Warning: Graphic content, readers’ discretion advised. This story contains a recollection of crime and can be triggering to some readers discretion advised.
Serial killers are the dark stars of modern culture, but is it nature or nurture that creates a serial killer? Born To Kill takes an in-depth look at the cases of some of the most notorious murderers that have shocked the world.
In a span of rapes and murders from 15 July 1992 through November 199.
Robert Clive Napper (eventually known as The Green Chain Rapist) targeted mothers accompanied by children.
He may not have been born to kill, but living under a wife-beating father and suffering sexual assault at thirteen from a family friend didn’t sit well with his Asperger’s syndrome diagnosis, his later identification as a paranoid schizophrenic, and his personal humiliation at having erectile dysfunction. His killings, though few, were abnormally savage.
This was first broadcast: 2015.
in the early 1990s southeast London was held in a grip of serial rapist. there was serious serial preditor on the loose.
the savage stalker was particular about his his prey.he so frequently used the fear that young mims would have of wanting to protect their children.
as violence intensified , more an more victims were reporting that their attacker had been armed with a knife. his mind would to turn to murder. the amouny of rage and anger is really off the chart
but was these heinous crimes his destinay .was he born to kill ?
this is a guy who feels completely unsafe and who’s going to take some kind of action to make sure that his world is protectecd.
the district of plumstead lies just below the river Thames in southeast Londonn. the multicultural community boast a busy high street as well as large three lined areas and commons that make up part of the green chain.
it encompasses many open park glands and woodland, it does goes for many miles and takes many routes. it was a quite middle class area,quite well to do.
it was generally a low crime area where people felt safe.
in 1992 plumstead resident samantha bissett was like any other parents.
recording fond memories of her four -year -old daughter ,jasmine.
the 27 year old was a doting mum.who was intent on giving her daughter the best start in life.sam was very very strong- minded person.she’s quite a feminist.
and a good sense of humor . jasmine was lovely she was going well with other children. got on with adults. sam brought it up really well , sam was a good mother .
the whole life revolved around jasmine. samantha lived in a basement flat on the edge windscommon.a peacful location for a family life.
but on one november night this sense of tranquility was torn apart. an intruder had forced his way into samantha’s flat. a violent struggle happened in the hallway and he stabbed her and she probably died quite quickly.
he dragged her body into the living room and laid it out and then at some stage went back trhough the house to jasmine’s bedroom and smothered her i her cot .
the plumsted community was shattered by the tragic news. as police set out to investigate the horrific double murder .
local resident robert napper was having his own run- ins with the law. he had been arrested for shoplifting.there was an incident where he’d been caught firing a an air gun in the wood . the most serious incident he’d been caught in possession of a firearm.
despite his recent convition the 27 year old would manage to get a job at a local plastics facrory.
Napper may have apeared to be a reliable worker but but his background was anything but stable.
he was born in southeast London in 1966. the eldest child of brian a driving instructor and his mother pauline.
his early years were marred by the vilence of his father towards his mother , father eventually left home. when he was about seven. and as a result he was looked at byh child psychiatrists.
there’s an account of him at one point using a BB gun one of these rifles to shootout.one of the brothers and some indications of some degree of violence between brother and sister.
Napper would later be diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome, they seem to be very frustrated with people and get into a lot of trouble.a child with asperger’s can have a vey difficult time making friends and keeping friends and realy knowing what’s socially appropriate.
former classmates bill peak recalls nappa’s difficulties at school. from time to time they wold work to include robert in they’re group,but he never really seemed to fit into any social group really, he would be with a group for a while then he would drift away again and very much be a loner.
a very intense lad and and he would stand very close during any conversations, it was quite unusual in the way he did that .this unusual behavior would make him an easy target. fullu alert that they would score for people like robert wooding involved some bullying from the both the boys and the girl unforunately.
he would just be the butt of the jokes,he would be the person that aattracted the flying obejct or whatever in the class . it was the odd while. napper’s fellow students were unaware that he harbored a tragic secret that may had profounded effect on his future….
in november 1993 a horrific dubble murder was undercovered in plumstead southeast London.
samantha bissett and her four year old daughter had been sexually assulted and subjected to unimaginable violence during a prolonged attack.
but this district of london had long been suffering at the hands of a predator. during the 1980s and 1990s there was a whole sequence of very nasty rapes and sex attacks that took place across quite a broad of south London.
