Latest / The Evolution of Evil - True Crime Stories / Serial Killer Documentary - Robert Napper

Transcript

Serial Killer Documentary - Robert Napper · The Evolution of Evil - True Crime Stories

0:05
Speaker 1: 15th July 1992, London, England. On a summer morning, 23-year-old
0:12
Speaker 1: Rachel Nickell was walking her dog Molly across Wimbledon Common
0:17
Speaker 1: with her two-year-old son Alex.
0:20
Speaker 2: What started off as such a normal day had become
0:23
Speaker 2: an incredible human tragedy.
0:26
Speaker 1: A man appeared from the undergrowth, stabbing Rachel nearly 50 times,
0:31
Speaker 1: then sexually assaulting her.
0:34
Speaker 3: It's an act of the most unspeakable violence.
0:37
Speaker 4: He's doing it to desecrate her body and he's doing
0:40
Speaker 4: it in front of her son.
0:41
Speaker 3: He takes the breath away.
0:44
Speaker 1: Rachel's young son, Alex, was left alone, clinging to his
0:48
Speaker 1: mother's blood-soaked body.
0:51
Speaker 5: The level of violence used is absolutely horrific and it's
0:55
Speaker 5: something that really did shock the nation to the core.
0:58
Speaker 1: The depraved killer was 26-year-old Robert Knapper. 16 months later,
1:04
Speaker 1: he would strike again, killing a 4-year-old child, Jasmine Bissett,
1:09
Speaker 1: and her 27-year-old mother, Samantha, who was brutally dismembered.
1:13
Speaker 6: Leaving a woman posed in a way that robbed her
1:17
Speaker 6: of dignity, that is beyond simply wanting rid of somebody.
1:21
Speaker 3: That is truly evil.
1:24
Speaker 1: Robert Knapper was a rapist who sadistically attacked mothers in
1:29
Speaker 1: front of their children. He brutally killed two women, then
1:34
Speaker 1: desecrated their bodies, making Robert Knapper one of the world's
1:40
Speaker 1: most evil killers. When Rachel Nickell's murder hit the news,
2:07
Speaker 1: the public were appalled. Her toddler Alex was found alone
2:11
Speaker 1: by a passer-by pleading with his dead mother to get
2:15
Speaker 1: up mummy.
2:18
Speaker 3: This was the killing of.
2:19
Speaker 4: A young woman in front of her infant son, broad daylight,
2:23
Speaker 4: a sunny day in July, on Wimbledon Common, not.
2:27
Speaker 3: Far from the tennis.
2:28
Speaker 4: I mean, this is desecration of everything that people in
2:33
Speaker 4: Britain hold dear.
2:34
Speaker 3: It literally hypnotised the nation.
2:39
Speaker 5: This was a murder that really did shock because it's
2:42
Speaker 5: that stranger violence that when it happens, it makes us
2:45
Speaker 5: all question our own daily activities. It makes us think
2:48
Speaker 5: about our own level of risk. And while somebody is
2:52
Speaker 5: out there who is preying on strangers, everybody has something
2:55
Speaker 5: to fear.
2:57
Speaker 1: In the desperate hunt to find Rachel's murderer, police became
3:01
Speaker 1: fixated on an innocent man called Colin Stagg. Meanwhile, the
3:06
Speaker 1: real killer, Robert Knapper, slipped under their radar. Just over
3:11
Speaker 1: a year later, he brutally killed and sexually assaulted Samantha
3:15
Speaker 1: Bissett and her four-year-old daughter, Jasmine. Forensic psychologist Lawrence Allison
3:21
Speaker 1: was part of Colin Stagg's defence council.
3:24
Speaker 2: A real human tragedy in the sense that whilst all
3:27
Speaker 2: the attention was being allocated to Stag, right on the
3:31
Speaker 2: very doorstep of this was another very similar offence. A
3:35
Speaker 2: horrific mutilation attack on a young woman.
3:39
Speaker 7: The scene was something out of Dante's Inferno. Her body
3:44
Speaker 7: was cut completely open. The ribcage had been taken out.
3:49
Speaker 7: The legs had been severed at the knees. The internal
3:52
Speaker 7: organs had been torn. pulled about and repeatedly stabbed. It
3:57
Speaker 7: was beyond belief.
4:00
Speaker 1: Fingerprints left at the scene identified Robert Napper as the
4:04
Speaker 1: depraved killer, but it wasn't until a cold case review
4:08
Speaker 1: of Rachel Nickell's murder that DNA evidence finally led to
4:13
Speaker 1: Napper's conviction in 2008 for one of Britain's most notorious crimes.
4:19
Speaker 4: There is something about Napper that, still to this day
4:24
Speaker 4: sends a shiver down my spine.
4:26
Speaker 3: In that sense, he is a satanic figure.
4:31
Speaker 1: This killer's story began on the 25th of February 1966.
4:37
Speaker 1: Robert Clive Knapper was born in Erith, south-east London, and
4:42
Speaker 1: grew up on the nearby Abbey Wood estate. He was
4:45
Speaker 1: the eldest of four, with two brothers and a sister.
4:50
Speaker 7: His parents had a violent relationship. His mother was terrified
4:54
Speaker 7: of the father, and this so upset the children that
4:58
Speaker 7: they were all subjected to some counselling through children's psychiatrists.
5:04
Speaker 7: The other children seemed to have got over it quite well,
5:07
Speaker 7: but Robert Knapper continued to display behaviour which was unusual
5:13
Speaker 7: for a child of his age.
5:15
Speaker 4: At one point, he turned to his father and said,''
5:18
Speaker 4: They think I'm mad.'' His father thought it was a joke.
5:22
Speaker 4: But the awful truth, the reality, is that Knapper probably realized,
5:27
Speaker 4: even at a very young age, that he had the
5:29
Speaker 4: capacity for something quite extraordinary.
