Robert Napper, who has schizophrenia and a history of violent attacks on young women, today pleaded guilty to killing Rachel Nickell on Wimbledon Common 16 years ago.
In Court One of the Old Bailey, Napper's admission of manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility brought to a close the inquiry into one of the most notorious killings in modern British criminal history.
Mr Justice Griffiths Williams told Napper he would be held in Broadmoor high-security hospital indefinitely. "You are on any view a very dangerous man," the judge said.
The story of how the Metropolitan police missed several opportunities to catch Napper can be revealed today. On at least seven occasions he came on to the police radar, twice being flagged up as a potential stalker or rapist, but he was never pursued.
Connections between three major investigations – into a series of rapes in south-east London, the killing of Nickell and the murders of Samantha Bissett and her four-year-old daughter – were never made and Napper, the perpetrator of all of the attacks, remained at large.
Had officers pursued the connections, Bissett and her daughter could have been alive today.
Napper, 42, was already being held indefinitely at Broadmoor for the killings of Bissett, 27, and her daughter, which he admitted in October 1995 on the grounds of diminished responsibility. In 1995 he also admitted one rape and two attempted rapes of women he had stalked on the Green Chain Walk in south-east London.
Detectives, who investigated a series of attacks over four years in south-east London in the early to mid-1990s, say 86 victims and 106 crimes were identified by officers; Napper refuses to admit any offences for which there is no forensic evidence.
Police apology
Today, Commander Simon Foy, the head of homicide command at Scotland Yard, said the families of Samantha Bissett and Rachel Nickell had received apologies from the police.
"We have been frank with them about a number of missed opportunities to arrest Robert Napper. Where it has been appropriate we have apologised unreservedly," he said.
Nickell's parents, Monica and Andrew, who live in Bedfordshire, were in court to hear the sentencing. Nickell's partner, Andre Hanscombe, who left Britain with their son, Alex, after her killing and now lives in Spain, was also in court.
Speaking outside the Old Bailey, Andrew Nickell said : " We sincerely hope that he [Napper] will spend the rest of his life in a totally secure environment. A long time ago we came to terms with Rachel's death. We now hope to draw a line and move forward into the new year."
He thanked the police and investigators and said that despite mistakes being made in the original investigation, the family never felt that officers gave "anything less than their best".
Colin Stagg: completely innocent
Detectives wrongly pursued another man, Colin Stagg, for the killing of Nickell, using an undercover policewoman in a honeytrap operation to try to entice a confession from him.
Stagg, 45, spent 13 months in prison on remand. He was saved from a potential life sentence for a crime he did not commit when a judge threw the case out before it reached a jury, condemning the police actions and the use of a forensic profiler, Paul Britton.
The Metropolitan police apologised to Stagg today and made it clear they would make it a matter of public record that he was an innocent man. In a letter to Stagg, delivered by hand to his solicitor this morning, Assistant Commissioner John Yates said on behalf of the Met: "I must offer you an unreserved apology for the proceedings instigated against you in 1994. I acknowledge the huge and most regrettable impact this case has had on you for the last 16 years."
Yates said the proceedures and processes in place today meant it would be unlikely the police would repeat the mistakes made during the Nickell investigation.
Later Yates stood outside the Old Bailey to make a similar, public apology to Stagg: "It's clear that he (Stagg) is competely innocent of any involvement in the case."
Minutes later. Rene Barclay, the Crown Prosecution Service director of serious casework, made a public statement outside the court in which he apologised to Stagg and said he had also written to him to express his regret that a prosecution was brought against him in 1993.
"We hope that justice having been done that the outcome of today's hearing will provide some measure of closure for the friends and family of Rachel Nichell," he said.
Hilary Bradfield, a CPS lawyer, said Napper's plea had been accepted by the prosecution after "very careful consideration", based on Napper's DNA being found on Nickell, a shoemark that could have come from Napper's shoe and similarities with other assaults perpetrated by Napper.
DNA breakthrough
It was not until 2004 that forensic tests finally linked Napper to the killing of Nickell. The 23-year-old was attacked as she walked on Wimbledon Common on 15 July 1992 with Alex, who was then aged two.
Napper, who carried a rape kit and knives, forced Nickell off the pathway into an overgrown part of the common, where he stabbed her 49 times. The first blows almost decapitated her.
She was found by a member of the public. Alex was clinging to her body saying: "Get up Mummy."
A tiny sample of DNA was picked up when Nickell's body was swabbed using tape soon after her death. It was too small to be analysed until recent advances made it possible and a match to Napper was confirmed four years ago.
Today the judge told Napper: "You stabbed her a total of 49 times and you even stabbed her when she was dead. All the while Alex was there. The marks of injury upon his face proved that at some time you almost certainly in my judgement dragged him away from his mother. Now, 16 years or so later, in early adulthood, Alex knows the man who killed his mother has been brought, albeit belatedly, to justice. It may be that he can now close a long drawn out chapter in his life."
The killing led to a frenzy of media interest, and the arrest of Stagg was published on the front pages of almost every newspaper. Despite being cleared in September 1994, Stagg was treated like a man who got away with murder.
In court today Napper, wearing a check shirt, was asked by the clerk to enter a plea to the charge that he murdered Nickell. The court stood silent as he responded in a clear but faltering voice, stumbling over the wording of his denial of murder but admission to manslaughter by reason of diminished responsibility.
Victor Temple QC, prosecuting, said two psychiatrists agreed that at the time of the killing Napper suffered from Asperger's syndrome and paranoid schizophrenia. He said after consultation with police, lawyers and the victim's family it had been decided it was "proper and appropriate" to accept the plea.
A psychiatrist from Broadmoor, Dr Natalie Pyszora, told the court Napper was severely mentally ill and should be returned there for treatment. She said there was a high risk of him committing further sexual offences without treatment, and a high risk of him killing himself. Upon his admission to Broadmoor in 1995, Napper had a number of delusions and thought people were out to get him. He believed he had won the Nobel peace prize, had millions of pounds in the bank and was listed in Who's Who.
David Fisher QC, defending, said Napper wished to apologise to the victim's then partner and her son, her parents and her close friends for "the dreadful thing that he did". He said the killer had asked him to make an apology to Stagg.
"At the time of these events, the arrest and the preliminary trial of that man, this defendant was not in a satisfactory mental state to really appreciate what was going on. He is now. He realises how dreadful that period of time in Mr Stagg's life must have been," Fisher said.
Fisher accepted that Napper was "highly unlikely ever to be released from detention".
