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Rachel Nickell partner 'to sue Met for failing to catch her killer in 1989'
Felix Allen and Justin Davenport28.09.09
Scotland Yard is facing a possible six-figure compensation claim over failure to prevent the killing of Rachel Nickell on Wimbledon Common.
Andre Hanscombe, whose son by Miss Nickell was a toddler when he witnessed her July 1992 murder, plans to sue the Met for negligence for hundreds of thousands of pounds.
Mr Hanscombe, 46, who also wants a public inquiry, claims ex-model Miss Nickell, 23, would still be alive if police had caught her killer, paranoid schizophrenic Robert Napper, when they had the chance three years earlier. She was stabbed 49 times and sexually assaulted in front of her son Alex, then two. Details of the planned legal action were revealed in letters to some of Napper's surviving victims, according to the Daily Mail. Any compensation would take account of trauma suffered by Alex, now 20, who lives abroad with his father.
Napper admitted Miss Nickell's manslaughter last December and is to be held indefinitely at Broadmoor psychiatric hospital. It later emerged police failures failed to identify him as a rapist responsible for up to 106 attacks. He was only caught after he killed Samantha Bisset, 27, and her four-year-old daughter Jazmine in November 1993. Police had the chance to arrest him in October 1989.
Scotland Yard said today it had "no knowledge" of any claim on behalf of Mr Hanscombe.