this was in a series of parks and these rapes became known as what we call the green chain rapes.
the police investigaton was complicated as they appeared to be dealing with two types of attacks. the first of which were in open areas . such as plumstead and winds common.
this is a typical example of the green chain walk , lanes unmade adjacent to roads , this is exactly the sort of area where people target his rape victims.
the ones in open country seem to be random, not planned and motre or less on the spur of the moments taking advantage of the situation talking the advantage of the situation.
the second type of attacks were evidently premeditated,ones where he attacks someone in the house. he appeared to be prepare to stalk to watch to use s lot of patience and sees his opportunityin a planned way.
the predator predominantly had one target in mind, young mothers accompanied by children.you could argue while he was just picking victims of availablity and those victims were likely to be young mums on the common and use the fear that young mums would have of wanting to protect their children.
did he actually sexualize that and that is a particularly sadistic and very unusual feature that sexualization of fear .
it’s an aspect of sadism he wanted to have somebody observe what he was doing to make him feel more strong.more powerful than watch the child cry and get so upset when his mother is being raped and so it came from his own mind and his own psychological need.
conrad ellum remembers the series of rapes that preceded the murder of his partner samantha bissett.
” this is a stretching of green chain walk here ,what you’ve got here is someone’s garden’s back and it seems by spying on the houses you’d find out which one had women on their own and he’d just climb over the garden fence and if they left the back door open you’d get access to the house.”
-conrad.
one of the early attacks he had entered the house and raped the mother upstairs in one of the bedrooms while whilst the children were having breakfast downstairs.
he left his parting words were ” you should keep your door locked.”
he was trying to put the blame on the victim.this is a way to say”you asked for it , you left your open ,people are like me wandering around, we pick places like this because you make yourself vulnerable , so first of all it’s a way to blame the victim and felel better about himself but secondly it somebody who doesn’t have social skills it could actually be that he was trying to be helpful that is a possiblilty.
at the reign of terror continued local resident robert knapper had set up home in a bed set in nearby plumstead high street. his life had become increasingly isolated.the relationship with his mother had become distant partly due to nappa’s hatred of his new stepfather.
robert was also tormented by a more deep -rooted issue.there was a report of an incident when he was aged about 12.that a friend of the family had recommended another person to take the children on a camping holiday.
and during this holiday robert napper was sexually abused.
most people who are abused do not become abusers themself but some do and almost all individuals who are abusers have themselves been abused.these are traumas that are very very difficult for an individual to resolve.
this traumatic event is likely to have been exacerbated by napper’s pre-existing asperger’s syndrome.
if a person suffering from asperger’s fpr example is abused sexually they would be much more confused than ordinary children and have much less relisience afterward they will feel victimized,theyu will want to do something to make sure this doesn’t happen again.
napper’s issuses as a child would be futher complicated by another diagnosis in his teenage years.in nappa’s case the suggestion was that he had paranoid schizophrenia and schizophrenia is manifest often by an inability to discriminate reality from imagining.
he would claim to have met the Queen ,he claimed he as being pursued by the IRA had been captured one time they’d tortured him ,cut off his fingers which he¨d been able to through introducing some process had managed to grow them again and fantastical stories like that.
17 miles southwest of plumstead lies the affluent area of wimbledon.famed for its Tennis championships.the london suburb also boasts a picturesque common.
but on one july morning in 1992 the peacful family -friendly atmosphere was shattered by the discovery of the body young mother rachel.
homicide advisor ron turnbull was one of the first on the scene.the inicital reaction for all of police was disbelief.that this could have happened in such peaceful pleasant place. this is not a secluded area that somewhere that you would anticipate an attack, it’s open space even the wooded region where she was found.
her clothes were disheveled which intimated to Ron that there was a secual aspect to her demise and it was obivous that she had suffered multiple stabbwounds.to be so angry and enraged to commit that atrocity 49 times does speak both tothe sort of level of sadism and actually rage
the brutal murder of the young mother had beem carried out in front her two year old son. it could be at that point that the child represents something to him .
a witness to the mother’s humilation , so there certainly could be psychological layers to that particular murder.
the horrific nature of the attack,left the nation in a sstate of shock.there was a wave f revulsion about the circumstances surrounding the murder of rachel , obviously there was a great public deamnd for the police to find whoever done it .
following an appeal to the public local loner colin stagg came to the forefront of the investigation and would become the prime suspect.he had a number of minor offenses of her sexual nature involving the common.