5:33
Speaker 1: At the age of 12, his parents divorced and his
5:36
Speaker 1: father left the home. Young Knapper found it difficult making
5:40
Speaker 1: friends and preferred to spend time on his own. Eventually,
5:44
Speaker 1: he was diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome.
5:49
Speaker 2: Asperger's syndrome we know is a social disorder, very difficult
5:52
Speaker 2: to make connections with people. He was very isolated at school,
5:55
Speaker 2: very remote figure, and that seems to have carried forward
5:58
Speaker 2: all the way through his life.
6:00
Speaker 1: As Napper entered adolescence, his isolation continued. The young loner
6:05
Speaker 1: was mercilessly bullied at secondary school.
6:09
Speaker 4: He was despised at school, there's no question about that.
6:12
Speaker 4: People wouldn't play with him, they wouldn't sit with him.
6:15
Speaker 4: He was the archetypal outsider.
6:19
Speaker 8: Knapper was teased and bullied a lot in school, which
6:22
Speaker 8: is always devastating for people. These types of things that
6:27
Speaker 8: go on in early childhood are very impactful for how
6:30
Speaker 8: somebody develops later.
6:31
Speaker 7: On in life.
6:33
Speaker 9: He spent quite a lot of time in and out
6:35
Speaker 9: of foster care.
6:36
Speaker 5: And what tends to happen when children come from those
6:38
Speaker 5: kind of backgrounds is that they develop this very defensive
6:41
Speaker 5: attitude and outlook. Nobody is going to be there to
6:45
Speaker 5: look out for me, so I have to retaliate first.
6:48
Speaker 9: I have to always be on the attack.
6:50
Speaker 1: Young Knapper's anger at the world escalated following a trauma
6:54
Speaker 1: he suffered at the age of 12. He was sexually
6:58
Speaker 1: assaulted by a family friend on a camping holiday.
7:02
Speaker 3: Now, that may have given him a distorted view of sexuality.
7:06
Speaker 4: It may have triggered some kind of reaction in him
7:12
Speaker 4: that identified all sex as somehow abusive. It's possible he
7:18
Speaker 4: had a completely distorted vision of women.
7:21
Speaker 1: As Knapper progressed through his teenage years, the angry victim
7:26
Speaker 1: of abuse emerged as the abuser.
7:29
Speaker 2: There were early indications of violence towards his siblings. I
7:32
Speaker 2: believe that he discharged an air gun at the face
7:35
Speaker 2: of one of his siblings.
7:39
Speaker 3: It's pretty clear that he was a bully.
7:42
Speaker 4: He bullied his brothers and he spied on his sister.
7:46
Speaker 3: He was a voyeur. He started peeping at his own
7:48
Speaker 3: sister and then emerged from that.
7:52
Speaker 4: And that aspect of voyeurism plus a very uncomfortable adolescence
7:59
Speaker 4: led to Napa becoming effectively a time bomb.
8:04
Speaker 1: The troubled Napa left school at 16 and took a
8:07
Speaker 1: job at a local warehouse. Soon he was stalking the
8:11
Speaker 1: streets of southeast London, spying on women he saw at
8:15
Speaker 1: home alone.
8:18
Speaker 3: This was a man who, as he emerged into adulthood,
8:22
Speaker 3: was literally a volcano.
8:25
Speaker 1: One day, his peeping-tom behavior focused on a house next
8:29
Speaker 1: to Wynne's Common and turned into something more sinister.
8:33
Speaker 4: In August 1989, a woman was upstairs drying her hair,
8:36
Speaker 4: and her two children were downstairs. The napper broke into
8:40
Speaker 4: the house through the rear door, which they'd left open.
8:44
Speaker 7: He'd walked past two children who were having breakfast at
8:48
Speaker 7: the table, went upstairs, raped his victim, and then said
8:53
Speaker 7: to her, you should keep your door locked, walked back downstairs,
8:57
Speaker 7: passed the children, out, back over onto the common. He
9:01
Speaker 7: blamed the victim.
9:02
Speaker 8: He never should have left the door open. Do you
9:04
Speaker 8: know how many times I've heard that from offenders over
9:07
Speaker 8: the years? They blame the victim, and it's a way
9:10
Speaker 8: to rationalize, well, they're not fully responsible. You hear time
9:14
Speaker 8: and time again.
9:17
Speaker 1: But Knapper couldn't keep his dark secret. A few months later,
9:22
Speaker 1: he confessed to his mother.
9:25
Speaker 7: His mother was so concerned, she reported it to Plumstead
9:29
Speaker 7: Police Station. She was told... at the time, that a
9:34
Speaker 7: rape hadn't happened on Plumstead Common.
9:37
Speaker 1: The police could find no trace of the rape in
9:40
Speaker 1: their records, so Knapper's confession was never followed up. But
9:44
Speaker 1: his mother was so concerned about her son's mental state
9:48
Speaker 1: that she sent him back to a psychiatrist.
9:52
Speaker 7: She certainly was worried enough to refer him again to
9:56
Speaker 7: the Maudsley Hospital for further treatment, which he did go
9:59
Speaker 7: back to. but discharged himself after a short period of
10:04
Speaker 7: analysis and counseling.
10:06
Speaker 1: As Knapper's mental health deteriorated, his mother cut off contact.
10:12
Speaker 1: He continued his stalking behavior and marked his hunting grounds
10:17
Speaker 1: on an A to Z, His favourite was the green
10:20
Speaker 1: chain network of footpaths that winds its way through parkland
10:25
Speaker 1: across south-east London.
10:27
Speaker 3: This is a sexual predator on the loose.
10:30
Speaker 4: In the first months of 1992, he commits a series
10:34
Speaker 4: of attacks, attacking women chillingly, almost caressing his victims with
10:40
Speaker 4: a knife blade. He's a man out of control and
10:45
Speaker 4: absolutely consumed by sexual lust. not for a relationship, but
10:52
Speaker 4: simply for the power. By March, he'd made two attempted rapes.
