00:00:05
- MALE NARRATOR:
15th of July, 1992. London, England. On a summer morning,
23-year-old Rachel Nickell
00:00:13
was walking her dog, Molly,
across Wimbledon Common with her 2-year-old son, Alex.
00:00:20
- What started off as such
a normal day had become an incredible
human tragedy. - NARRATOR: A man appeared
from the undergrowth,
00:00:28
stabbing Rachel nearly 50 times,
then sexually assaulting her. - GEOFFREY: It's an act
of most unspeakable violence.
00:00:37
He's doing it to desecrate
her body, and he's doing it
in front of her son. It takes the breath away.
00:00:44
- NARRATOR: Rachel's young son,
Alex, was left alone, clinging to his mother's
blood-soaked body.
00:00:51
- The level of violence he used
is absolutely horrific, and it's something that really
did shock the nation
00:00:56
to the core. - NARRATOR: The depraved killer was 26-year-old Robert Napper. Sixteen months later,
he would strike again,
00:01:05
killing a four-year-old child,
Jazmine Bissett, and her twenty-seven-year-old
mother, Samantha,
00:01:11
who was brutally dismembered. - NAME: Leaving a woman
posed in a way that robbed her of dignity,
that is...
00:01:19
beyond simply wanting
to be rid of somebody. That is truly evil. - NARRATOR: Robert Napper
was a rapist
00:01:26
who sadistically attacked
mothers in front of their children. He brutally killed
two women,
00:01:33
then desecrated their bodies, making Robert Napper one of
the world's most evil killers.
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- ♪ ♪♪ - NARRATOR:
When Rachel Nickell's murder hit the news,
the public were appalled.
00:02:09
Her toddler, Alex,
was found alone by a passerby, pleading with his dead mother
to, "Get up, Mommy."
00:02:18
- GEOFFREY: This was a killing
of a young woman in front of her infant son,
broad daylight,
00:02:23
a sunny day in July,
on Wimbledon Common, not far from the tennis,
I mean, this is...
00:02:29
desecration of everything that
people in Britain hold dear. It literally hypnotized
the nation.
00:02:39
- DR. YARDLEY: This was
a murder that really did shock because it's that stranger
violence that when it happens,
00:02:44
it makes us all question
our own daily activities, it makes us think about
our own level of risk,
00:02:50
and while somebody is out there
who was preying on strangers, everybody has something to fear.
00:02:57
- NARRATOR: In the desperate
hunt to find Rachel's murderer, police became fixated
on an innocent man
00:03:03
called Colin Stagg. Meanwhile, the real killer,
Robert Napper, slipped under their radar.
00:03:10
Just over a year later,
he brutally killed and sexually assaulted
Samantha Bissett
00:03:15
and her four-year-old daughter,
Jazmine. Forensic psychologist
Laurence Alison was part of Colin Stagg's
defense counsel.
00:03:25
- LAURENCE: A real human tragedy
in the sense that whilst all the attention
was being allocated to Stagg,
00:03:30
right on the very doorstep
of this was another very similar offense. The horrific, mutilation
attack of a young woman.
00:03:38
- ALAN: The scene
was something out of Dante's "Inferno." Her body was cut
completely open,
00:03:45
the--the ribcage
had been taken out and the legs had been
severed at the knees. The internal organs
had been pulled about
00:03:54
and repeatedly stabbed,
it was beyond belief. - NARRATOR: Fingerprints
left at the scene
00:04:01
identified Robert Napper
as the depraved killer, but it wasn't until
a cold case review
00:04:08
of Rachel Nickell's murder
that DNA evidence finally led to Napper's
conviction in 2008
00:04:15
for one of Britain's
most notorious crimes. - GEOFFREY: There is something
about Napper
00:04:22
that, still to this day,
sends a shiver down my spine. In that sense,
he is a Satanic figure.
00:04:31
- NARRATOR:
This killer's story began on the 25th of February, 1966. Robert Clive Napper
00:04:38
was born in Erith,
Southeast London, and grew up on the nearby
Abbey Wood estate.
00:04:45
He was the eldest of four,
with two brothers and a sister. - ALAN: His parents
had a violent relationship.
00:04:52
His mother was terrified
of the father, and this so upset the children
that they were all subjected
00:04:59
to some counseling through
some children psychiatrists. The other children seemed to
have gotten over it quite well,
00:05:07
but, uh, Robert Napper
continued to display behavior which was unusual
for a child of his age.
00:05:15
- GEOFFREY: At one point,
he turned to his father and said, "They think I'm mad."
00:05:20
His father thought
it was a joke, but the awful truth,
the reality, is that Napper probably
realized,
00:05:26
even at a very young age, that he had the capacity for
something quite extraordinary.
00:05:32
- NARRATOR: At the age of 12,
his parents divorced, and his father left the home.
