Man admits Rachel Nickell murder

[Cap'n Jack]

Naughty coppers, eh?
The good old Met, suggest any suspect apart from the actual killer. Move heaven and earth to prove that, and then say that they are not looking for anyone else in connection with the murder while that murder remains unsolved.
Then some old cop comes on here with some whacky theory and everyone does the Lambeth walk.

[Stephen Thomas]

Just a thought here for Colin Stagg.

What a Hellish nightmare this man was put through for years and years.

[Graham]

[/QUOTE]Then some old cop comes on here with some whacky theory and everyone does the Lambeth walk.[QUOTE]

As far as the Nickell Case is concerned, what cop was that?

Cheers,

Graham

[Graham]

Naughty coppers, eh?
The good old Met, suggest any suspect apart from the actual killer. Move heaven and earth to prove that, and then say that they are not looking for anyone else in connection with the murder while that murder remains unsolved.
Then some old cop comes on here with some whacky theory and everyone does the Lambeth walk.

With reference to the Nickell Case, what old cop was that?

Cheers,

Graham

[Cap'n Jack]

Graham, I wasn't referring to any specific officer of the law here, but we have yet to await the eventual fiasco that will result from the misguided attempts to pervert the true course of justice in the Dando case; and I do suspect that the same Met officers had a hand in both cases.
I was referring to the fact that many accept the testimony of retired police officers on this site as the word of god.
It is the Lambeth walk.
And the devil's work.

[Natalie Severn]

He was delusional, suffered asperger's, schizophrenia, but was obviously obsessively sex-mad. Yet his murders were frenzied attempts to commit sex attacks - he literally lost control at the last minute despite any planning. He's a disorganised offender with deeply ingrained obsessive traits. He planned his murders driven by his obsessive nature and powerful sex drive but was too much of a mentalist to carry them out - in the end he was just a frenzy-killer. He'd probably have gone on to become a spree killer had he remained at large - that, or he'd have gone totally nutty.

Hi Dark,
The crucial bit ,in my opinion, is that he was "delusional" and a victim of a brutal rape as a child.
By the time he was adult his mental illnesses made him think he was "all powerful", and "untouchable" .He also believed he was a millionaire , that he had a maths MA and had won the Nobel Peace Prize and could communicate by telepathy.
Napper was apparently brutally raped in the woods when he was twelve -two younger boys he was with were also sexually assaulted.Napper,according to witnesses, withdrew into a "robotic" state,expressing no emotion,after the rape and began to live in his own world.It marked the end of his ability to concentrate in class and was reported on by his teachers.

Such a withdrawal sounds very like "Post-traumatic stress syndrome" ,a prominent feature of which is the need to obsessively "repeat" the trauma- its as though nature tries to deal with the injury to the mind and in his case his body too, "by washing or constantly rinsing it away -the brutal repeated attacks on women being his own deluded way [-remember he already has a serious mental illness as he suffers from paranoid schizophrenia]---of dealing with the gross earlier violation to his own body at the age of twelve.
So much for the "sexual " component of the murders.It was as likely as not NOT "sex" as such,but rather the need to repeat the horrific and brutal invasion of his own body at the age of twelve.
Should you doubt me over this,I suggest you look up the medical ramifications of post traumatic stress syndrome.The Medical Foundation for Victim"s of Torture may also have information relating to this condition on their website.

[Graham]

Graham, I wasn't referring to any specific officer of the law here, but we have yet to await the eventual fiasco that will result from the misguided attempts to pervert the true course of justice in the Dando case; and I do suspect that the same Met officers had a hand in both cases.
I was referring to the fact that many accept the testimony of retired police officers on this site as the word of god.
It is the Lambeth walk.
And the devil's work.

Right, Jack. I take your point. Like water, the police will sometimes take the easy route.
Re: Dando, microscopic traces of what the police thought/claimed to be residue of combusted propellant in the pocket of the accused, when it was no such thing. But it looked good/OK/admissable at the time, so let's go with it. But let's never forget that the police are paid to apprehend and send down those who transgress against the laws of the land, and as I said above, like water they sometimes take the easy route.

Graham

[Cap'n Jack]

Graham, there is no easy route where murder is concerned.
The CPS has been invaded.
And lost.
Bring back the Treasury I say.

[Graham]

Graham, there is no easy route where murder is concerned.
The CPS has been invaded.
And lost.
Bring back the Treasury I say.

Again, you're right. I think.

Graham

[Sara]

There are quite a few interesting points thrown up by the case of Napper, with regard to unsolved serial killers in general and JTR in particular (not to mention a few other disputatious cases inc Hanratty's)

The first is the absolute proof (if any were needed after Sutcliffe et al) of how blinkered the Police always seem to become in such cases. They take a stance, get a bee in their collective bonnet, refuse to look outside the box - a box of their own making usually. It's the same old story - do they never learn? And do we not ever learn to question how certain cases are made up, and what lengths the 'authorities' under pressure to find a perpetrator will go, to please the mob, the victims' families, the press - and themselves?

Part of the reson for this - the second important point - is the folly of the insistance on profiling (we are all guilty of it to some extent), when any serious reading up of real life cases demonstrates that serial murderers can and do vary their modus operadi, sometimes to a startling degree. However obsessive such damaged characters can be - and none is more obsessive and dedicated to routine and repetition than an Aspergers sufferer - it's only human to crave variety in some respects, some of the time.

There's a lot here we can learn in looking at the JTR pheomenon; and I agree with Natalie that whilst some elements of Napper's crimes may have been deliberate copying, other elements were self-driven. (Creepy thought - did he ever join Casebook I wonder )

Another thing which is really striking (eps in relating to the A6 case) is how uncannily accurate the FIRST photofit image was.


One thing that puzzles me about the reporting of this case (see the Times and esp Telegraph links above) is that Napper was described by one report (a post-crime report iirc) as being 'a virgin and sexual inadequate'. How then could he be convicted of rape?

[sdreid]

45 years ago here in the States, we solved 91% of all murders. Now with DNA, profiling, VICAP, sex offender registries, AFIS and such we are solving 60%. What is wrong with this picture?

[FrankO]

Maye the number of serial killers, or better yet, the number of seemingly motiveless murders of strangers has significantly increased since that time, Stan. Or maybe the police detective of today just isn't what he used to be. Or perhaps he's expected to do more work in less time. Maybe a bit of all. I don't know.

Best,
Frank

[FrankO]

Hi all,

Here's a link that gives more information about Napper's murder of Samantha Bisset. As you'll see, it's a message I posted in early 2004:

http://www.casebook.org/forum/messages/4921/9015.html

All the best,
Frank

[Sara]

That's an interesting statistic Frank. The key word is "solved".
How sure can we be that these cases really were solved, and the right man took the rap?
Maybe too the burden of proof now has to be far greater than in previous gneerations - Human Rights and all that. I think there is much more random killing now too - and more stick-ups, gang warfare and so on adding to the toll. Murder is not so rare as people lose the God-fearing habit and live more often in huge annonymous urban centres

As I've mentioned elsewhere, one oddity in the Napper case is the remark by a profiler in a report that Napper was "a virgin and sexual inadequate" and yet he was convicted of more than one rape.

[DarkPassenger]

Some profilers make their money by telling the press what they want to hear - saying he's an inadequate virgin loner is an off-the-shelf winner for everyone.