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Robert Napper Admits Killing Rachel Nickell on Wimbledon Common, 16 Years After She Died in Front of Her Son

Napper pleaded guilty to manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility. Police apologized to Colin Stagg, the man wrongly prosecuted for the killing.

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Illustration of press photographers behind barriers outside a stone London court building as a red bus passes. Not an actual scene from the case.

Rachel Nickell, 23, was killed on Wimbledon Common on July 15, 1992, as she walked with her two-year-old son, Alex. On December 18, 2008, Robert Napper, 42, admitted her manslaughter at the Old Bailey on the grounds of diminished responsibility.

Mr Justice Griffith Williams ordered Napper held indefinitely at Broadmoor high-security hospital. "You are on any view a very dangerous man," the judge told him. Napper was already detained there after admitting, in 1995, the manslaughter of Samantha Bissett, 27, and her 4-year-old daughter, Jazmine, at their flat in Plumstead in 1993, as well as a rape and two attempted rapes. A tiny sample of DNA taken from Nickell's body could only be analyzed after scientific advances, and a match to Napper was confirmed in 2004. The prosecution accepted his plea based on that DNA, a shoe mark and similarities with his other attacks.

Police had first pursued another man, Colin Stagg, who spent 13 months in custody before a judge threw out the case against him in 1994. The Metropolitan Police apologized to Stagg and said he was "completely innocent." Commander Simon Foy said the Nickell and Bissett families had also received apologies over "a number of missed opportunities to arrest Robert Napper."

The Metropolitan Police apologized to Stagg for proceedings begun in 1994, while the Crown Prosecution Service expressed regret for a prosecution it said was brought against him in 1993.

Sources