00:05:38
Young Napper found it
difficult making friends and preferred to spend time
on his own.
00:05:44
Eventually, he was diagnosed
with Asperger's Syndrome. - Asperger's syndrome, you know,
is a social disorder,
00:05:51
very difficult to make
connections with people. He was very isolated
at school, a very remote figure,
00:05:56
and that seemed to carry
forward all the way through his life. - NARRATOR:
As Napper entered adolescence,
00:06:01
his isolation continued. The young loner
was mercilessly bullied at secondary school.
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- He was despised at school, there's no question
about that. People wouldn't play with him,
they wouldn't sit with him,
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he was...
the archetypal outsider. - LOUIS: Napper was teased
and bullied a lot in school,
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which is always devastating
for people. These types of things
that go on in early childhood
00:06:28
are very impactful for how somebody develops
later on in life. - DR. YARDLEY: He spent quite
a lot of time in and out
00:06:35
of foster care, and what tends to happen
when children come from those kind of backgrounds
is they develop
00:06:40
this very defensive
attitude and outlook. "Nobody is going to be there
to look out for me,
00:06:45
"so I have to retaliate first, I have to always be
on the attack." - NARRATOR: Young Napper's
anger at the world
00:06:52
escalated following
a trauma he suffered at the age of 12. He was sexually assaulted
by a family friend
00:06:59
on a camping holiday. - Now, that may have given him
a distorted view of sexuality.
00:07:06
It may have triggered
some kind of reaction in him that identified all sex
as somehow abusive.
00:07:16
It's possible he had
a completely distorted vision of women. - NARRATOR: As Napper progressed
through his teenage years,
00:07:24
the angry victim of abuse
emerged as the abuser. - LAURENCE: There were early
indications of violence
00:07:31
towards his siblings, I believe he discharged
a air gun in the face of one of his siblings.
00:07:38
- GEOFFREY: It's pretty clear
that he was a bully. He bullied his brothers
and he spied on his sister.
00:07:45
He was a voyeur. He started peeping
at his own sister, and emerged from that. And that aspect of voyeurism,
00:07:54
plus a very
uncomfortable adolescence, led to Napper becoming
effectively a time bomb.
00:08:04
- NARRATOR: The troubled Napper
left school at 16 and took a job
at a local warehouse.
00:08:09
Soon, he was stalking
the streets of Southeast London, spying on women he saw
at home alone.
00:08:17
- This was a man who,
as he emerged into adulthood, was literally a volcano. - NARRATOR: One day,
his peeping Tom behavior
00:08:27
focused on a house
next to Wimbs Common, and turned into something
more sinister.
00:08:33
- GEOFFREY: In August 1989,
a woman was upstairs drying her hair, and her two children
were downstairs,
00:08:38
and Napper broke into the house
through the rear door, which they'd left open. - He walked past two children
who were having breakfast
00:08:47
at the table,
went upstairs, raped his victim,
and then said to her, "You should keep
your door locked,"
00:08:55
walked back downstairs,
past the children, out and back over onto
the Common. - LOUIS: He blamed
the victim:
00:09:02
"You never should've left
the door open." Do you know how many times
I've heard that
00:09:06
from offenders over the years? They blame the victim,
and it's a way to rationalize:
00:09:11
"Well, they're not fully
responsible." You hear it time and time again. - NARRATOR: But Napper
couldn't keep his dark secret.
00:09:20
A few months later,
he confessed to his mother. - ALAN: His mother
was so concerned,
00:09:26
she reported it to
Plumstead police station, she was told at the time that a rape hadn't happened
on Plumstead Common.
00:09:37
- NARRATOR: The police
could find no trace of the rape in their records,
so Napper's confession
00:09:42
was never followed up. But his mother was so concerned
about her son's mental state,
00:09:48
that she sent him back
to a psychiatrist. - ALAN: She certainly
was worried enough
00:09:54
to refer him again
to the Maudsley Hospital for further treatment,
which he did go back to,
00:10:00
but discharged himself
after a short period of analysis and counseling. - NARRATOR: As Napper's
mental health deteriorated,
00:10:09
his mother cut off contact. He continued his stalking
behavior, and marked his hunting grounds
on an A-Z.
00:10:18
His favorite was
the Green Chain network of foot paths that winds
its way through park ground
00:10:24
across southeast London. - GEOFFREY: This is a sexual
predator on the loose. In the first months of 1992,
he commits a series of attacks.
00:10:35
Attacking women chillingly,
almost caressing his victims with a knife blade. He's a man out of control
00:10:44
and absolutely consumed
by sexual lust. Not for a relationship,
but simply for the power.
00:10:54
- NARRATOR: By March,
he'd made two attempted rapes. - He really didn't penetrate
the victims sexually,
00:11:01
because he was impotent
at the crime scene in almost all of the cases. What does that mean?
