as a possible suspect, he slips through the net. - NARRATOR: Eventually, in late October,
the police wrongly concluded that Napper wasn't their man. - ALAN: The description given by all of the victims,
except one, was that the attacker was approximately 5'10" tall, so police's decision was made
that anyone below 5'6" and over 6' would be eliminated from the inquiry; he was described as being
over 6'1", so on that and that alone, he was eliminated from the inquiry. - NARRATOR: Now Robert Napper had escaped
the police's watchful eye, he was free to roam the streets unhindered once again.
Using his trusty A-Z Map, he continued to stalk southeast London, marking places he'd spotted
more potential victims. - LAURENCE: So it's very common to engage in what we call
behavioral tryouts. So if thinking of attacking a particular victim, they won't suddenly go out one day and make that attack.
They will stalk, track, uh... observe, and all the indications are with Napper that he was doing that, he would go for walks,
he would select victims, peeping Tom behavior by looking through windows, selecting victims, targeting specific houses.
It was all very significant in Napper's criminal repertoire. - NARRATOR: In July 1993, Napper's name
came onto the police radar once again, when he was reported prowling and spying on a house near Plumstead Common.
The police officer who investigated reported him as a potential rapist. Once again, no further action was taken.
Now Napper was stalking homes around one of his favorite haunts--Wimbs Common. He was looking for his next victim.
- GEOFFREY: Napper is hiding in the bushes again, and sees a 27-year-old woman called Samantha Bissett,
who has a daughter, Jazmine. Well, one version of it is that he sees Samantha making love with her boyfriend through the window,
and is so aroused by this. - LAURENCE: One night, Samantha Bissett said to her then-partner,
"I've seen someone at our window, looking in at the window." We now know that that was Robert Napper,
so again, the modus operandi was exactly the same. Peeking on a victim, stalking the victim,
ruminating through what he was gonna do to that victim. - NARRATOR: On the evening of the 3rd of November,
Napper saw that Samantha was alone in her flat. Her four-year-old daughter, Jazmine,
was asleep in her bedroom. Napper climbed onto the balcony and broke in through the window.
He startled Samantha in her hallway. - GEOFFREY: He attacks Samantha with a knife.
He stabs her eight times, one blow so severe that it...snaps her spinal cord. It is...yet further example
of Napper's grotesque depravity. But it doesn't even end there. - NARRATOR: The killer turned his mind
to Samantha's sleeping daughter. - GEOFFREY: He proceeds to sexually assault the four-year-old daughter, Jazmine, and suffocates her
in her bedroom with her duvet, and leaves her body on the bed, surrounded by her toys.
- DR. YARDLEY: If we look at the method that Napper used to kill Jazmine, after he'd sexually assaulted her,
he suffocated her. So he's using a different method than the method he used on her mother, and I think this is potentially a case of him
mixing up his offending, because offenders get bored, they liked to vary it, they like to keep things interesting.
- NARRATOR: But Napper's grotesque fantasies were not complete. He then dragged mother Samantha's body into the lounge.
- GEOFFREY: Napper eviscerates Samantha's body. He cuts her from the chest to the crotch,
peels back her skin, cracks the ribs, literally eviscerates this innocent young woman's body
in a horrifying, horrible attack. - NARRATOR: After pulling away her ribs, Napper repeatedly stabbed Samantha's internal organs.
- DR. HAMILTON: He mutilates her body, he actually takes a part of the skin from her abdominal wall,
presumably as some sort of trophy; there are deep cuts in her legs, almost as if attempting to dismember her.
This is an escalation of his behavior. Once he has finished with the mutilation,
he poses Samantha in a very sexually provocative pose. - DR. YARDLEY: He positioned her body on a cushion,
and her body was left in the same position as it was when she had sex with her boyfriend.
Now, that basically is saying that this woman is sexually available, he's trying to create
a narrative here, he's trying to say that she deserved this, and that really does tell us about his misogyny.
- LOUIS: Posing a victim following a murder of a sexual nature is very, very common.
They pose the victim because killing alone is not psychosexually sufficient. And so they go beyond killing to satisfy themselves,
it's sexually stimulating, it's a fusion of sex and aggression, so that the aggressive act itself is eroticized.
- NARRATOR: Robert Napper had now gained the status of a serial killer. Treasuring the part of Samantha's abdomen
that he removed for safekeeping, the triple murderer left the horrific scene. Samantha's boyfriend made the tragic discovery
the next morning. - ALAN: He entered the flat and found Samantha's body in the living room.
At first he thought it was some sort of macabre joke, because the body was destroyed,
and he thought it was some form of mannequin, and he ran back to the kitchen and called the police.
- NARRATOR: Former detective Sergeant Alan Jackaman was one of the first to arrive at Samantha's flat.
- ALAN: In all my years of service, I've never seen anything so dreadful and so horrific,
from the state that the body was in, the way that she'd been attacked and dismembered,
this was a crime way, way beyond normality, way out of the ordinary. - NARRATOR: One member of the forensic team
investigating at the scene was so traumatized they had to take two years' sick leave.
The way Samantha's daughter Jazmine had been left by the killer was also deeply troubling
for investigators. - ALAN: Jazmine had been attacked in her cot, her quilt had been put back over,
and she had the appearance of being a child asleep, which was somehow more disturbing
than seeing what was left of her mother. - NARRATOR: Napper had seemingly left little
in the way of evidence, except a partial footprint in blood. Every single fingerprint that the police found
in Samantha's flat was eliminated, including those belonging to little Jazmine's friends,
who'd recently visited for her fourth birthday party. - ALAN: There wasn't a good suspect coming into the frame,
uh, we went six months down the line, and we all knew that this wasn't a one-off killing,
