Broadmoor patient is charged with killing Rachel Nickell, 15 years after her brutal death

The decision to charge Robert Napper followed a dramatic DNA breakthrough and is the latest twist in the long-running case.

Former model Miss Nickell, 23, was stabbed 49 times and sexually assaulted in front of her two-year-old son Alex on the common in July 1992.

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The decision to charge Napper, 41, is likely to be pave the way for a substantial compensation payout to Colin Stagg, who was cleared of the killing in 1994.

The 44-year-old former prime suspect could not contain his delight yesterday after hearing the news.

He said: "Finally people are going to have to believe I didn't do it.

"Despite being cleared by an Old Bailey judge back in 1994 I have been portrayed ever since as the man who got away with murder.

"I became a national hate figure. I had to endure every form of vilification.

"I was insulted, attacked, spat upon. My home was attacked and so was I. My name alone was enough to stop me getting work."

Mr Stagg is expected to receive a six-figure payout from the Metropolitan Police, in addition to up to £250,000 damages under a Home Office compensation scheme, for his ordeal.

Mr Stagg, from nearby Roehampton, South-West London, was prosecuted for the murder, but cleared after a furious judge threw out the case on the grounds that police had used a 'honey trap' plot to encourage him to confess.

He spent a year in custody before walking out of the Old Bailey a free man.

Napper was formally charged with murder after a five-year, multi-million-pound reinvestigation by Scotland Yard.

Police have been carrying out exhaustive inquiries to try to ensure that the second prosecution does not end in failure.

In particular, they want to rebut possible claims that key forensic evidence - at the heart of the new trial - could have been contaminated.

The Crown Prosecution Service said Napper will appear at City of Westminster Magistrates' Court in central London next Tuesday.

Mr Stagg claims the CPS, the Met and a Cracker-style criminal profiler were wrong to target him during the first probe.

A leaked internal CPS report on the collapse of the trial made an astonishing attack on Mr Justice Ognall, the judge who threw out the case against Mr Stagg after criticising the honey-trap operation involving a blonde undercover policewoman known as Lizzie James.

Mr Justice Ognall told the Old Bailey the tactic was 'a substantial attempt to incriminate a suspect by positive and deceptive conduct of the grossest kind'.

But the CPS report said the judge had an unfairly 'disciplinary approach' towards the police and, after hearing how they gathered their evidence, was 'determined to stop the prosecution'.

There was further controversy six years ago when Lizzie James was awarded £125,000 compensation for the stress caused by the case.

In September 2003 officers from Scotland Yard's Murder Review Group, which examines unsolved cases, made a potentially vital breakthrough.

Forensic advances meant they were able to find microscopic traces of DNA on Miss Nickell's body which would have been undetectable in 1992.

In June last year, officers spent several days interviewing Napper in Broadmoor.

He was asked to account for his movements on the hot summer's day when Miss Nickell died and supplied a DNA sample for police to compare with existing records.