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Robert Napper - killer who carried his armoury in sport bag
Paul Cheston, Courts Correspondent18 Dec 2008
ROBERT NAPPER gave few clues that he was a killer, sex attacker and compulsive stalker and voyeur of women.
His workmates considered him dull and boring with little conversation. The warehouseman and machine operator at a plastics factory turned up for work on time and paid the rent promptly on his obsessively neat flat.
But hidden in his home was a cache of guns, weapons and ammunition. There were also detailed notes about the targets he stalked and maps of their homes.
There were notes about the location of grates, foxholes, paths and access gates for possible rape sites, surveillance spots or hideaways for his weapons. An Old Bailey judge would call him “highly dangerous and a grave and immediate risk to the public”.
Despite this, Robin McCarlie, Napper's former foreman at the plastics factory, struggled to find anything to remember about him. “He was really boring,” he said.
Napper's only distinctive characteristic was the sports bag he carried everywhere. He called it his tool box, but it was his portable armoury.
Undetected by his colleagues, his sexual deviancy had manifested itself first in flashing and voyeurism. It then escalated into sexual beatings, rape and finally, when in the full grip of paranoid schizophrenia, into killing. As Detective Superintendent Michael Banks said: “Each time he got more and more violent.”
His diaries contained references that were classic signs of schizophrenia— fears that his food was being spiked, that people were talking about him behind his back and how women offered “instant sunshine” but were only out to exploit him.
One woman's name had the words “sodden filthy bitch” alongside it and there was also a scribble about “Mengele's way”, a reference to the Nazi surgical experimenter. His dictionary contained handwritten stars against the words immolate, necropolis, carcass, holocaust and regicide.
Napper, now 43, had been the oldest of four children in a violent household before his parents split up. His childhood was divided between foster homes and being brought up by his mother Pauline Lasham, who would later tell the police that he had confessed to her that he had committed a rape — only for the police to allegedly ignore the warning.
As a youngster Napper had six years of counselling at the Maudsley Hospital, Camberwell, was sexually abused by a man and used to spy on his sister dressing. He left an Abbey Wood comprehensive with seven academic qualifications and a City and Guilds in catering.
His early criminal record consisted of shoplifting but Napper progressed to guns. In 1986 he was given a conditional discharge and ordered to pay £10 costs for carrying a loaded gun in a public place.
At around this point he is believed to have begun the series of sex attacks, which police believe number more than 100, although he was ultimately only charged with four, which took place in south-east London.
It is believed that police investigations following the last three attacks in early 1992, forced him to move his activities from the Plumstead area to Wimbledon, where he killed Rachel Nickell. The next year, he killed Samantha Bisset and her daughter Jazmine.
Napper's mental disturbance was flagged up in a pre-sentence reports before the court and a psychiatric evaluation stating that he was “without doubt an immediate threat to himself and the public”.
Intriguingly he kept guns but only ever used knives on his sex victims. As his attacks increased he became more and more brazen in letting his face be seen and leaving evidence behind.
Napper's sister, Gillian Stamp, who lives with her husband Bruce and their children in Eltham, said: “I just want to move on from this now. We've been hounded for years and it's about time it finally went away. I've got my own children to protect now. I don't want to think about him anymore.
“I don't think there are any words that can describe how I feel about him. I have thrown away every photograph I had of him. He should die a slow death and be treated in the same way he treated those poor people.”
Reader views (2)
How long until the bleeding-hearts demand the release of Napper because his condition is untreatable?
- Mike, London, 18/12/2008 13:52
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Will the "old Bill" involved in trying to entrap Stagg and as a consequence cause the deaths and mutilation of more women and children be sacked without pay or pensions?? of course not, they are retired already with inflation proof pensions and commendations for being "exemplary coppers" what a joke the MET is.
- Kerry, Purley, 18/12/2008 13:35
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