Robert Napper

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Robert Clive Napper (born 25 February 1966) is a British convicted murderer and rapist responsible for three murders and at least five unrelated sexual assaults. Since 1995 he has been confined at Broadmoor Mental Hospital in Berkshire.

Biography

Napper was born in London in 1966. He was placed in foster care after his parents divorced due to domestic abuse. He was bullied at school due to suffering from Asperger's syndrome and paranoid schizophrenia. He underwent a personality change when he was 13 after being sexually assaulted by a family friend.

In 1986 Napper was arrested for firearms offences, although no action was taken against him. In 1989 his mother reported to police that Napper had confessed to raping a woman on Plumstead Common. Police took no action because no such case had occurred; however, it would later be found that a 30-year-old woman had been raped in front of her children at around that time in a house that backed onto Plumstead Common.

On 15 July 1992, Napper attacked Rachel Nickell and her two-year-old son Alex on Wimbledon Common. Napper sexually assaulted Nickell and stabbed her repeatedly before fleeing the scene, leaving Nickell for dead. An innocent man named Colin Stagg was arrested on legally dubious evidence but was later acquitted, and Napper was linked to the crime through DNA evidence in 2004.

In November 1993, Napper broke into the house of the Bisset Family. He stabbed 27-year-old Samantha Bisset to death, before molesting her four-year-old daughter Jazmine and smothering her with a pillow. He then cuts parts off of Samantha Bisset's body as trophies and fled the scene. He was arrested after his fingerprint was recovered from the Bisset house and matched to one taken after his 1986 firearms arrest. While in custody, Napper admitted to the murders, and as well as two rapes and two attempted rapes.

Napper was convicted of two counts of murder in 1995 and sentenced to lifetime imprisonment in Broadmoor Mental Hospital. Soon after, Rachel Nickell's murder was re-opened and Napper was made a suspect since he had lived in the same area. When interviewed he denied responsibility, but his DNA was matched to a sample found on Nickell's clothes. He was charged with manslaughter on mental health grounds, convicted and given an indefinite sentence at Broadmoor.