10:58
Speaker 8: He really didn't penetrate the victim sexually because he was
11:02
Speaker 8: impotent at the crime scene in.
11:05
Speaker 7: Almost all of the cases.
11:07
Speaker 8: What does that mean? The violence takes the place of it.
11:11
Speaker 5: He was becoming, I think, increasingly frustrated, feelings of rage,
11:15
Speaker 5: and that violence was bubbling beneath the surface.
11:18
Speaker 1: His attacks became progressively more violent. He changed his targets,
11:23
Speaker 1: aiming for a different type of victim.
11:27
Speaker 4: His fantasies rotated around young mothers with young children. And
11:33
Speaker 4: in May 1992, he ties a ligature around a 22-year-old.
11:38
Speaker 4: As she pushes her baby daughter in a buggy, he
11:41
Speaker 4: pulls her into the undergrowth, strips her, rapes her, beats her.
11:47
Speaker 4: She begs for her life and he runs off.
11:50
Speaker 7: He viciously assaulted her. When she arrived at a relative's house,
11:54
Speaker 7: she wasn't recognized initially. She was so badly injured.
11:58
Speaker 8: The child was absolutely terrorized and that was just another
12:03
Speaker 8: level of sadistic gratification for Knapper.
12:08
Speaker 1: But soon, sexual assaults and beatings wouldn't be enough to
12:12
Speaker 1: satisfy the depraved urges of the mentally unstable Robert Knapper. Soon,
12:20
Speaker 1: he'd feel the need to carry out the ultimate of
12:23
Speaker 1: his sadistic fantasies, murder. By now, police had linked these
12:30
Speaker 1: sexual attacks and in June established Operation Eccleston to investigate
12:35
Speaker 1: the so-called Green Chain Rapist. But Robert Knapper remained at large,
12:42
Speaker 1: and on the morning of the 15th of July 1992,
12:45
Speaker 1: he set his sights on another young mother walking with
12:49
Speaker 1: her child on Wimbledon Common. 23-year-old ex-model Rachel Nickell The
12:56
Speaker 1: events that followed would make an indelible mark on the nation.
13:00
Speaker 2: So this was any normal day in July. It was
13:02
Speaker 2: a nice sunny day. Rachel's walking with her son and
13:05
Speaker 2: their dog across the common for what should have been
13:07
Speaker 2: the most normal walk in the world.
13:10
Speaker 5: This is a place where she went often. It was
13:12
Speaker 5: somewhere she felt safe, she felt secure. And it's quite
13:15
Speaker 5: likely that Napa had been stalking Rachel for some time.
13:20
Speaker 4: Napa was lurking in the undergrowth nearby. He was clearly
13:24
Speaker 4: looking for a victim. But this time, it wasn't so
13:28
Speaker 4: much the sexual urge, it was the fantasy of killing
13:31
Speaker 4: a woman that had come into its fullest.
13:34
Speaker 1: Napa waited until Rachel and her young son, Alex, came
13:38
Speaker 1: close and then attacked.
13:40
Speaker 2: He prodded her in the back with a knife to
13:42
Speaker 2: move her to a sort of cop's slightly more secluded area,
13:47
Speaker 2: forced her to kneel down and attacked her. He slit
13:49
Speaker 2: her throat and then stabbed her nearly 50 times in
13:52
Speaker 2: front of her son, a really horrific, disturbing offense.
13:56
Speaker 7: She was stabbed in the abdomen many times after she
14:01
Speaker 7: had obviously been killed. She was sexually assaulted and then
14:08
Speaker 7: left in the company of her child whilst he made
14:12
Speaker 7: good his escape.
14:13
Speaker 1: A witness saw Knapper washing Rachel's blood off his hands
14:17
Speaker 1: in a nearby stream.
14:20
Speaker 3: It was an act of such callousness and such bravura.
14:23
Speaker 3: He didn't run.
14:25
Speaker 4: He walked calmly away from this obscenity that he'd committed
14:31
Speaker 4: without apparently a moment's hesitation or looking back.
14:35
Speaker 3: He just calmly walked away.
14:38
Speaker 1: Two-year-old Alex was left alone holding his mother's dead body
14:42
Speaker 1: until an elderly walker found him amidst the horrific scene.
14:47
Speaker 9: Absolutely heartbreaking stuff.
14:49
Speaker 5: He's thinking that she's asleep or she's unconscious, and she's
14:52
Speaker 5: basically lying there, and he's saying, wake up, Mommy. You know,
14:55
Speaker 5: this is really horrific. He wouldn't really know how to
14:58
Speaker 5: make sense of this.
15:00
Speaker 1: Soon, the news spread of Rachel's death. Stories about the
15:04
Speaker 1: abhorrent crime continually hit the headlines in the weeks that followed.
15:09
Speaker 4: It absolutely captured the public imagination. Unprovoked attack on a
15:15
Speaker 4: young woman and her child. in broad daylight on Wimbledon Common,
15:20
Speaker 4: and the stories of the boy saying, wake up, mummy,
15:25
Speaker 4: get up, mummy, I mean, touched the heartstrings of the nation.
15:28
Speaker 4: It occupied everyone's mind.
15:32
Speaker 10: I think there was a huge amount of pressure on
15:34
Speaker 10: the police to solve the crime, and the difficulty was
15:39
Speaker 10: that the killer had actually left no forensic clue that
15:44
Speaker 10: was capable of being detected at the scene at all,
15:48
Speaker 10: and the police really had absolutely nothing to go on.
15:51
Speaker 1: Pressure to solve the case was mounting. In an effort
15:55
Speaker 1: to determine the type of individual most likely to be
15:58
Speaker 1: Rachel's killer, the Metropolitan Police brought in a psychological profiler.
16:04
Speaker 2: Between the police and the profiler, they constructed a profile
16:06
Speaker 2: of the offender, a guy in his late 20s, early 30s,
16:10
Speaker 2: an individual that didn't have very successful relationships with women,
16:13
Speaker 2: that may well live on his own and was interested
16:16
Speaker 2: in strange things such as Satanism and so on.