00:11:07
The violence takes
the place of it. - DR. YARDLEY:
He was becoming, I think, increasingly frustrated,
with feelings of rage
00:11:14
and that violence was bubbling
beneath the surface. - NARRATOR: His attacks became
progressively more violent.
00:11:21
He changed his target, aiming for a different
type of victim. - GEOFFREY: His fantasies
rotated around young mothers
00:11:30
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.
00:11:41
He pulls her
into the undergrowth, strips her, rapes her,
beats her. She begs for her life,
and he runs off.
00:11:50
- ALAN:
He viciously assaulted her. When she arrived
at a relative's house, she wasn't recognized initially,
she was so badly injured.
00:11:59
- LOUIS: The child was
absolutely terrorized, and that was just another level
of sadistic gratification
00:12:05
for Napper. - NARRATOR: But soon,
sexual assaults and beatings wouldn't be enough to satisfy
the depraved urges
00:12:14
of the mentally unstable
Robert Napper. Soon, he'd feel the need
to carry out the ultimate of his
sadistic fantasies: murder.
00:12:28
By now, police have linked
these sexual attacks and, in June, established
Operation Eccleston
00:12:34
to investigate the so-called
Green Chain Rapist. But Robert Napper
remained at large,
00:12:41
and on the morning
of the 15th of July, 1992, he set his sights
on another young mother
00:12:48
walking with her child
on Wimbledon Common: 23-year-old ex-model
Rachel Nickell.
00:12:55
The events that followed
would make an indelible mark on the nation. - LAURENCE: Such as any
normal day in July,
00:13:01
it was a nice sunny day,
Rachel's walking with her son and their dog across the Common
for what should've been
00:13:07
the most normal walk
in the world. - DR. YARDLEY: This is
a place where she went often,
00:13:11
it was where she felt safe,
she felt secure, and it's quite likely that
Napper had been stalking Rachel
00:13:17
for--for some time. - GEOFFREY: Napper was lurking
in the undergrowth nearby. He was clearly
looking for a victim,
00:13:25
but this time it wasn't so much
the sexual urge, it was the fantasy
of killing a woman
00:13:31
that had come into its fullest. - NARRATOR: Napper waited until
Rachel and her young son Alex
00:13:37
came close, and then attacked. - LAURENCE: He prodded her
in the back with a knife
00:13:42
to move her to a sort of cops--
slightly more secluded area, forced her to kneel down
and attacked her.
00:13:48
He slit her throat and then
stabbed her nearly 50 times in front of her son. A really horrific,
disturbing offense.
00:13:56
- ALAN: She was stabbed
in the abdomen many times after she had obviously
been killed;
00:14:04
she was sexually assaulted, and then left in the company
of her child whilst he made good
his escape.
00:14:13
- NARRATOR: A witness saw
Napper washing Rachel's blood off his hands
in a nearby stream.
00:14:19
- GEOFFREY: It was an act
of such callousness and such bravura,
he didn't run, he walked calmly away
from this obscenity
00:14:29
that he committed. Without, apparently,
a moment's hesitation or looking back. He just calmly walked away.
00:14:37
- NARRATOR: Two-year-old
Alex was left alone holding his mother's
dead body until an elderly walker
found him
00:14:44
amidst the horrific scene. - DR. YARDLEY:
Absolutely heartbreaking stuff. He's thinking that she's
asleep or she's unconscious
00:14:51
and she's basically lying there and he's saying,
"Wake up, Mommy," you know, this is--this is
really horrific.
00:14:57
He wouldn't really know
how to make sense of this. - NARRATOR: Soon, the news
spread of Rachel's death.
00:15:03
Stories about
the abhorrent crime continually hit the headlines
in the weeks that followed.
00:15:09
- GEOFFREY: It absolutely
captured the public imagination. Unprovoked attack on a young
woman and her child...
00:15:17
in broad daylight
on Wimbledon Common. And the stories of the boy
saying, "Wake up, Mommy,"
00:15:24
or "Get up, Mommy," I mean, tugs the heartstrings
of the nation. It occupied everyone's mind.
00:15:32
- WILLIAM: I think there was
a huge amount of pressure on the police to solve
the crime,
00:15:37
and the difficulty was
that the killer had actually left no forensic clue that was
capable of being detected
00:15:45
at the scene at all. And the police really had
absolutely nothing to go on. - NARRATOR: Pressure to solve
the case was mounting.
00:15:54
In an effort to determine
the type of individual most likely to be
Rachel's killer,
00:15:59
the metropolitan police brought
in a psychological profiler. - LAURENCE: Between
the police and the profiler,
00:16:05
they constructed a profile
of the offender: a guy in his late 20s,
early 30s, an individual that didn't have
very successful relationships
00:16:12
with women, that may well
live on his own and was interested
in strange things, such as Satanism and so on.