he fitted the description of some of the witnesses. there were some what were interpreted as black magi symbols in his house and i was easy for the police to latch on to and say ” aha” look there’s a reason .to think that he might be a violent sex criminal
the police were confident they had their man the horrific knife attack would not be linked to the the chain rapist of southeast london.
however ther rapist was still at large and it appeared he was starting to emulate the the wimbledon attack.
the initial incidents didn’t feature any violence at all but gradually there was were an escalating pattern of violence and more and more victims were reporting that their attacker had been armed with a knife.
if you look at the series of green chain race what you really have is a pretty sexually inpotent offender , most of these attacks are, the offender fails to get an erection.
ther’s severe violence after the attack almost as if because this was sort of deeply unsatisifying in terms of the physical sexuality that then the violence has to take over as a kind of proxy for that .
in some of his crmes the offender was supremely aggressive.as the green chain attacks intensified,police appealed to the public amongst the named suspects matching the e-fit
was local plumstead resident robert nappa.- one of the biggest problems for the police was that descriptions of the rapist were varied and vague.
the man that they were told they were looking fo was described as being five feet eight inches tall, detectives went to see him and in fact napper was considered to be taller at about six foot two. so essentally wrote him out of the inquiry.
despite being brought to the attention of police , napper would do little to raise concern amongst his co -workers.co -workers remember robert was very nondescript, very quite he would speak he would enter into a conversation if he spoke to him he didn’t particularly instigate conversation ,he kept very much to himself. he was a very blank gray man.
femal colleagues would also feel comfortable in his comapny.
most of the girls who worked at the factory had to go up to plumstead high street. overnight time when it got dark it was quite spooky , quite made you quite nervous walking through there.
robert napper lived up in pimstead high street so he naturally walked up with him.never had any complaits or any worries from any of the girls at all.
despite his courtehouse manner authorities becam increasingly aware that nappa’s out-of work interests were less than scruplous.
it was reported that peeping tom was looking at the backs of the houses here , specfically upon a young lady who lived alone . police were called and arrested one robert napper
i think for napper is probably a degree of control in i t and obviously sexual pleasure as well.probably also propped up by the fact that any of the women that he probably shunned him because he was odd and bizzare.
napper ‘s arrest allowed police to search his flat in plumstead high street
the bed set where napper was arrested were just one room . it was kept very tidy
everything was put in its place. also on the scene police found a red metal toolbox whisch cotnained hunting knifes ,they found lot of doodles,
they founf an A to z with little roots planned out.the map in question covered an area around the green chain walk the location of the horrific rapes.
that had terrorized the london suburb.
during 1992 plumstead resident robert nappper was arrested following complaints about a peeping tom.
while searching his flat police discovered a red toolbox containing knives and a doodle map.
the skteches were centered around areas of parkland which had been become the hunting ground for the green chain rapist.
local resident conrad knew the area wel,l this was listed as one of the place.
despite receiving an eight -week jail sentence for the possesion of a firearm, the other contents of napper’s box, where not linked to the green chain rapes.
the campaign of terror would become increasingly violent throuhghout 2993 and 2993.
the grusesom murders of plumstead mother samantha bissett and her four year old daughter jasmine would be the tragic consequence.
detective sergean alan jackman was the amongst the first on the scene.
this is the main entrance to heathfield terrace ,it leads down these stone steps to the main entrance which you see below.it lookd just the same as it did as when detective sergean alan jackman entered with his colleagues on the 3rd of november 993.just inside the door they found large pullings of blood
inside lay the bodies of jasmine and samantha bissett.
long time partner conrad had made the appalling discovery on his return to the flat that morning.he walked into the front room and there was just this sort of pile of clothes you could see arms and legs sticking out .
conrad couldn’t really see much but he was thinking as this is awful . he couldn’t even see if it was sam or not but…but then it just hit him they hadn’t seen jasmine and conrad thought she is there or what?
he looked in the bedroom and you could see, she ‘s covered in the duvet so you couldn’t really at first i thought she might still have been alive.but he could see she wasn’t moving.
jasmine’s mother samantha had suffered multiple stab wound her body had hideously mutilated. police felt a gut feeling really . that this was areally inusual killing.
obviously this wasn’t a first offense , there had to br s lead up to this, there had to be aprogression towards such an horrific event.