16:20
Speaker 1: An e-fit photograph was constructed based on the suspect seen
16:24
Speaker 1: washing his hands, and this was sent out across the
16:27
Speaker 1: national media. 30-year-old local man Colin Stagg was named in
16:32
Speaker 1: several phone calls to the police.
16:35
Speaker 2: Colin lived within about two miles of the offence. He
16:38
Speaker 2: was also picked out in an identity parade and subsequently
16:42
Speaker 2: was interviewed by the police.
16:43
Speaker 3: Police visited his flat.
16:45
Speaker 2: They felt that the flat was odd, partly because Colin
16:49
Speaker 2: Stagg had one of the rooms painted black and on
16:52
Speaker 2: some of the walls there were some seemingly strange chalk drawings,
16:56
Speaker 2: which we now know were part of the Wiccan religion
16:58
Speaker 2: but were interpreted in more sinister ways by the police
17:01
Speaker 2: at the time.
17:02
Speaker 7: They had no real evidence apart from identification evidence of
17:07
Speaker 7: one witness who put him on the common at the time.
17:11
Speaker 7: So they made a decision to try and draw that
17:15
Speaker 7: evidence from him by introducing an undercover police officer to
17:21
Speaker 7: get him to confess to the murder. It was all
17:24
Speaker 7: sanctioned at the very highest level at New Scotland Yard.
17:28
Speaker 1: Under Operation Edsel, a young blonde female detective was sent
17:33
Speaker 1: undercover using the pseudonym of Lizzie James. In a so-called
17:38
Speaker 1: honey trap operation, she approached Colin Stagg through a dating
17:42
Speaker 1: section in the local newspaper.
17:45
Speaker 2: Very risky, very unusual operation. And the idea, essentially, was
17:50
Speaker 2: to befriend Stagg through a series of letters, through a
17:54
Speaker 2: Lonely Hearts column.
17:55
Speaker 3: And the intention of the.
17:56
Speaker 2: Undercover operation was to establish whether Stagg would know something
18:01
Speaker 2: about the offence that only the offender would know. And secondly,
18:05
Speaker 2: would he, in his dealings with Lizzie James, show any
18:09
Speaker 2: of the sexual fantasies or behaviours that the profiler had
18:12
Speaker 2: predicted that this sort of offender would be interested in.
18:17
Speaker 1: The police now seem fixated on proving Colin Stagg's guilt
18:22
Speaker 1: using the relatively new trend in criminal investigation, psychological profiling.
18:28
Speaker 8: In any case where profiling becomes prominent in an investigation,
18:34
Speaker 8: you're headed for disaster. Profiling behavior can be useful, but
18:39
Speaker 8: only as an add-on. It's just a way to give
18:41
Speaker 8: the police another way to look at things. Profiling should never,
18:47
Speaker 8: ever take the place of time-tested investigative techniques.
18:51
Speaker 1: Meanwhile, Rachel's real killer, Robert Knapper, was still on the loose.
18:57
Speaker 2: So obviously part of the problem with the fixation on
18:59
Speaker 2: Colin Stagg at the time was that Napa must have
19:01
Speaker 2: been thinking, wow, this is fantastic. You know, all the
19:05
Speaker 2: heat's off me. No one's looking at me. So I
19:07
Speaker 2: suspect that this emboldened Napa to go on.
19:10
Speaker 1: At the end of August 1992, Napa did, however, come
19:14
Speaker 1: onto the police radar, but this was under Operation Eccleston,
19:18
Speaker 1: the team investigating his earlier rapes along the Green Chain Walk.
19:24
Speaker 1: After publicising an e-fit of the suspected rapist, Napa's name
19:28
Speaker 1: had been put forward by two of his neighbours.
19:32
Speaker 4: Napa is invited to the police station and asked to
19:35
Speaker 4: give a blood sample.
19:37
Speaker 3: He doesn't turn up. He's invited again. He doesn't turn
19:41
Speaker 3: up again.
19:42
Speaker 4: There are countless occasions in which Napa is identified as
19:46
Speaker 4: a possible suspect.
19:48
Speaker 3: He slips through the net.
19:50
Speaker 1: Eventually, in late October, the police wrongly concluded that Napa
19:55
Speaker 1: wasn't their man.
19:58
Speaker 7: The description given by all of the victims, except one,
20:02
Speaker 7: was that the attacker was approximately 5 foot 10 inches tall.
20:09
Speaker 7: So a policy decision was made that anyone below five
20:12
Speaker 7: foot six and over six foot would be eliminated from
20:16
Speaker 7: the inquiry. He was described as being over six foot one.
20:20
Speaker 7: So on that and that alone, he was eliminated from
20:24
Speaker 7: the inquiry.
20:25
Speaker 1: Now Robert Knapper had escaped the police's watchful eye, he
20:29
Speaker 1: was free to roam the streets unhindered once again. Using
20:33
Speaker 1: his trusty A-Z map, he continued to stalk southeast London,
20:38
Speaker 1: marking places he'd spotted more potential victims.
20:42
Speaker 2: So it's very common to engage in what we call
20:45
Speaker 2: behavioral tryouts. So if they're going to attack a particular victim,
20:48
Speaker 2: they won't suddenly go out one day and make that attack.
20:52
Speaker 2: They will stalk, track, observe, and all the indications are
20:57
Speaker 2: with Napa that he was doing that. He would go
20:59
Speaker 2: for walks, he would select victims, heaping tom behavior, looking
21:02
Speaker 2: through windows, selecting victims, targeting specific houses, was all very
21:08
Speaker 2: significant in Napa's criminal repertoire.
21:11
Speaker 1: In July 1993, Napa's name came onto the police radar
21:17
Speaker 1: once again when he was reported prowling and spying on
21:20
Speaker 1: a house near Plumstead Common. The police officer who investigated
21:25
Speaker 1: reported him as a potential rapist. Once again, no further
21:29
Speaker 1: action was taken. Now Napa was stalking homes around one
21:36
Speaker 1: of his favourite haunts, Wynne's Common.