00:16:19
- NARRATOR: An E-FIT
photograph was constructed based on the suspect seen
washing his hands,
00:16:25
and this was sent out
across the national media. Thirty-year-old local man
Colin Stagg
00:16:31
was named in several phone calls
to the police. - LAURENCE: Colin lived
within about two miles
00:16:37
of the offense,
he was also picked out in an identity parade
and subsequently was interviewed
00:16:42
by the police,
police visited his flat, they felt that the flat
was odd, partly because Colin Stagg
00:16:49
had one of the rooms
painted black, and on some of the walls
there was some seemingly strange
00:16:55
chalk drawings which we now
know were part of the Wiccan religion, but were interpreted
in more sinister ways
00:17:00
by the police at the time. - ALAN: They had no
real evidence apart from identification evidence
of one witness
00:17:08
who put him on the Common
at the time. So they made a decision
to try and draw that evidence
00:17:16
from him by introducing
an undercover police officer to get him to confess
to the murder.
00:17:23
It was all sanctioned
at the very highest level at New Scotland Yard. - NARRATOR:
Under Operation Ezdell,
00:17:30
a young, blonde female detective
was sent undercover using the pseudonym
of Lizzie James.
00:17:37
In a so-called "honeytrap"
operation, she approached Colin Stagg
through a dating section
00:17:43
in the local newspaper. - LAURENCE: Very risky,
very unusual operation, and the idea essentially
was to befriend Stagg, uh,
00:17:52
through a series of letters
through a Lonely Hearts column, and the intention
of the undercover operation
00:17:57
was to establish whether
Stagg would know something about the offense that only
the offender would know.
00:18:03
And secondly, would he in his
dealings with Lizzie James show any of the sexual
fantasies or behaviors
00:18:11
that the profiler had predicted
that this sort of offender would be interested in.
00:18:17
- NARRATOR: The police now
seem fixated on proving Colin Stagg's guilt,
using the relatively new trend
00:18:23
in criminal investigation:
psychological profiling. - In any case where profiling
becomes prominent
00:18:32
in investigation,
you're headed for disaster. Profiling behavior can be
useful but only as an add-on,
00:18:40
it's just a way to give
the police another way to look at things. Profiling should never,
ever take the place
00:18:48
of time-tested investigative
techniques. - NARRATOR: Meanwhile,
Rachel's real killer,
00:18:53
Robert Napper,
was still on the loose. - LAURENCE: So obviously
part of the problem
00:18:58
with the fixation on Colin Stagg
at the time was that Napper must have been thinking,
"Wow, this is fantastic,"
00:19:04
you know, "All the heat's
off me, no one's looking at me," so I suspect that this
emboldened Napper to go on.
00:19:09
- NARRATOR: At the end
of August 1992, Napper did, however,
come onto the police radar,
00:19:16
but this was under
Operation Eccleston-- the team investigating
his earlier rapes
00:19:21
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.
00:19:31
- GEOFFREY: Napper is
invited to the police station and asked to give
a blood sample.
00:19:36
He doesn't turn up. He's invited again,
he doesn't turn up again. There are countless occasions
in which Napper is identified
00:19:46
as a possible suspect,
he slips through the net. - NARRATOR: Eventually,
in late October,
00:19:52
the police wrongly concluded
that Napper wasn't their man. - ALAN: The description
given by all of the victims,
00:20:01
except one,
was that the attacker was approximately 5'10" tall,
so police's decision was made
00:20:11
that anyone below 5'6"
and over 6' would be eliminated from the inquiry;
he was described as being
00:20:18
over 6'1", so on that
and that alone, he was eliminated
from the inquiry. - NARRATOR:
Now Robert Napper had escaped
00:20:27
the police's watchful eye, he was free to roam the streets
unhindered once again.
00:20:32
Using his trusty A-Z Map,
he continued to stalk southeast London,
marking places he'd spotted
00:20:39
more potential victims. - LAURENCE: So it's very common
to engage in what we call
00:20:45
behavioral tryouts. So if thinking of attacking
a particular victim, they won't suddenly go out
one day and make that attack.
00:20:51
They will stalk, track, uh...
observe, and all the indications
are with Napper that he was doing that,
he would go for walks,
00:20:59
he would select victims, peeping Tom behavior
by looking through windows, selecting victims,
targeting specific houses.
00:21:06
It was all very significant
in Napper's criminal repertoire. - NARRATOR: In July 1993,
Napper's name
00:21:14
came onto the police radar
once again, when he was reported
prowling and spying on a house
near Plumstead Common.
00:21:22
The police officer
who investigated reported him as a potential
rapist. Once again, no further
action was taken.
