#robert napper

Broadmoor Hospital is a high-security psychiatric hospital located in Berkshire, England. It is the oldest of its kind. It is managed by the NHS.

First known as the Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum, the hospital was completed in 1863. The first patient was a female admitted for infanticide. The hospital was expanded over the years. During the first world war, Broadmoor was also used as a prison-of-war camp for mentally ill German soldiers.

After a high profile escape in 1952, the hospital set up an alarm system which alerts people nearby and in surrounding town if a potentially dangerous patient has escaped. All schools in the area were also instructed to ensure that if a patient escapes no child is ever out of direct supervision.

Broadmoor uses a combination of medication, psychotherapy and occupational therapy. Due to its high walls, security features and numbers of high profile criminals sent there, Broadmoor is sometimes, incorrectly, assumed to be a prison. It is, however, primarily an institute to support the mentally unwell rather than a prison.

16-year-old Claire Tiltman was murdered in 1993 but is the right man behind bars for the vicious killing?

Claire Tiltman was on her way to a friend’s house to study when she was brutally murdered by being stabbed nine times in an alleyway in her home town of Greenhithe, Kent, England. Claire had just turned 16. Her murder remained unsolved for some twenty-one years.

Alan Jackaman was the police officer who finally managed to grab Napper for the cruel murder of Rachel Nickell on 15th July 1992, on Wimbledon Common, London.

Rachel was stabbed 49 times whilst her terrified two-year-old son was left watching. The original murder investigation led to an innocent man, Colin Stagg being arrested and charged.

After that, the Rachel Nickell murder investigation went cold and it wasn’t until 2002 that Scotland Yard called on a cold case review team that used newly refined DNA techniques which enabled them to establish possible links to other cases. As part of the investigation, the team identified a male DNA sample that did not match Rachel’s boyfriend or son.

Whilst the stand-alone sample was not sufficient to identify a suspect, it was enough to rule out suspects.

In July 2006, the Scotland Yard team interviewed 40-year-old convicted killer, Robert Napper for two days at Broadmoor. He had been convicted of the murder of Samantha Bisset and her four-year-old daughter Jazmine in November 1993 and had been at Broadmoor for 10 years.

On 28 November 2007, Napper was finally charged with Nickell’s murder. He appeared at the City of Westminster Magistrates’ Court on 4 December 2007, where he was ordered to remain at Broadmoor psychiatric hospital until another hearing on 20 December 2007.

Enter Colin Ash-Smith

After many years of the Claire Tiltman murder investigation being cold with no sign of a killer being found, suddenly on September 12th 2013 the former home of a convicted criminal, Colin Ash-Smith in Myrtle Place, Stone, near Dartford, Kent was searched by police as part of a cold case investigation.

Colin’s father, Aubrey still lived at the family home and during the raid, several bags were taken away, presumably containing potential evidence yet Ash-Smith was not interviewed about the Tiltman murder.

Eventually, Colin Ash-Smith was charged with the killing and taken before the courts, despite pleading not guilty he was convicted in December 2014 and sentenced to serve a minimum of 21 years for the murder of Claire Tiltman.

He had served nineteen years in prison, including periods of assessment at Broadmoor secure hospital and a specialist treatment facility, HMP Whatton. He had been deemed suitable to be considered for parole, but that all came changed when he was charged with murdering Claire. Why had the police not seen him and dealt with him in regard to the Tiltman investigation during the 19 years that he was in custody?

Mr Jackaman says that the police simply dismissed Robert Napper from the Tillman murder enquiry as he lived in South East London, not in Kent but it is only a short, four-stop train journey, just 21 minutes in duration.

He has the nicknames, ‘The Plumstead Ripper’ and ‘The Green Chain Rapist’ and it seems highly likely that he could have been responsible for two more killings and maybe over a hundred rapes, yet he was not worthy of consideration for the killing of Claire.

Robert Napper has been diagnosed as suffering from paranoid schizophrenia and Asperger’s syndrome. His first conviction was a relatively minor crime involving possession of an air rifle but then began his much more serious offending when he allegedly raped a 30-year-old woman in front of her children in a house that backed onto Plumstead Common, not far from his home.

He had admitted the offence to his mother but, despite her having contacted the police the claim did not fit any cases on police record at the time.

Summing up

Do I agree with Mr Jackaman on his opinion that Napper should be questioned and a new investigation launched into the Claire Tiltman murder? Yes I do

Do I believe that Colin Ash-Smith is innocent and was made a scapegoat of in order to stop him from getting parole and being released? Having met Colin, my answer is, yes I absolutely do!

I absolutely agree with Mr Jackaman that a man is serving time in prison for a murder that he did not commit and I fully support any application to get the Claire Tiltman case reviewed.

So what do you think? I would love to know your feelings on this case, so please leave me a comment or even drop me an email at:

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Revealed: The bucolic wine buff accountant who let privatisation spivs fiddle London fire brigade

Robert Napper: Pic credit: Twitter

CROSS POSTED ON BYLINE.COM

He has been fined £120,000 and barred for three years from his professional body for ” professional misconduct ” by the Financial Reporting Council in April for his part in allowing a now bust private firm to fiddle its income from London Fire Brigade.

But before this happened Robert Napper, a partner with Grant Thornton, one of the…

In July 1992, 23 year old Rachel Jane Nickell (pictured) was brutally murdered on Wimbledon Common after being sexually assaulted and stabbed a total of 49 times. Her 2 year old son witnessed the attack and was found clinging to his mother’s lifeless body. Later that same year, a man named Colin Stagg was named as a suspect. He frequently walked his dog in the area where Rachel had been killed, but there was very little else linking him to the crime. In order to catch Stagg out, the police set up a ‘honey trap’, which saw a female officer who disguised herself as a woman with an interest in Satanism make contact with him. However, despite prompts, Stagg did not admit to committing any crime. A judge later condemned this course of action by the police, labelling it as “deceptive conduct of the grossest kind.” After this point, the case began to turn cold. 

In 2000, the case was again reviewed and authorities began to consider that the killer could be linked to other offences. DNA technologies had advanced further, and so Rachel’s clothing was sent for testing once more. After being kept in storage as evidence for 12 years, a piece of tape which had been attached to Rachel’s skin was now found to contain male DNA. This was enough to rule out close family members. Attention turned to a man named Robert Napper (pictured), a known rapist and murderer convicted for the 1993 killing of a woman and her daughter in similar circumstances. A red painted toolbox which belonged to Napper was tested, after tiny flecks of red paint were found in the hair of Rachel’s son. The red paint coating the toolbox and the flecks found in the little boy’s hair proved to be a match. In November 2007, Napper was charged with the murder of Rachel Nickell and detained indefinitely at Broadmoor Hospital the following year, which has housed notorious criminals such as Peter Sutcliffe, Charles Bronson and Ronnie Kray.