21:39
Speaker 3: He was looking for his next victims.
21:42
Speaker 4: Napa is hiding in the bushes again and sees a
21:46
Speaker 4: 27-year-old woman called Samantha Bissett, who has a daughter, Jasmine. Well,
21:52
Speaker 4: one version of it is that he sees Samantha making
21:55
Speaker 4: love with her boyfriend through the window and is so
22:00
Speaker 4: aroused by this.
22:03
Speaker 2: One night, Samantha Bissett said to her then partner, I've
22:06
Speaker 2: seen someone at our window, looking in at the window.
22:08
Speaker 2: We now know that that was Robert Knapper. So again,
22:11
Speaker 2: the modus operandi was exactly the same, picking on a victim,
22:15
Speaker 2: stalking the victim, ruminating through what he was going to
22:17
Speaker 2: do to that victim.
22:19
Speaker 1: On the evening of the 3rd of November, Knapper saw
22:23
Speaker 1: that Samantha was alone in her flat. Her 4-year-old daughter, Jasmine,
22:28
Speaker 1: was asleep in her bedroom. Knapper climbed onto the balcony
22:33
Speaker 1: and broke in through the window. He startled Samantha in
22:37
Speaker 1: her hallway.
22:39
Speaker 3: He attacks Samantha with a knife.
22:42
Speaker 4: He stabs her eight times, one blow so severe that
22:46
Speaker 4: it snaps her spinal cord. It is yet further example
22:53
Speaker 4: of Napa's grotesque depravity, but it doesn't even end there.
22:59
Speaker 1: The killer turned his mind to Samantha's sleeping daughter.
23:05
Speaker 4: He proceeds to sexually assault the four-year-old daughter Jasmine and
23:10
Speaker 4: suffocates her in her bedroom with her duvet and leaves
23:15
Speaker 4: her body on the bed surrounded by her toys.
23:20
Speaker 5: If we look at the method that Napper used to
23:22
Speaker 5: kill Jasmine, after he'd sexually assaulted her, he suffocated her.
23:26
Speaker 5: So he's using a different method to the method he
23:29
Speaker 5: used on her mother. And I think this is potentially
23:31
Speaker 5: a case of him mixing up his offending because offenders
23:34
Speaker 5: get bored, they like to vary it, they like to
23:37
Speaker 5: keep things interesting.
23:39
Speaker 1: But Napa's grotesque fantasies were not complete. He then dragged
23:44
Speaker 1: Mother Samantha's body into the lounge.
23:48
Speaker 3: Napa eviscerates Samantha's body.
23:52
Speaker 4: He cuts her from the chest to the crotch, peels
23:57
Speaker 4: back her skin, cracks the ribs... literally eviscerates this innocent
24:03
Speaker 4: young woman's body in a horrifying, horrible attack.
24:08
Speaker 1: After pulling away her ribs, Napa repeatedly stabbed Samantha's internal organs.
24:16
Speaker 6: He mutilates her body. He actually takes a part of
24:19
Speaker 6: the skin from her abdominal wall, presumably as some sort
24:23
Speaker 6: of trophy. There are deep cuts in her legs, almost
24:28
Speaker 6: as if he's attempting to dismember her. This is an
24:31
Speaker 6: escalation of his behavior. Once he has finished with the mutilation,
24:38
Speaker 6: he poses Samantha in a very sexually provocative pose.
24:45
Speaker 5: He positioned her body on a cushion and her body
24:48
Speaker 5: was left in the same position as it was when
24:51
Speaker 5: she had sex with her boyfriend. Now that basically is
24:54
Speaker 5: saying that this woman is sexually available. He is trying
24:57
Speaker 5: to create a narrative here. He's trying to say that
24:59
Speaker 5: she deserved this. And that really does tell us about
25:02
Speaker 5: his misogyny.
25:05
Speaker 8: Posing a victim following a murder of a sexual nature
25:09
Speaker 8: is very, very common. They pose the victim because killing
25:13
Speaker 8: alone is not psychosexually sufficient. And so they go beyond
25:17
Speaker 8: killing to satisfy themselves It's sexually stimulating. It's a fusion
25:22
Speaker 8: of sex and aggression so that the aggressive act itself
25:26
Speaker 8: is eroticized.
25:29
Speaker 1: Robert Knapper had now gained the status of a serial killer.
25:34
Speaker 1: Treasuring the part of Samantha's abdomen that he'd removed for safekeeping,
25:39
Speaker 1: the triple murderer left the horrific scene. Samantha's boyfriend made
25:44
Speaker 1: the tragic discovery the next morning.
25:48
Speaker 7: He entered the flat. and found Samantha's body in the
25:52
Speaker 7: living room. At first, he thought it was some sort
25:54
Speaker 7: of macabre joke because the body was destroyed, and he
25:57
Speaker 7: thought it was some form of mannequin, and he ran
26:01
Speaker 7: back to the kitchen and called the police.
26:06
Speaker 1: Former Detective Sergeant Alan Jackerman was one of the first
26:10
Speaker 1: to arrive at Samantha's flat.
26:12
Speaker 7: In all my years of service, I've never seen anything
26:15
Speaker 7: so dreadful and so horrific. From the state that the
26:18
Speaker 7: body was in the way that she'd been attacked and dismembered.
26:22
Speaker 7: This was a crime way, way beyond normality, way out
26:27
Speaker 7: of the ordinary.
26:29
Speaker 1: One member of the forensic team investigating at the scene
26:32
Speaker 1: was so traumatized they had to take two years' sick leave.
26:36
Speaker 1: The way Samantha's daughter Jasmine had been left by the
26:39
Speaker 1: killer was also deeply troubling for investigators.