00:21:33
Now Napper was stalking homes around one of his favorite
haunts--Wimbs Common. He was looking
for his next victim.
00:21:42
- GEOFFREY: Napper is
hiding in the bushes again, and sees a 27-year-old woman
called Samantha Bissett,
00:21:50
who has a daughter, Jazmine. Well, one version of it
is that he sees Samantha making love with her boyfriend
through the window,
00:21:58
and is so aroused by this. - LAURENCE: One night,
Samantha Bissett said to her then-partner,
00:22:06
"I've seen someone
at our window, looking in at the window." We now know that that
was Robert Napper,
00:22:10
so again, the modus operandi
was exactly the same. Peeking on a victim,
stalking the victim,
00:22:15
ruminating through what
he was gonna do to that victim. - NARRATOR: On the evening
of the 3rd of November,
00:22:22
Napper saw that Samantha
was alone in her flat. Her four-year-old daughter,
Jazmine,
00:22:27
was asleep in her bedroom. Napper climbed onto the balcony
and broke in through the window.
00:22:35
He startled Samantha
in her hallway. - GEOFFREY: He attacks
Samantha with a knife.
00:22:42
He stabs her eight times,
one blow so severe that it...snaps her spinal cord. It is...yet further example
00:22:53
of Napper's grotesque
depravity. But it doesn't even end there. - NARRATOR: The killer
turned his mind
00:23:01
to Samantha's sleeping daughter. - GEOFFREY: He proceeds
to sexually assault the four-year-old daughter,
Jazmine, and suffocates her
00:23:11
in her bedroom with her duvet, and leaves her body
on the bed, surrounded by her toys.
00:23:20
- DR. YARDLEY: If we look
at the method that Napper used to kill Jazmine, after he'd
sexually assaulted her,
00:23:24
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
00:23:32
mixing up his offending,
because offenders get bored, they liked to vary it, they like to keep things
interesting.
00:23:39
- NARRATOR: But Napper's
grotesque fantasies were not complete. He then dragged mother
Samantha's body into the lounge.
00:23:48
- GEOFFREY: Napper eviscerates
Samantha's body. He cuts her from the chest
to the crotch,
00:23:56
peels back her skin,
cracks the ribs, literally eviscerates
this innocent young woman's body
00:24:04
in a horrifying,
horrible attack. - NARRATOR: After pulling away
her ribs, Napper repeatedly stabbed
Samantha's internal organs.
00:24:16
- DR. HAMILTON:
He mutilates her body, he actually takes a part
of the skin from her abdominal wall,
00:24:22
presumably
as some sort of trophy; there are deep cuts
in her legs, almost as if attempting
to dismember her.
00:24:29
This is an escalation
of his behavior. Once he has finished with
the mutilation,
00:24:39
he poses Samantha in a very
sexually provocative pose. - DR. YARDLEY: He positioned
her body on a cushion,
00:24:47
and her body was left in
the same position as it was when she
had sex with her boyfriend.
00:24:52
Now, that basically is saying
that this woman is sexually available,
he's trying to create
00:24:57
a narrative here, he's trying to say
that she deserved this, and that really does tell us
about his misogyny.
00:25:04
- LOUIS: Posing a victim
following a murder of a sexual nature
is very, very common.
00:25:10
They pose the victim
because killing alone is not psychosexually
sufficient. And so they go beyond killing
to satisfy themselves,
00:25:19
it's sexually stimulating, it's a fusion of sex
and aggression, so that the aggressive act
itself is eroticized.
00:25:29
- NARRATOR: Robert Napper
had now gained the status of a serial killer. Treasuring the part
of Samantha's abdomen
00:25:36
that he removed for safekeeping,
the triple murderer left the horrific scene. Samantha's boyfriend made
the tragic discovery
00:25:45
the next morning. - ALAN: He entered the flat
and found Samantha's body in the living room.
00:25:52
At first he thought it was
some sort of macabre joke, because the body was destroyed,
00:25:57
and he thought it was
some form of mannequin, and he ran back to the kitchen
and called the police.
00:26:05
- NARRATOR: Former detective
Sergeant Alan Jackaman was one of the first to arrive
at Samantha's flat.
00:26:12
- ALAN: In all my years
of service, I've never seen anything
so dreadful and so horrific,
00:26:16
from the state that the body
was in, the way that she'd been
attacked and dismembered,
00:26:22
this was a crime way,
way beyond normality, way out of the ordinary. - NARRATOR: One member
of the forensic team
00:26:30
investigating at the scene
was so traumatized they had to take two years'
sick leave.
