Rachell Nickell: Boyfriend to sue police

Rachel Nickell

THE boyfriend of Colchester schoolgirl Rachel Nickell is planning to sue Scotland Yard for failing to arrest her killer before she was brutally stabbed to death on Wimbledon Common, it has been claimed.

According to newspaper reports, Andre Handscombe, the father of Miss Nickell's son Alex, has hired a leading London law firm to take action against the Metropolitan Police for negligence in failing to catch her killer, Robert Napper, three years earlier.

Miss Nickell, 23, who was a student at Colchester High School for Girls and was brought up in Wickham Bishops, was sexually assaulted and murdered in July 1992 in front of Alex, then aged two, who was left clinging to her body.

Rachel, who studied for her A levels at the Colchester Institute, had been living near Wimbledon Common at the time of her death.

Napper pleaded guilty to the manslaughter, on grounds of diminished responsibility, of Ms Nickell at the Old Bailey in December last year.

He was already a patient at Broadmoor high-security psychiatric hospital having pleaded guilty, on grounds of diminished responsibility, to the manslaughter of Samantha Bisset, 28, and her four year old daughter Jazmine Bisset, in 1993 at their south London home.

However, Mr Handscombe reportedly claims that had detectives done their job properly while investigating another rape they would have arrested mentally-ill Napper three years before Miss Nickell was attacked.

Police were allegedly told in 1989 by Napper's mother that he had confessed to raping a woman close to their house in Plumstead.

However, she wrongly told them the attack happened on a nearby common when the woman had in fact been raped in her home.

Because of this, after conducting a check on the common, they failed to interview Napper, who had in fact been responsible for the attack, even though the victim had come forward.

It is claimed that had they done so, and checked his DNA with that found at the scene of the rape, they would have been able to prove he had been guilty.

It is now thought Napper may have been responsible for a large number of rapes and sex attacks in the years before he was arrested.

Speaking after Napper was found guilty of killing Miss Nickell last year, Assistant Met Commissioner John Yates admitted: “There are other cases where more could and should have been done.

“Had more been done, we would have been in a position to have prevented this and other very serious attacks by Napper.”

Former Crown Prosecution Service lawyer Jeff McCann, who charged Napper over Miss Bisset and her daughter's killings, told a newspaper: “The investigation into the murder of Rachel Nickell was for more than a decade blighted by errors and missed opportunities.

“It comes as no surprise that Andre Hanscombe is planning legal action against the Met.”

A spokesman for New Scotland Yard said yesterday: “We have no knowledge of any action being taken against us with relation to the Rachel Nickell case at this time.”