Bungling British cops refuse to compensate murdered woman's son

A little kid's loss of his mother is surely one of the greatest losses of all

The son of Rachel Nickell will not receive a penny in compensation from the police force which failed to prevent his mother’s murder, the Mail can reveal. Scotland Yard chiefs say the force has ‘no legal liability’ to make a payout to Alex Hanscombe, who as a toddler witnessed his mother’s horrific stabbing on Wimbledon Common.

Following legal advice, they have also ruled out the idea of making a ‘goodwill gesture’ payment. This is despite the fact that former prime suspect Colin Stagg has received £706,000 compensation from the Home Office for being wrongly accused of 23-year-old Miss Nickell’s murder.

In addition, the Metropolitan Police paid £150,000 compensation to the undercover policewoman at the centre of the bungled investigation into Miss Nickell’s murder, for the stress caused by the case. The payout to the officer, known as Lizzie James, who was used in a honey-trap operation against Mr Stagg, was approved by senior officers in 2001.

Last year Alex, now 21, and his father Andre Hanscombe, 47, issued a writ against the Met seeking compensation over Miss Nickell’s murder in July 1992. The move came ahead of a police watchdog report which lambasted the force’s handling of the case.

The Independent Police Complaints Commission said errors by Met officers had left Robert Napper free to kill Miss Nickell, who was stabbed 49 times and sexually assaulted as she walked with Alex and their dog.

It added in its report published in June that the lives of another young mother, Samantha Bisset, and her four-year-old daughter Jazmine would also have been saved if police had acted on tip-offs that psychopath Napper was a serial rapist.

But despite the IPCC’s conclusions, senior Met officers have decided that no compensation should be awarded to Alex and his father. Arguing they are ‘answerable to the taxpayer’, they say they will not pay their five-figure legal costs either.

Mr Hanscombe could not be reached for comment last night, but a close friend told the Mail that the Met was ‘morally obliged’ to make a payout to him and Alex. ‘It is mind-blowing that the Met is not even prepared to pay their legal costs, which were necessary to get the IPCC to investigate the case,’ the friend said.

‘It is outrageous that the Met talks about accountability in its letter to Alex and Andre, when no officers have been disciplined, let alone sacked, over the fatal errors that cost Rachel her life.’

The compensation snub was condemned by former Crown Prosecution Service lawyer Jeff McCann, a critic of how the Nickell investigation was handled by the CPS and the Met. Mr McCann, who prosecuted Napper over the Bisset killings, said: ‘The Met is obviously worried about opening the floodgates to other potential claims.

‘However, given the precedent it has set in other cases it would have made sense for it to make a goodwill payment to Alex and Mr Hanscombe. They had a terrible ordeal as a result of the appalling errors by the police and CPS.’

In June, the Met belatedly made a public apology to Alex and Mr Hanscombe for bungling the probe into Miss Nickell’s murder. The investigation is widely regarded as one of the most shameful episodes in Scotland Yard history.

The statement of regret came minutes after the IPCC’s withering report was published. Rachel Cerfontyne, of the IPCC, said that before Napper murdered Miss Nickell in 1992 he could have been arrested over the ‘Green Chain’ rapes on South London parkland.

‘It is clear that throughout the investigations into the Green Chain rapes and Rachel Nickell’s death there was a catalogue of bad decisions and errors made by the Metropolitan Police,’ she said.

‘The police failed to sufficiently investigate after Napper’s mother called police to report that he had confessed to her that he had raped a woman and, inconceivably, they eliminated Napper from inquiries into the Green Chain rapes because he was over 6ft.

‘Without these errors, Robert Napper could have been off the streets before he killed Rachel Nickell and the Bissets, and before numerous women suffered violent sexual attacks at his hands.’

Napper, 44, pleaded guilty to Miss Nickell’s manslaughter in 2008 after a DNA breakthrough. He had been detained at Broadmoor since 1995 for the Bisset killings and the rapes.

For two years, Scotland Yard pursued Colin Stagg for Miss Nickell’s murder but the case was thrown out at the Old Bailey in 1994 after a furious judge slammed police tactics. By then, Napper had also killed Samantha and Jazmine Bisset in Plumstead, South-East London.

Speaking in June this year, Mr Hanscombe, a tennis coach who now lives by the coast on the Mediterranean, said the IPCC shared his ‘sense of shock and disbelief’ at the police blunders. In a statement, he said: ‘Nothing is going to bring Rachel, Samantha or Jazmine back. ‘But having had some time to come to terms with this new reality, I now believe the best way to serve those who paid most heavily is to make sure all the lessons have been learned, to make sure that this could never happen again.’

Following a seven-year legal battle, Alex has previously received around £90,000 criminal injuries compensation for loss of services of the mother and for his own trauma.

Original report here




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