00:26:36
The way Samantha's daughter
Jazmine had been left by the killer was also
deeply troubling
00:26:41
for investigators. - ALAN: Jazmine had been
attacked in her cot, her quilt had been put
back over,
00:26:51
and she had the appearance
of being a child asleep, which was somehow
more disturbing
00:26:58
than seeing what was left
of her mother. - NARRATOR: Napper had
seemingly left little
00:27:07
in the way of evidence, except a partial footprint
in blood. Every single fingerprint
that the police found
00:27:14
in Samantha's flat was
eliminated, including those belonging
to little Jazmine's friends,
00:27:20
who'd recently visited
for her fourth birthday party. - ALAN: There wasn't a good
suspect coming into the frame,
00:27:27
uh, we went six months
down the line, and we all knew that
this wasn't a one-off killing,
00:27:36
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
00:27:46
or publicity from the media, because it was a single mother
whom the press erroneously believed was
on the edges of prostitution,
00:27:58
so it didn't get much past the second page
of "The News Shopper." - DR. YARDLEY: When we're
comparing the media coverage,
00:28:04
Rachel Nickell's murder received
an awful lot more attention than Samantha and Jazmine
Bissett.
00:28:11
And they're making judgments
about this victim as to how worthy they are
of attention,
00:28:16
and what we've got here
is judgments being made about appropriate femininity,
appropriate motherhood,
00:28:23
so Rachel was in a secure
long-term relationship with her partner. Samantha's daughter--
her father didn't live
00:28:30
with the family,
so I think all of those kind of new right,
neoliberal values about
00:28:35
what a family should look like
are coming out here in the media's choice
to emphasize on a cold case
00:28:42
over the Bissett case. - NARRATOR: With few leads
to go on, the team investigating
Samantha and Jazmine's murders
00:28:49
was wound down to just
five officers. Desperate for a breakthrough,
in May 1994,
00:28:56
the senior investigating
officer took a punt, and asked for the fingerprints
found at the scene
00:29:02
to be reexamined. - ALAN: He insisted
that it was done, and then within a few days,
sheepishly,
00:29:11
the fingerprint officer
returned to say that they had made a mistake. It transpired that three
fingerprint sets
00:29:19
within the flat did not
come from the victim, they came from some
unknown person.
00:29:24
When they were sent
back for analysis, they came back
as Robert Napper-- a man who had not featured
in our inquiry at all.
00:29:34
- NARRATOR: At last,
the police had Robert Napper in their sights. When they delved into
his history,
00:29:41
they discovered he had
a criminal record. - ALAN: We found that he had
this firearm offense,
00:29:48
and in the property store,
was still some of the property pertaining to that offense,
one of the items
00:29:55
was an A-Z book,
which, when we looked at it, had lots of roots, plans,
which coincided
00:30:06
with our murder and,
more specifically, with the Green Chain rape
offenses. Also, clearly marked out
was the Isabella Plantation,
00:30:19
very close to Wimbledon Common,
and that immediately rang bells with Rachel Nickell.
00:30:26
- NARRATOR: When Detective
Sergeant Jackaman found Napper's mug shot
on police file,
00:30:31
they made another startling
discovery. - ALAN: One of the indexers took
one look at the photograph--
00:30:38
she had worked on
the Green Chain rape inquiry, and she said, "That
is the Green Chain rapist."
00:30:44
So I ran out
to the front office, and took down
from the wall the poster asking for information
on the Green Chain rapist,
00:30:52
which had a Photo-Fit on it,
and we compared photographs, and they were very,
very similar.
00:31:00
- NARRATOR: Having possibly
connected Napper to further crimes,
as well as the Bissett murders,
00:31:06
Detective Jackaman
and his colleagues put the suspected killer
under surveillance.
00:31:13
- ALAN: The surveillance team
had followed him and he was carrying out
some really strange behavior,
00:31:18
going on long walks on his own, looking at camping equipment,
firearm magazines,
00:31:25
buying, uh, pornographic
magazines. So it was felt, as it was
a bank holiday weekend,
00:31:32
we couldn't take the risk
that he might go out and kill somebody. - NARRATOR: The net was now
closing in on triple murderer
00:31:39
Robert Napper. On the 21st of May, detectives went to his
Plumstead flat to make an arrest.
00:31:49
- He went to work,
like clockwork, every morning at 7 a.m. We stood outside well
before 7 a.m., he didn't appear.
00:31:58
So we started to get
worried then that perhaps he wasn't
in there. - NARRATOR: It turned out
that Napper had been fired
00:32:05
from his job the previous day
and was still in bed. He was startled when
the police knocked at his door.
00:32:12
- ALAN: He was totally shocked, and he was immediately
handcuffed, told why he was under arrest,
00:32:19
and a search was subsequently
made and another A-Z found, knives and lots of
incriminating evidence.