so we concentrated our minds to try and find out who was responsible for this. In addition to that, of course, it had no...oxygen
or publicity from the media, because it was a single mother whom the press erroneously believed was on the edges of prostitution,
so it didn't get much past the second page of "The News Shopper." - DR. YARDLEY: When we're comparing the media coverage,
Rachel Nickell's murder received an awful lot more attention than Samantha and Jazmine Bissett.
And they're making judgments about this victim as to how worthy they are of attention,
and what we've got here is judgments being made about appropriate femininity, appropriate motherhood,
so Rachel was in a secure long-term relationship with her partner. Samantha's daughter-- her father didn't live
with the family, so I think all of those kind of new right, neoliberal values about
what a family should look like are coming out here in the media's choice to emphasize on a cold case
over the Bissett case. - NARRATOR: With few leads to go on, the team investigating Samantha and Jazmine's murders
was wound down to just five officers. Desperate for a breakthrough, in May 1994,
the senior investigating officer took a punt, and asked for the fingerprints found at the scene
to be reexamined. - ALAN: He insisted that it was done, and then within a few days, sheepishly,
the fingerprint officer returned to say that they had made a mistake. It transpired that three fingerprint sets
within the flat did not come from the victim, they came from some unknown person.
When they were sent back for analysis, they came back as Robert Napper-- a man who had not featured in our inquiry at all.
- NARRATOR: At last, the police had Robert Napper in their sights. When they delved into his history,
they discovered he had a criminal record. - ALAN: We found that he had this firearm offense,
and in the property store, was still some of the property pertaining to that offense, one of the items
was an A-Z book, which, when we looked at it, had lots of roots, plans, which coincided
with our murder and, more specifically, with the Green Chain rape offenses. Also, clearly marked out was the Isabella Plantation,
very close to Wimbledon Common, and that immediately rang bells with Rachel Nickell.
- NARRATOR: When Detective Sergeant Jackaman found Napper's mug shot on police file,
they made another startling discovery. - ALAN: One of the indexers took one look at the photograph--
she had worked on the Green Chain rape inquiry, and she said, "That is the Green Chain rapist."
So I ran out to the front office, and took down from the wall the poster asking for information on the Green Chain rapist,
which had a Photo-Fit on it, and we compared photographs, and they were very, very similar.
- NARRATOR: Having possibly connected Napper to further crimes, as well as the Bissett murders,
Detective Jackaman and his colleagues put the suspected killer under surveillance.
- ALAN: The surveillance team had followed him and he was carrying out some really strange behavior,
going on long walks on his own, looking at camping equipment, firearm magazines,
buying, uh, pornographic magazines. So it was felt, as it was a bank holiday weekend,
we couldn't take the risk that he might go out and kill somebody. - NARRATOR: The net was now closing in on triple murderer
Robert Napper. On the 21st of May, detectives went to his Plumstead flat to make an arrest.
- He went to work, like clockwork, every morning at 7 a.m. We stood outside well before 7 a.m., he didn't appear.
So we started to get worried then that perhaps he wasn't in there. - NARRATOR: It turned out that Napper had been fired
from his job the previous day and was still in bed. He was startled when the police knocked at his door.
- ALAN: He was totally shocked, and he was immediately handcuffed, told why he was under arrest,
and a search was subsequently made and another A-Z found, knives and lots of incriminating evidence.
- NARRATOR: Police have now found a second A-Z belonging to Napper that showed markings
next to Samantha Bissett's home. In his flat, detectives also discovered a receipt
for a pair of size nine Adidas trainers. A bloodied footprint from exactly the same shoe
had been found at the murder scene. - ALAN: We were able to take his DNA. The DNA, no surprise to us,
matched that of the Green Chain rapist. So he was then in the frame for two rapes
and two attempted rapes, plus now our two murders. - NARRATOR: In July, Napper was charged
and held on remand in prison, but there still wasn't a link with the first murder
of 23-year-old Rachel Nickell on Wimbledon Common 2 years earlier. However, Detective Jackaman was convinced
he was Rachel's killer. - ALAN: We went to the Wimbledon inquiry and put Napper up as, uh, a suspect
for the Rachel Nickell murder, by which time they had in their frame, their suspect, Colin Stagg.
Despite our bringing this new suspect into the frame, he was never ever considered.
- NARRATOR: This innocent man, Colin Stagg, was being held in custody for Rachel's killing.
Barrister William Clegg was working on his defense for the forthcoming trial. - WILLIAM: I always thought he was a very unlikely killer
because of his personality, but it wasn't 'til I really read the papers, it became obvious to me that there was not
a shred of evidence against him. - NARRATOR: The police, however, believe their honeytrap operation proved
Colin Stagg was Rachel's killer, based on exchanges he'd had with their undercover female operative, Lizzie James.
Criminal psychologist Laurence Alison examined this evidence for Colin Stagg's defense team and was concerned
by what he found. - LAURENCE: He said that in one of the meetings that he had with Lizzie James he almost dropped his chips
in talking to her because what she was asking him for was so bizarre and off the wall, and of course,
Stagg starts rising fantasies that go down that line not because he has them but because he wants
to please a person that's offering him sex. - ALAN: This was turned gradually into the attack
on Wimbledon Common, and he was encouraged to admit to having committed the murder,
but he never ever did. - NARRATOR: When it finally came to a pre-committal hearing
on the 14th of September, the judge threw out the case against Colin Stagg. - NAME: Colin tragically spent 13 months in custody
awaiting trial, but it never went to full trial, and Lord Chief Justice Ognall described it
as deceptive conduct of the grossest kind. The undercover operation quite rightly was thrown out.
