British police to face the music for their fatal negligence

Rachel Nickell boyfriend sues: Police face huge damages claim over missed chances to stop killing

Scotland Yard is facing a potentially huge compensation claim over its failure to prevent the murder of Rachel Nickell. The father of Miss Nickell's son Alex, who as a toddler witnessed her murder on Wimbledon Common, is preparing to sue the Metropolitan Police over the appalling bungles that blighted the case. Andre Hanscombe, 46, has instructed a leading London law firm in his attempt to win substantial damages for police negligence. Given the payouts involved in other recent cases, the Met may have to hand over several hundred thousand pounds if it is found liable. A key consideration in any award will be trauma suffered by Alex, now 20.

Miss Nickell was stabbed 49 times and sexually assaulted in July 1992. She was attacked as she walked on the common in South-West London with Alex, who was a month short of his third birthday. He was found by a passer-by clinging to his mother's bloodstained body, begging her: 'Get up, Mummy'.

But Mr Hanscombe makes the case that Miss Nickell would not have died if police had caught her killer when they had the chance three years earlier.

Letters revealing details of his proposed legal action have been sent to surviving victims of serial rapist and triple killer Robert Napper, nine months after he admitted the manslaughter of Miss Nickell.

Last December, as a judge ordered Napper to be detained indefinitely at Broadmoor high-security psychiatric hospital, details emerged of a catalogue of police failures that meant Miss Nickell, 23, and another young mother and daughter he killed need not have died. Police missed a series of chances to arrest the mentally ill loner before his five-year spree of up to 86 rapes and sex attacks was brought to a close.

Had they taken the first chance to interview him about a rape in 1989, he would not have been free to kill ex-model Miss Nickell. Napper's mother told police he had confessed to her that he had raped a woman near their home in Plumstead, South-East London. She mistakenly told them the attack had taken place on the local common, when the victim had actually been raped at her home nearby.

A police officer made a cursory check of the common and no further action was taken when he failed to find any sign of an attack. But, although the victim had come forward, police did not make the link between her and Napper. He was never interviewed by police, who also failed to carry out a blood test that would have shown his DNA matched traces from the rape scene. If Napper had been arrested and jailed for that crime, Miss Nickell's horrific death would have been prevented.

Instead the paranoid schizophrenic followed Miss Nickell's sex killing with the manslaughter of Samantha Bisset and her four-year-old daughter Jazmine at their South London home in November 1993.

For 16 years, Miss Nickell's death was one of the most notorious unsolved murders on Scotland Yard's books. Referring to the Nickell case, Assistant Met Commissioner John Yates said after Napper's guilty plea in December: '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.'
Rachel Nickell

After Napper, 42, admitted killing Miss Nickell, the Met publicly apologised to former prime suspect Colin Stagg, who won £706,000 in compensation from the Home Office, who had spent a year in custody before the case against him collapsed.

Mr Hanscombe also wants a public inquiry into the errors that hampered the hunt for Napper. It was only on the eve of Napper's guilty plea that Mr Hanscombe learned how police incompetence had failed to prevent Miss Nickell's death. Mr Hanscombe was unavailable for comment last night. But speaking to the Daily Mail last December, he said: 'There has been a catalogue of errors with extremely tragic consequences. 'Mistakes by the police cost Samantha Bisset and her daughter their lives. Now we have to accept the possibility that what happened to Rachel could have been avoided as well.'

The Met has already paid £320,000 to the parents of murdered teenager Stephen Lawrence for the bungles that deprived them of justice, and it paid six figures to the family of Victoria Climbie, eight,who was murdered by her guardians under the noses of child protection detectives.

Last night, ex-Crown Prosecution Service lawyer Jeff McCann, who charged Napper over the killings of Miss Bisset and her daughter, said: '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.'

Original report here



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