26:44
Speaker 7: Jasmine had been attacked in her cot, her body, had
26:49
Speaker 7: been put back over, and she had the appearance of
26:53
Speaker 7: being a child asleep, which was somehow more disturbing than
26:58
Speaker 7: seeing what was left of her mother.
27:05
Speaker 1: Napa had seemingly left little in the way of evidence
27:09
Speaker 1: except a partial footprint in blood. Every single fingerprint that
27:13
Speaker 1: the police found in Samantha's flat was eliminated. including those
27:18
Speaker 1: belonging to little Jasmine's friends who'd recently visited for her
27:22
Speaker 1: fourth birthday party.
27:25
Speaker 7: There wasn't a good suspect coming into the frame. We
27:28
Speaker 7: went six months down the line and we all knew
27:33
Speaker 7: that this wasn't a one-off killing, so we concentrated our
27:38
Speaker 7: minds to try and find out who was responsible for this.
27:42
Speaker 7: In addition to that, of course, it had no... oxygen
27:47
Speaker 7: of publicity from the media because it was a single
27:51
Speaker 7: mother whom the press erroneously believed was on the edges
27:57
Speaker 7: of prostitution. So it didn't get much past the second
28:01
Speaker 7: page of the New Shopper.
28:03
Speaker 5: When we're comparing the media coverage, Rachel Nickell's murder received
28:06
Speaker 5: an awful lot more attention than.
28:09
Speaker 9: Samantha and Jasmine Bissett.
28:11
Speaker 5: And you're making judgements about this victim as to how
28:14
Speaker 5: worthy they are of attention.
28:16
Speaker 9: And what we've got here is.
28:18
Speaker 5: Judgments being made about appropriate femininity and appropriate motherhood. So
28:23
Speaker 5: Rachel was in a secure long-term relationship with her partner,
28:27
Speaker 5: Samantha's daughter, her father didn't live with the family.
28:32
Speaker 9: So I think all of those kind of.
28:33
Speaker 5: New right neoliberal values about what a family should look
28:37
Speaker 5: like are coming out here in the media's choice to
28:40
Speaker 5: emphasize the Nickell case over the Bissett case.
28:44
Speaker 1: With few leads to go on, the team investigating Samantha
28:48
Speaker 1: and Jasmine's murders was wound down to just five officers.
28:53
Speaker 1: Desperate for a breakthrough, in May 1994, the senior investigating
28:58
Speaker 1: officer took a punt and asked for the fingerprints found
29:02
Speaker 1: at the scene to be re-examined.
29:04
Speaker 7: He insisted that it was done, and then, within a
29:08
Speaker 7: few days, sheepishly, the fingerprint officer returned to say that
29:14
Speaker 7: they had made a mistake. It transpired that three fingerprint
29:18
Speaker 7: sets within the flat did not come from the victim.
29:22
Speaker 7: They came from some unknown person. When they were sent
29:25
Speaker 7: back for analysis, they came back as Robert Knapper, a
29:30
Speaker 7: man who had not featured in our inquiry at all.
29:35
Speaker 1: At last, the police had Robert Knapper in their sights
29:39
Speaker 1: when they delved into his history, they discovered he had
29:42
Speaker 1: a criminal record.
29:45
Speaker 7: We found that he had this firearm offence and in
29:48
Speaker 7: the property store was still some of the property appertaining
29:54
Speaker 7: to that offence. One of the items was an A
29:56
Speaker 7: to Z book, which, when we looked at it, had
30:01
Speaker 7: lots of roots, plans, which coincided with our murder and,
30:10
Speaker 7: more specifically, with the Green Chain rape offences. Also clearly
30:15
Speaker 7: marked out was the Isabella plantation, very close to Wimbledon Common,
30:22
Speaker 7: and that immediately rang bells with Rachel McKell.
30:26
Speaker 1: When Detective Sergeant Jackerman found Napper's mugshot on police file,
30:31
Speaker 1: they made another startling discovery.
30:35
Speaker 7: One of the indexers took one look at the photograph.
30:38
Speaker 7: She had worked on the green chain rape inquiry and
30:42
Speaker 7: she said, that is the green chain rapist. So I
30:45
Speaker 7: ran out to the front office and took down from
30:47
Speaker 7: the wall the poster asking for information on the green
30:51
Speaker 7: chain rapist, which had a photo fit on it. and
30:55
Speaker 7: we compared the photographs, and they were very, very similar.
31:01
Speaker 1: Having possibly connected Knapper to further crimes as well as
31:05
Speaker 1: the Bissett murders, Detective Jackerman and his colleagues put the
31:09
Speaker 1: suspected killer under surveillance.
31:13
Speaker 7: The surveillance team had followed him, and he was carrying
31:16
Speaker 7: out some really strange behaviour, going on long walks on
31:20
Speaker 7: his own, looking at... camping equipment, firearm magazines, buying pornographic magazines.
31:28
Speaker 7: So it was felt, as it was a bank holiday weekend,
31:32
Speaker 7: we couldn't take the risk that he might go out
31:35
Speaker 7: and kill somebody. The net was.
31:37
Speaker 1: Now closing in on triple murderer Robert Knapper. On 21st May,
31:43
Speaker 1: detectives went to his Plumstead flat to make an arrest.
31:49
Speaker 7: He went to work, like clockwork, every morning at 7am.
31:55
Speaker 7: We stood outside well before 7am, he didn't appear. So
31:58
Speaker 7: we were starting to get worried then that perhaps he
32:01
Speaker 7: wasn't in there.
32:03
Speaker 1: It turned out that Knapper had been fired from his
32:06
Speaker 1: job the previous day and was still in bed. He
32:09
Speaker 1: was startled when the police knocked at his door.
32:13
Speaker 7: He was totally shocked and he was immediately handcuffed, told
32:17
Speaker 7: why he was under arrest. and a search was subsequently made,
32:21
Speaker 7: and another A-Z found knives and lots of incriminating evidence.