forensic examination of the scene initially drew a blank.every fingerprint that was lifted in that flat was identified.detective believed that the perpetrator must having gloves.
but further investigation revealed an incredible coincidence, that would finally unlock the case.the fingerprints between the perpetrator and the victim samantha were almost identical .
now we all know from watchin TV programs that no two fingerprints can ever be identical but there were very very many similarities and the first person to look at them had made a mistake.
and written those fingerprints off as samanthas, luckily for the police the fingerprints were on records and they came back to……
Robert Napper
Napper was arrested in his bed set on nearby plumstead high street.police began building a case against their prime suspect.
sam did say she was in bed one night and she just said there was a face actually in the window.just that one occasison and that was just scared and that what conrad guess that would have been napper.
the killer’s planning had been measured but the murder was frenzied. there was a very very vicious attack where he immediately stabbed sam bisset. so vigorously actually that he may well have almost immediately killed her.dragged her into the lounge and then committed some horrific mutilations on the body.
a pathologist would uncover another distrubing side to the attack on samantha. woody pieced samanatha’s body back together,realized there was a large part of the stomack wall missing
a square of about six inches.that party of her body has never been recovered.
an organized offender who knos what they’re doing will take a trinket, an earring , a shoe ,something like that ,someone with a serious mental illness tends totake a body part or does biting behavior or cutting or post-mortem ,experimentation looking around at things inside the body that’s typically mental illness.
the only witnesses to the murders had reoprtedly heard two assilants voices. napper’s mental state may offer an alternative explanationone of the witnesses heard shouts from two men along the lines of leave it .police now believe that was napper shouting at himself.with napper in custody his connection to the heinous crime was startling news for many of his acquaintances.
“the atmosphere in the factory afterwards was a sort of absolute shock nrvause ots mpt every day you come across something like this inyour in uout normal life.”
-Robin
people find old to imagine that one day someone can be at work getting on with a job in knowledge that they’ve also committed horrifics offenses but the reality is they’re not slathering easily identfable monsters.
typically serial killers who want to continue to get away withwhat they’re doing are going to form a double life they’regoing to have that life of murder and and mayhem and rapes that is compartemalized completely divided away from the life they need to live in order to pass as a normal person.
it would soon become apparent nthat the double murder was not a solitary act for the 27 year old. on further examination of napper’s toolbox , police became acutely aware of the tatted map stored inside.
napper had made a number of notes on those maps and those notes corresponded to the settings of a number of the so-called green chain rapes.
in his bed set police found various doodles which mentions this part and specifically part of this common amongst which was strawberry circle which referred to small group of birch here on the right.
it gave a good view to the rear of a house where one of this victims was raped.it appeared that the four year reign of terror that had preceded the murders of samantha and jasmine bissid.
may have been at the hand of robert napper. policeehave very little doubt that napa did commit most of the green chain rates.
there were 70 possibly 80 in that sequence and thinks that all evidence points the fact that he committed most of those .
if you know that rape is a relatively rare offense and here you have tens of theses rapes occurring together in the same sort of area you’d have to seriously consider that they’d be committed by the same person.
napper’s first rape is thought to have taken place in 1989 in a house on the edge of the common. the attack left him in a confused state .he felt comelled to confess all to his mother.
he said to his mum there’s some people out to get me because i’ve left a woman on plumsted common and his mother went straight to the police and said to them: oh my son just says he raped a women and plans to come” and she’d look into this. and they looked in their records and said , well there ‘s no record of that no record of rape being reported on plumps in common.
the attack had actually taken place on neighboring winds common.subsequently police records did not match the mother’s report.
as Napper went on ,he probably felt a degree of invincibility because he was able to get away with it for so long and as with anything that you do repetititvely you start to learn effectively what works.Napper’s laid -back career and lifestyle may have been chosenby design.