00:32:28
- NARRATOR: Police have now
found a second A-Z belonging to Napper that showed
markings
00:32:33
next to Samantha Bissett's home. In his flat, detectives also
discovered a receipt
00:32:39
for a pair of size nine
Adidas trainers. A bloodied footprint from
exactly the same shoe
00:32:46
had been found
at the murder scene. - ALAN: We were able
to take his DNA. The DNA, no surprise to us,
00:32:53
matched that of
the Green Chain rapist. So he was then in the frame
for two rapes
00:33:00
and two attempted rapes,
plus now our two murders. - NARRATOR: In July,
Napper was charged
00:33:07
and held on remand in prison, but there still wasn't a link
with the first murder
00:33:12
of 23-year-old Rachel Nickell
on Wimbledon Common 2 years earlier. However, Detective Jackaman
was convinced
00:33:21
he was Rachel's killer. - ALAN: We went to
the Wimbledon inquiry and put Napper up as, uh,
a suspect
00:33:31
for the Rachel Nickell murder, by which time they had
in their frame, their suspect, Colin Stagg.
00:33:41
Despite our bringing this new
suspect into the frame, he was never ever considered.
00:33:48
- NARRATOR: This innocent man,
Colin Stagg, was being held in custody
for Rachel's killing.
00:33:53
Barrister William Clegg
was working on his defense for the forthcoming trial. - WILLIAM: I always thought
he was a very unlikely killer
00:34:00
because of his personality, but it wasn't 'til I really
read the papers, it became obvious to me
that there was not
00:34:06
a shred of evidence against him. - NARRATOR: The police, however, believe their honeytrap
operation proved
00:34:12
Colin Stagg was Rachel's killer,
based on exchanges he'd had with their undercover
female operative, Lizzie James.
00:34:21
Criminal psychologist
Laurence Alison examined this evidence for Colin Stagg's
defense team and was concerned
00:34:28
by what he found. - LAURENCE: He said that
in one of the meetings that he had with Lizzie James
he almost dropped his chips
00:34:34
in talking to her because
what she was asking him for was so bizarre and off the wall,
and of course,
00:34:40
Stagg starts rising
fantasies that go down that line not because he has them
but because he wants
00:34:44
to please a person
that's offering him sex. - ALAN: This was turned
gradually into the attack
00:34:51
on Wimbledon Common,
and he was encouraged to admit to having committed
the murder,
00:35:01
but he never ever did. - NARRATOR: When it finally
came to a pre-committal hearing
00:35:06
on the 14th of September,
the judge threw out the case against Colin Stagg. - NAME: Colin tragically
spent 13 months in custody
00:35:15
awaiting trial,
but it never went to full trial, and Lord Chief Justice Ognall
described it
00:35:19
as deceptive conduct
of the grossest kind. The undercover operation
quite rightly was thrown out.
00:35:24
- The judge recognized that
there was never any evidence against me,
no forensic evidence,
00:35:28
no confession evidence,
nothing at all. - NARRATOR: Colin Stagg
was eventually awarded
00:35:33
over £700,000 in damages
by the Metropolitan Police and given a formal apology. Five days after his acquittal,
00:35:42
a review of the Rachel Nickell
murder investigation was launched. - GEOFFREY: Gradually
at that point,
00:35:50
the recognition is that
perhaps there is a link between Rachel Nickell's killing
and Samantha Bissett's killing.
00:35:58
Gradually the two forces
coalesce, so that it becomes clear
that Napper could well
00:36:04
have been responsible
for both killings. - NARRATOR: Napper was
interviewed by the review team
00:36:09
about Rachel's killing, but as the police still
had no evidence linking him to the scene,
this led to a dead end.
00:36:17
Nearly a year later, though,
in October 1995, Robert Napper's trial date
was set for the murders
00:36:25
of Samantha and Jazmine Bissett
and for one count of rape and two counts
of attempted rape
00:36:31
for his Green Chain Walk
attacks. Barrister William Clegg
was defending him. - WILLIAM: I'd met Robert Napper
at Broadmoor Mental Hospital
00:36:41
where he was on remand
awaiting his trial. It was soon fairly obvious
to me that he was, um, suffering
00:36:48
from serious delusions. He firmly believed members
of the royal family were visiting him in Broadmoor.
00:36:55
He was an extremely ill man. - NARRATOR:
Despite being diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic,
00:37:02
an assessment by four different
psychiatrists concluded Napper was fit to stand.
00:37:08
The trial for the murders
of Samantha and Jazmine Bissett began at the Old Bailey
on the 9th of October.
00:37:16
- ALAN: We were on the edges
of our seats as we sat outside number one court,
waiting for the trial to begin,
00:37:23
when all of a sudden,
the commotion and everybody started running
out of the court,
00:37:27
and the word goes around
that he's pleaded to manslaughter through
diminished responsibility.
00:37:33
There's a mixed feeling
because manslaughter is not a conviction of murder. However,
under the circumstances,
00:37:43
it was obvious that he was
mentally very, very ill, and it was an admission of sorts
and a conviction.