32:28
Speaker 1: Police had now found a second A-Z belonging to Napa
32:32
Speaker 1: that showed markings next to Samantha Bissett's home. In his flat,
32:37
Speaker 1: detectives also discovered a receipt for a pair of size
32:40
Speaker 1: 9 Adidas trainers, a bloodied footprint from exactly the same
32:45
Speaker 1: shoe had been found at the murder scene.
32:49
Speaker 7: We were able to take his DNA. The DNA, no
32:52
Speaker 7: surprise to us, matched that of the green chain rapist.
32:56
Speaker 7: So he was then in the frame for two rapes
33:00
Speaker 7: and two attempted rapes, plus our two murders.
33:05
Speaker 1: In July, Napa was charged and held on remand in prison,
33:09
Speaker 1: but there still wasn't a link with the first murder
33:12
Speaker 1: of 23-year-old Rachel Nickell on Wimbledon Common.
33:16
Speaker 3: Two years earlier.
33:18
Speaker 7: However.
33:19
Speaker 1: Detective Jackerman was convinced he was Rachel's killer.
33:24
Speaker 7: We went to the Wimbledon inquiry and put Knapper up
33:29
Speaker 7: as a suspect for the Rachel McHale murder, by which
33:34
Speaker 7: time they had in their frame their suspect, Colin Stagg.
33:41
Speaker 7: Despite our bringing this new suspect into the frame, he
33:45
Speaker 7: was never, ever considered.
33:48
Speaker 1: This innocent man, Colin Stagg, was being held in custody
33:52
Speaker 1: for Rachel's killing. Barrister William Clegg was working on his
33:56
Speaker 1: defence for the forthcoming trial.
33:59
Speaker 10: I always thought he was a very unlikely killer because
34:01
Speaker 10: of his personality, but it wasn't until I really read
34:04
Speaker 10: the papers it became obvious to me that there was
34:07
Speaker 10: not a shred of evidence against him.
34:09
Speaker 1: The police, however, believe their honey trap operation proved Colin
34:13
Speaker 1: Stagg was Rachel's killer based on exchanges he'd had with
34:17
Speaker 1: their undercover female operative, Lizzie James. Criminal psychologist Lawrence Allison
34:24
Speaker 1: examined this evidence for Colin Stagg's defense team and was
34:28
Speaker 1: concerned by what he found.
34:30
Speaker 2: He said that in one of the meetings that he
34:32
Speaker 2: had with Lizzie James, he almost dropped his chips. in
34:35
Speaker 2: talking to her because what she was asking him for
34:37
Speaker 2: was so bizarre and off the wall. And of course,
34:40
Speaker 2: Stagg starts writing fantasies that go down that line, not
34:43
Speaker 2: because he has them, but because he wants to please
34:46
Speaker 2: a person that's offering him sex.
34:48
Speaker 7: This was turned gradually into the attack on Wynwood and Common,
34:54
Speaker 7: and he was encouraged to admit to having committed the murder,
35:01
Speaker 7: but he never ever did.
35:04
Speaker 1: When it finally came to a pre-committal hearing on the
35:07
Speaker 1: 14th of September, the judge threw out the case against
35:11
Speaker 1: Colin Stagg.
35:12
Speaker 2: Colin tragically spent 13 months in custody awaiting trial, but
35:16
Speaker 2: it never went to full trial, and Lord Chief Justice
35:18
Speaker 2: Ognall described it as deceptive conduct of the grossest kind.
35:22
Speaker 3: The undercover operation, quite rightly, was thrown out.
35:24
Speaker 4: The judge recognised that there was never any evidence against me,
35:28
Speaker 4: no forensic evidence, no confession evidence, nothing at all.
35:31
Speaker 1: Colin Stagg was eventually awarded over £ 700, 000 in damages by
35:36
Speaker 1: the Metropolitan Police and given a formal apology. Five days
35:41
Speaker 1: after his acquittal, a review of the Rachel Nickell murder
35:44
Speaker 1: investigation was launched.
35:47
Speaker 4: Gradually, at that point, the recognition is that perhaps there
35:53
Speaker 4: is a link between Rachel Nickell's killing and Samantha Bissett's killing.
35:59
Speaker 7: Gradually, the two.
36:00
Speaker 4: Forces coalesce so that it becomes clear that Napa could
36:04
Speaker 4: well have been responsible for both killings.
36:07
Speaker 1: Napa was interviewed by the review team about Rachel's killing,
36:12
Speaker 1: but as the police still had no evidence linking him
36:15
Speaker 1: to the scene, this.
36:16
Speaker 3: Led to a dead end.
36:18
Speaker 1: Nearly a year later, though, in October 1995, Robert Knapper's
36:23
Speaker 1: trial date was set for the murders of Samantha and
36:26
Speaker 1: Jasmine Bissett and for one count of rape and two
36:29
Speaker 1: counts of attempted rape for his Green Chain Walk attacks.
36:34
Speaker 1: Barrister William Clegg was defending him.
36:37
Speaker 10: I'd met Robert Knapper at Broadmoor Mental Hospital, where he
36:41
Speaker 10: was on remand awaiting his trial. It was soon fairly
36:46
Speaker 10: obvious to me that he was suffering from serious delusions.
36:51
Speaker 10: He firmly believed members of the royal family were visiting
36:54
Speaker 10: him in Broadmoor.
36:56
Speaker 3: He was an extremely ill man.
36:59
Speaker 1: Despite being diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic, an assessment by
37:03
Speaker 1: four different psychiatrists concluded Knapper was fit to stand. The
37:08
Speaker 1: trial for the murders of Samantha and Jasmine Bissett began
37:12
Speaker 1: at the Old Bailey on 9th October.
37:17
Speaker 7: We were on the edges of our seats as we
37:19
Speaker 7: sat outside number one court waiting for the trial to
37:22
Speaker 7: begin when all of a sudden the commotion and everybody
37:26
Speaker 7: started running out of the court and the word goes
37:28
Speaker 7: around that he's pleaded to manslaughter through diminished responsibility. There's
37:33
Speaker 7: a mixed feeling because manslaughter is not a conviction of murder. However,
37:41
Speaker 7: under the circumstances, it was obvious that he was guilty
37:46
Speaker 7: mentally very, very ill. And it was an omission of
37:50
Speaker 7: sorts and a conviction.
