Robert Napper

Robert Clive Napper (born 25 February 1966) is an English serial killer and rapist. He has been convicted of two murders, one manslaughter, two rapes and two attempted rapes. He was sentenced to indefinite detention at Broadmoor Hospital on 18 December 2008 for the manslaughter of Rachel Nickell on 15 July 1992. He was previously convicted of the 1993 double murder of Samantha Bisset and her daughter Jazmine Bisset.

Early life Robert Napper is the eldest child of Brian Napper, a driving instructor, and his wife, Pauline. Born in Erith, southeast London, Napper was brought up in nearby Abbey Wood. His background was troubled and dysfunctional. The marriage of his parents was violent and Napper witnessed his father abusing his mother. His parents divorced when he was nine and he and his siblings (two brothers and a sister) were placed in foster care and underwent psychiatric treatment for six years at the Maudsley Hospital in Camberwell.

Napper was socially awkward at school, where he was shunned by his peers, who later described Napper as being "despised". At age 13 Napper underwent a personality change after a family friend sexually assaulted him on a camping holiday. The offender was jailed, police had rejected information conveyed in a phone call from Napper's mother that her son had admitted to committing a rape on Plumstead Common. No case apparently matched the evidence. However, it emerged at the time of Napper's second conviction, that the rape of a 30-year-old woman, in front of her children, eight weeks earlier, had been reported to have occurred in a house that backed onto Plumstead Common. At this point, Pauline Napper broke off all contact with her son.

In November 1993, in the Bisset home in Plumstead, Napper stabbed 27-year-old Samantha Bisset in her neck and chest, killing her, and then sexually assaulted and smothered her four-year-old daughter, Jazmine Jemima Bisset. In her sitting room Napper mutilated Samantha Bisset's body, taking away body parts as a trophy. The crime scene was reportedly so grisly that the police photographer assigned to the case was forced to take two years' leave after witnessing it. Napper was convicted at the Old Bailey in October 1995. He also admitted two rapes and two attempted rapes at this time. From the time of the first Old Bailey trial he has been held at Broadmoor. In December 1995 he was questioned about Nickell's death but denied any involvement.

The investigation to find Nickell's murderer resulted in the attempted prosecution of an innocent man, Colin Stagg, until, in 2004, advances in DNA profiling revealed Napper's connection to the case. On 18 December 2008 Napper was convicted of the manslaughter of Nickell on the grounds of diminished responsibility. He also admitted to four other attacks on women.

The murder of Rachel Nickell was dramatised in Netflix’s drama The Witness (2026).