00:37:52
- I think what can tend
to happen is that the assumption can be made that
the offender isn't responsible
00:37:57
for what they've done, but he actually was
in this case, he knew exactly what
he was doing,
00:38:03
he knew what he was doing
was wrong, and he chose to do it anyway. - NARRATOR: Napper was
sentenced to life
00:38:08
in Broadmoor Psychiatric
Hospital in Barkshire. - WILLIAM: I think
the sentence was inevitable,
00:38:15
the best place for him
was a special hospital, and it was important
for everybody
00:38:20
that he remained there. - NARRATOR: But D.S. Jackaman
wasn't finished with Robert Napper.
00:38:25
He was still convinced
Napper was also responsible for the killing
of Rachel Nickell
00:38:31
on Wimbledon Common
in July 1992. - ALAN: That became
all-consuming. We became more and more
convinced over the years
00:38:41
that he was responsible
for the Rachel Nickell killing. - NARRATOR: D.S. Jackaman
had relayed his suspicions
00:38:47
about Napper to Rachel Nickell's
original murder inquiry team, but they already had
a suspect awaiting trial,
00:38:55
and the evidence he presented
wasn't given the recognition it deserved. Now, under a new review team,
D.S. Jackaman made it
00:39:04
his business to tell
the senior investigating officer about Robert Napper. - ALAN: I went into my office,
wrote out a report
00:39:13
giving all the details as to why
I believed that Robert Napper was guilty of killing
Rachel Nickell,
00:39:21
gave it back to him,
and he took it and put him on the list. - NARRATOR: A new forensics
team was appointed
00:39:28
and, in July 2004,
advances in DNA techniques led to a breakthrough. Samples taken from Rachel's
body revealed
00:39:37
a mixed DNA profile
of her killer. Soon, this was identified
as belonging to serial murderer
Robert Napper.
00:39:46
Other evidence was also
re-examined, linking him to the scene. - ALAN: In Rachel's child's
hair were found some flakes
00:39:57
of red paint. Nobody quite knows
how this happened, but they were found
to match
00:40:05
a tool box recovered
from Robert Napper's flat on his arrest. - NARRATOR:
An old pair of shoes
00:40:13
that Napper still had
with him in Broadmoor were also seized. - ALAN: They were examined
against shoe prints
00:40:19
found against the man seen
washing his hands near the scene
of Rachel Nickell's murder,
00:40:25
and those shoes matched
the shoe prints next to the stream. - Gradually, the case is built
against Napper.
00:40:33
But it's not until 2006
that he's interviewed again about the possibility
of his killing Rachel Nickell.
00:40:42
- NARRATOR: It took
another two years, until the 18th
of December, 2008, for Rachel's family
to finally see justice.
00:40:51
Sixteen years after her death,
Forty-two-year-old Robert Napper returned to the Old Bailey,
charged with her murder.
00:41:00
- ALAN: He sat there and
he didn't look much different, and it was in a dream
that the charges were read
00:41:07
and he pleaded guilty
to Rachel's manslaughter. - NARRATOR: Once again
Napper pleaded guilty
00:41:13
to manslaughter on the grounds
of diminished responsibility. The judge sentenced him
to remain in Broadmoor Hospital
00:41:20
indefinitely. For Detective Sergeant Jackaman, it was the moment he'd waited
years to witness.
00:41:29
- ALAN: Just before he went
down the steps, he turned, looked directly at me
and recognized me,
00:41:34
and I just mouthed,
"Hello, Bob." It was a satisfying moment,
but it was more than that,
00:41:40
it was--it was relief,
it was vindication, really, after all those years
of plugging away.
00:41:47
- NARRATOR: It brought
to a close one of the most upsetting murder cases
in British criminal history.
00:41:54
- DR. YARDLEY: Napper is
completely devoid of any conscience,
he doesn't care about
00:41:58
the impact of his actions
on others, and that makes him
a very dangerous man indeed.
00:42:04
- LOUIS: His mental state,
whether he's schizophrenic, really had nothing to do
with the crimes,
00:42:09
the important point is
that he's off the street and can't hurt anybody again. - GEOFFREY: The man knows
no humanity,
00:42:18
the man has utter disregard
for human life. He took inordinate pleasure from the suffering
of his victims.
00:42:27
- NARRATOR: Napper raped
and sexually assaulted women as they walked across
London's park lands and commons.
00:42:33
He honed in on vulnerable
mothers and took sadistic pleasure
from attacking them
00:42:38
in front of their children. He brutally slayed
two women in the prime of their life,
00:42:44
then sexually assaulted and
killed a four-year-old child, that makes Robert Napper
00:42:51
one of the world's
most evil killers. - ♪ ♪♪ - [whooshing]