Robert Napper

Early life

Robert Napper is the eldest child of Brian Napper, a driving instructor, and his wife Pauline. Born in Erith, southeast London, Napper was brought up in nearby Plumstead. His background was troubled and dysfunctional. The marriage of his parents was violent and Napper witnessed violent attacks on his mother. His parents divorced when he was 9 and he and his siblings (two brothers and a sister) were placed in foster care and underwent psychiatric treatment. The psychiatric counselling Napper had at the Maudsley Hospital in Camberwell lasted for six years.

At age 13, Napper underwent a personality change after a family friend sexually assaulted him on a camping holiday. The offender was jailed, but Napper became introverted, obsessively tidy and reclusive, according to his mother. He also bullied his siblings and spied on his sister while she was naked.

Criminal activities

In 1986, Napper first came to police attention after being convicted of an offence with an airgun. In October 1989, police had rejected information conveyed in a phonecall from Napper's mother that her son had admitted to perpetrating a rape on Plumstead Common. No case apparently matched the evidence. However, it emerged at the time of Napper's second conviction, that a rape of a 30-year-old woman, in front of her children, eight weeks earlier, had been reported to have occurred in a house which backed on to Plumstead Common. At this point, Pauline Napper broke off all contact with her son.

On 15 July 1992 on Wimbledon Common, Napper stabbed the young mother Rachel Nickell forty-nine times in front of her son Alex, then aged two, who clung on to his mother's body begging her to wake up. Napper was questioned about unsolved attacks on other women during the year, but was eliminated from inquiries.

In November 1993, in the Bisset home in Plumstead, Napper stabbed 27-year-old Samantha Bisset in her neck and chest, killing her, and then sexually assaulted and smothered her four-year-old daughter, Jazmine Jemima Bisset. In her sitting room, the 6' 2" Napper mutilated Samantha's body, taking away parts of her body as a trophy. The crime scene was reportedly so grisly that the police photographer assigned to the case was forced to take two years' leave after witnessing it.

After a fingerprint belonging to Napper was recovered from Samantha's flat, he was arrested, and charged with the murders of Samantha and Jazmine Bisset, in May 1994. Napper was convicted at the Old Bailey in October 1995. He also admitted two rapes and two attempted rapes at this time. From the time of the first Old Bailey trial, he has been held at Broadmoor. In December 1995 he was questioned about Nickell's death but denied any involvement.

Napper is also believed to be the "Green Chain Rapist", who carried out at least 70 savage attacks across south-east London over a four-year period ending in 1994. The earliest of the 'Green Chain' rapes have been linked to Napper, and were those he admitted to in 1995. Napper is known to have kept detailed records of the sites of potential and actual attacks on women.

The investigation to find Nickell's murderer resulted in the attempted prosecution of an innocent man, Colin Stagg, until, in 2004, advances in DNA profiling revealed Napper's connection to the case. On 18 December 2008, Napper was convicted of the manslaughter of Rachel Nickell on the grounds of diminished responsibility. He also admitted to four other attacks on women.

Napper was to be held indefinitely at Broadmoor Hospital. At the same time, Colin Stagg received a public apology from the police.

In his summing up at the Old Bailey, Mr Justice Griffiths Williams said to Napper: "You are on any view a very dangerous man".