- The judge recognized that there was never any evidence against me, no forensic evidence,
no confession evidence, nothing at all. - NARRATOR: Colin Stagg was eventually awarded
over £700,000 in damages by the Metropolitan Police and given a formal apology. Five days after his acquittal,
a review of the Rachel Nickell murder investigation was launched. - GEOFFREY: Gradually at that point,
the recognition is that perhaps there is a link between Rachel Nickell's killing and Samantha Bissett's killing.
Gradually the two forces coalesce, so that it becomes clear that Napper could well
have been responsible for both killings. - NARRATOR: Napper was interviewed by the review team
about Rachel's killing, but as the police still had no evidence linking him to the scene, this led to a dead end.
Nearly a year later, though, in October 1995, Robert Napper's trial date was set for the murders
of Samantha and Jazmine Bissett and for one count of rape and two counts of attempted rape
for his Green Chain Walk attacks. Barrister William Clegg was defending him. - WILLIAM: I'd met Robert Napper at Broadmoor Mental Hospital
where he was on remand awaiting his trial. It was soon fairly obvious to me that he was, um, suffering
from serious delusions. He firmly believed members of the royal family were visiting him in Broadmoor.
He was an extremely ill man. - NARRATOR: Despite being diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic,
an assessment by four different psychiatrists concluded Napper was fit to stand.
The trial for the murders of Samantha and Jazmine Bissett began at the Old Bailey on the 9th of October.
- ALAN: We were on the edges of our seats as we sat outside number one court, waiting for the trial to begin,
when all of a sudden, the commotion and everybody started running out of the court,
and the word goes around that he's pleaded to manslaughter through diminished responsibility.
There's a mixed feeling because manslaughter is not a conviction of murder. However, under the circumstances,
it was obvious that he was mentally very, very ill, and it was an admission of sorts and a conviction.
- I think what can tend to happen is that the assumption can be made that the offender isn't responsible
for what they've done, but he actually was in this case, he knew exactly what he was doing,
he knew what he was doing was wrong, and he chose to do it anyway. - NARRATOR: Napper was sentenced to life
in Broadmoor Psychiatric Hospital in Barkshire. - WILLIAM: I think the sentence was inevitable,
the best place for him was a special hospital, and it was important for everybody
that he remained there. - NARRATOR: But D.S. Jackaman wasn't finished with Robert Napper.
He was still convinced Napper was also responsible for the killing of Rachel Nickell
on Wimbledon Common in July 1992. - ALAN: That became all-consuming. We became more and more convinced over the years
that he was responsible for the Rachel Nickell killing. - NARRATOR: D.S. Jackaman had relayed his suspicions
about Napper to Rachel Nickell's original murder inquiry team, but they already had a suspect awaiting trial,
and the evidence he presented wasn't given the recognition it deserved. Now, under a new review team, D.S. Jackaman made it
his business to tell the senior investigating officer about Robert Napper. - ALAN: I went into my office, wrote out a report
giving all the details as to why I believed that Robert Napper was guilty of killing Rachel Nickell,
gave it back to him, and he took it and put him on the list. - NARRATOR: A new forensics team was appointed
and, in July 2004, advances in DNA techniques led to a breakthrough. Samples taken from Rachel's body revealed
a mixed DNA profile of her killer. Soon, this was identified as belonging to serial murderer Robert Napper.
Other evidence was also re-examined, linking him to the scene. - ALAN: In Rachel's child's hair were found some flakes
of red paint. Nobody quite knows how this happened, but they were found to match
a tool box recovered from Robert Napper's flat on his arrest. - NARRATOR: An old pair of shoes
that Napper still had with him in Broadmoor were also seized. - ALAN: They were examined against shoe prints
found against the man seen washing his hands near the scene of Rachel Nickell's murder,
and those shoes matched the shoe prints next to the stream. - Gradually, the case is built against Napper.
But it's not until 2006 that he's interviewed again about the possibility of his killing Rachel Nickell.
- NARRATOR: It took another two years, until the 18th of December, 2008, for Rachel's family to finally see justice.
Sixteen years after her death, Forty-two-year-old Robert Napper returned to the Old Bailey, charged with her murder.
- ALAN: He sat there and he didn't look much different, and it was in a dream that the charges were read
and he pleaded guilty to Rachel's manslaughter. - NARRATOR: Once again Napper pleaded guilty
to manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility. The judge sentenced him to remain in Broadmoor Hospital
indefinitely. For Detective Sergeant Jackaman, it was the moment he'd waited years to witness.
- ALAN: Just before he went down the steps, he turned, looked directly at me and recognized me,
and I just mouthed, "Hello, Bob." It was a satisfying moment, but it was more than that,
it was--it was relief, it was vindication, really, after all those years of plugging away.
- NARRATOR: It brought to a close one of the most upsetting murder cases in British criminal history.
- DR. YARDLEY: Napper is completely devoid of any conscience, he doesn't care about
the impact of his actions on others, and that makes him a very dangerous man indeed.
- LOUIS: His mental state, whether he's schizophrenic, really had nothing to do with the crimes,
the important point is that he's off the street and can't hurt anybody again. - GEOFFREY: The man knows no humanity,
the man has utter disregard for human life. He took inordinate pleasure from the suffering of his victims.
- NARRATOR: Napper raped and sexually assaulted women as they walked across London's park lands and commons.
He honed in on vulnerable mothers and took sadistic pleasure from attacking them
in front of their children. He brutally slayed two women in the prime of their life,
then sexually assaulted and killed a four-year-old child, that makes Robert Napper
one of the world's most evil killers. - ♪ ♪♪ - [whooshing]

