All language subtitles for Britains.Most.Evil.Killers.S04E02.WEBRip.en

- 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.

- ♪

♪♪

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