37:52
Speaker 5: I think what can tend to happen is that the
37:55
Speaker 5: assumption can be made that the offender isn't responsible for
37:58
Speaker 5: what they've done. But he actually was in this case.
38:01
Speaker 5: He knew exactly what he was doing. He knew what
38:04
Speaker 5: he was doing was wrong and he chose.
38:05
Speaker 9: To do it anyway.
38:06
Speaker 1: Napa was sentenced to life in Broadmoor Psychiatric Hospital in Berkshire.
38:13
Speaker 10: I think the sentence was inevitable. The best place for
38:16
Speaker 10: him was a special hospital, and it was important for
38:20
Speaker 10: everybody that he remain there.
38:22
Speaker 3: But D.S.
38:22
Speaker 1: Jackerman wasn't finished with Robert Napper. He was still convinced
38:27
Speaker 1: Napper was also responsible for the killing of Rachel Nickell
38:31
Speaker 1: on Wimbledon Common in July 1992.
38:34
Speaker 7: That became all-consuming. We became more and more convinced over
38:41
Speaker 7: the years that he was responsible for the Rachel Nickell killing.
38:45
Speaker 1: DS Jackerman had relayed his suspicions about Knapper to Rachel
38:49
Speaker 1: Nickell's original murder inquiry team, but they already had a
38:53
Speaker 1: suspect awaiting trial and the evidence he presented wasn't given
38:58
Speaker 1: the recognition it deserved.
39:00
Speaker 3: Now, under a.
39:01
Speaker 1: New review team, DS Jackerman made it his business to
39:05
Speaker 1: tell the senior investigating officer about Robert Knapper.
39:10
Speaker 7: I went into my office, wrote out a report giving
39:14
Speaker 7: all the details as to why I believed that Robert
39:17
Speaker 7: Knapper was guilty of killing Rachel McHale, gave it back
39:21
Speaker 7: to him, and he took it and put him on
39:24
Speaker 7: the list.
39:26
Speaker 1: A new forensics team was appointed, and in July 2008...
39:31
Speaker 1: in DNA techniques led to a breakthrough. Samples taken from
39:36
Speaker 1: Rachel's body revealed a mixed DNA profile of her killer. Soon,
39:41
Speaker 1: this was identified as belonging to serial murderer Robert Knapper.
39:47
Speaker 1: Other evidence was also reexamined, linking him to the scene.
39:53
Speaker 7: In Rachel's child's hair were found some flakes of red paint.
40:00
Speaker 7: Nobody quite knows how this happened, but they were found
40:03
Speaker 7: to match a toolbox recovered from Robert Knapper's flat on
40:10
Speaker 7: his arrest.
40:12
Speaker 1: An old pair of shoes that Knapper still had with
40:15
Speaker 1: him in Broadmoor were also seized.
40:18
Speaker 7: They were examined against shoe prints found against the man
40:21
Speaker 7: seen washing his hands near the scene of Rachel Kell's murder.
40:25
Speaker 7: And those shoes matched the shoe prints next to the stream.
40:29
Speaker 4: Gradually, the case is built against Knapper. But it's not
40:34
Speaker 4: until 2006 that he's interviewed again about the possibility of
40:40
Speaker 4: his killing Rachel McKell.
40:42
Speaker 1: It took another two years until the 18th of December
40:46
Speaker 1: 2008 for Rachel's family to finally see justice, 16 years
40:52
Speaker 1: after her death. 42-year-old Robert Knapper returned to the Old
40:57
Speaker 1: Bailey charged with her murder.
41:00
Speaker 7: He sat there and he didn't look much different and
41:04
Speaker 7: it was in a dream that the charges were read
41:07
Speaker 7: and he pleaded guilty to Rachel's manslaughter.
41:11
Speaker 1: Once again, Knapper pleaded guilty to manslaughter on the grounds
41:15
Speaker 1: of diminished responsibility. The judge sentenced him to remain in
41:19
Speaker 1: Broadmoor Hospital indefinitely. For Detective Sergeant Jackerman, it was the
41:25
Speaker 1: moment he'd waited years to witness.
41:29
Speaker 7: Just before he went down the steps, he turned, looked
41:32
Speaker 7: directly at me and recognised me, and I just mouthed, hello, Bob.
41:38
Speaker 7: It was a satisfying moment, but it was more than that.
41:42
Speaker 7: It was relief. It was vindication, really, of all those
41:46
Speaker 7: years of plugging away.
41:48
Speaker 1: It brought to a close one of the most upsetting
41:51
Speaker 1: murder cases in British criminal history.
41:54
Speaker 5: Napper is completely devoid of any conscience. He doesn't care
41:59
Speaker 5: about the impact of his actions on others, and that
42:02
Speaker 5: makes him a very dangerous man indeed.
42:05
Speaker 8: His mental state, whether he's schizophrenic, really have nothing to
42:09
Speaker 8: do with the crimes. The important point is that he's
42:12
Speaker 8: off the street and can't hurt anybody again.
42:14
Speaker 4: The man knows no humanity. The man has utter disregard
42:22
Speaker 4: for a human life. He took inordinate pleasure from the
42:26
Speaker 4: suffering of his victims.
42:27
Speaker 1: Napper raped and sexually assaulted women as they walked across
42:31
Speaker 1: London's parklands and commons. He homed in on vulnerable mothers
42:36
Speaker 1: and took sadistic pleasure from attacking them in front of
42:39
Speaker 1: their children. He brutally slayed two women in the prime
42:43
Speaker 1: of their life, then sexually assaulted and killed a four-year-old child.
42:49
Speaker 1: That makes Robert Napper one of the world's most evil killers.