In July 1992, Robert Napper stabbed Rachel Nickel in front of her 2-year-old son. In November 1993, he broke into the home of Samantha Bisset and stabbed her to death.

An in-depth look at the lives and crimes of some of the world's most evil killers, including Jeffrey Dahmer, Ted Bundy, Richard Ramirez, Cary Stayner, Leonard Lake, Dorothea Puente and more.

Brief Summary

Rachel Nickell's murder in 1992 led to a flawed investigation, wrongful arrest, and the eventual capture of her killer, Robert Napper.

Key points

Rachel Nickell's Tragic Murder. On July 15, 1992, Rachel Nickell was brutally murdered in front of her young son, Alex.
The Depravity of Robert Napper. Robert Napper, a sadistic killer, would go on to commit horrific acts against mothers and their children.
The Heartbreaking Plea of a Child. Two-year-old Alex was found pleading with his dead mother to 'Get up, Mommy.'
The Horrific Discovery. Samantha's boyfriend finds her mutilated body, mistaking it for a mannequin at first.
Napper's Arrest. Detectives finally arrest Robert Napper, linking him to multiple murders and rapes.
Justice for Rachel Nickell. After years of investigation, Napper is charged with Rachel's murder, bringing closure to the case.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

What started off as such a normal day had become an incredible human tragedy.

0:17WatchAug 12, 2021

Tension

85/ 100High tension

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