Robert was quite a reasonably educated man . so in retrospect it makes you wonder why he took such a menial boring job .there are different reasons why someone might take menial jobs that are really below his level of intelligence and skill .
it could be that they feel inadequate they feel insecure, they don’t really know that they can live up to their potential and so they don’t try.
but it also could be that they want extra time to stalk people , to just have the time it takes to do the planning of an assault.
experts believe his targeting of women with children,stammed from the sexual abuse he suffered as a child at the hand of a family friend.
the amount of rage and anger, that is left ina child who is abused in this type of repetitive and sadistic way is really off the chart and psychologically you could see how that probably had some significance wherein napper would get women who were with children.
but it had very personal meaning to napper , he was trying to work something out internally by behaving in this way.
this pain ful childhood memories are thought to have been exacerbated by napper’s sense of inadequacy as the rapes intensified.
when a man is impotent and when he’s trying to rape a women and can’t quite do it . to him she is to blame.he is going to now get violent and because he’s angry, she has humiliated him she’s witnessed his humiliation and itäs herfault that he can’t pull this off and that he’s now a failure.
and then of course there’s the use of a knife.it’s quite difficult to avoid the freudian analogy but the knife seemed to often be used as a proxy for an erection.in napper’s case it is safe to say that the knives were an obsession.
there was a collection that he had of knives. they were regularly used in the offense to the point of extreme verkill and a kind of morbid fascination with what a knife could do to a body .
just three monts after robert napper’s arrest.
the case against colin stagg for the wimbledon murder of rachelwas thrown out of court.
unknown to police vital evidence that would help convict the actual killer would be provided by a red toolbox beloning to robert napper.
in october 1995 robert napper stood trial of the old bayley accused of the dubbel murder of samantha bisset and her three year old daughter. as well as a series of rapes carried out in southeast London.
at the time , police weren’t convinced that they were going to get a conviction. taken in isolation each of the pieces of evidence against him wouldn’t have been enough to convict him but taken toghether they felt they had a case.
despite initial concerns of the police a verdict by the jury was not required.
he pleads guilty to manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibilty, he’s the murder of samantha and her daughter in other words he was suffering from mental disturbance at the tima and in fact he’s sent the broadmore the maximum security psychiatric hospital.
there was stilll of course the nagging problem of who murdered rachel
the case against he prime suspect colin stagg had been trown our od court just one month earlier once again the police were under intense pressure to solve the wimbledon common murder .
you can be a homicide detective with 25 years experience and not need any assistance at all in a murder case but you will in sexual murder case, all of the typical investigative approaches motive opportunity really go out the window in a sexual murder case.
allthoug napper’s murder of samantha and jasmine marked similarities to the wimbledon murder. the distance between tha attacks initially ruled him out.police know that offenders want to offend near enough home so they’re able to get back home quickly and it’s an area with which they’re very familiar.
however furher investigation of the map book used to document napper’s green chain attacks. suggested that he had ventured out of his comfort zone.
on one of the pages heavily marked was isabella plantation on richmond park that is within walking distance of women in common where rachel was murdered.this attracted police interest.
police interviewed napper in broadmoor during december 1995. he refused to answer questions.
10 years would pass before DNA evidence finally solved the wimbledon case. all of rachel’s clothes thatshe was wearing on the day she was murdered was very heavily blood -stained.
police had techniques in their armory that enabled them to lift the blood off of her clothing and what lay below was a microscopic sample of somebody else’s blood . it was provbed to come from robert napper. rachel’s horrificmurder had tragically been witnessed by her two year old son.
a crucial piece of evidence had been extracted from his hair.there were small pieces of paint that they were able to forensically match to a metal toolbox. the toolbox in question belonged to robert napper. Napper would finally be charged with the murder of rachel in november 2007.
Napper appeared before the old bailey. and actually pleaded guilty to the manslaughter of rachel again as with samantha bisset on the grounds of diminished responsibility in the rachel mirder was initially did not plead guilty and only in the fullness of time pled guilty when he realized that actually that forensic evidence was extremely damning.
so agaun it speaks to the idea that this wasn’t someone so delusional that they thought they still couldn’t get a get out at the last minute.
Napper was returned to broadmoore hospital where he will be detained indefinitely. the horrific violence suffered at the hand of this disturbed killer is hard to comprehend.
but was this reclusive loner the victim of his troubled childhood or was he born to kill.
the cards, the deck was stacked up against Napper ,he had severe psychiatric problems he also managed more through luck than judgement to get away for a while with a series of heinous crime and this imbued him with a sense of invincibilty.
napper’s a classic case of nature meeting nuture in all the most awful ways.partly nature but unless you have the nuture aspect of it ,going in the wrong direction then i don’t believe anyone’s born to kill.
robert napper is not born to kill , the assualt when he was 12 changedhis life, someone with asperger’s disorder is unlikely to be violent so really the events of his life are the things that formed him into a killer.
the true extemt of robert napper’s crimes may never be known, but for a new generation enjoying the green open spaces to the south of London. the horror has faded away.