Napper killed Claire too, says ex-Met man

Vincent Wright pleaded with police to investigate Napper for the killing of Ms Nickell on Wimbledon Common as far back as 1998. He later drove to Wimbledon police station to state his case to an inspector, telling her Napper had also killed 16-year-old Claire Tiltman.

Claire was knifed more than 40 times in an alley in Kent as she took a short cut to visit friends on 18January 1993.

The teenager's death came 10 months before Napper killed Samantha Bisset and her daughter, Jazmine, and six months after he killed Ms Nickell.

In 1998 Operation Enigma, a review of unsolved murders, suggested the Nickell and Tiltman cases might be connected by the same killer.

Mr Wright first became interested in the Nickell case after reading The Jigsaw Man, a book about the investigation written by psychologist, Paul Britton.

Napper was not named in the Operation Enigma report, but Mr Wright was convinced that similarities in the cases - including the fact that both women were stabbed more than 40 times - were too striking to ignore. Using the techniques he learned during his five years as a Pc in central London, Mr Wright began detailing Napper's criminal history and his movements around London. He discovered that Napper had been released from an eight-week jail term for possessing an arsenal of weapons shortly before Claire was stabbed to death in Greenhithe, less than 10 miles from his home in Plumstead,

Napper was by then said to be a "Peeping Tom" who spied on women, travelling from his home as far as Kent and Essex. In October 1995 he admitted attempting to rape a 17-year-old he had followed off a bus in March 1992 and an attack eight days later when, armed with a knife, he raped another teenager.

Mr Wright said: "Napper could have been stopped. It was down to poor investigatory procedure that he wasn't. I first raised the possibility with a Pc in Southampton, where I was living in 1998, but it was brushed off.

"I then went to see an inspector in Wimbledon in 2000. I gave them a time line and told them that I thought Napper had killed Rachel Nickell and Claire Tiltman.

"It was soon after Rachel Nickell was killed, I think they were so focused on getting Colin Stagg they could not contemplate it could have been somebody else."

He has contacted Claire's family and presented a dossier to a cold case investigation team in Kent.

After Napper admitted the manslaughter of Ms Nickell yesterday, Mr Wright renewed his call for him to be questioned about the Tiltman murder. He has a letter from Kent Constabulary saying that "close liaisons" have taken place between the force and Met officers.

Claire's father, Cliff Tiltman, said: "Over the years there has been a number of people put in the frame for my daughter's murder. I can't condemn Robert Napper because I don't know if he did it or not. I have spoken to Kent police officers about the possibility but they say they have nothing conclusive so cannot comment on the possibility."