Timeline
1986: Robert Napper is fined and given a conditional discharge after being found in possession of an airgun.
March 1992: Napper tries to rape a 17-year-old girl. Eight days later, he sexually assaults another teenage girl at knifepoint.
May 1992: Napper grabs a 22-year-old mother pushing her two-year-old daughter in a buggy along the Green Chain Walk in broad daylight. He strangles, batters and rapes her.
July 1992: Napper murders Rachel Jane Nickell. The only witness is her two-year-old son.
August 1993: Police interview Napper after a couple complain about him spying on a young blonde in her flat. The officers’ notes read "Subject strange, abnormal, should be considered as a possible rapist, indecency type suspect."
September 1993: Police first arrest Colin Stagg.
November 1993: Robert Napper rapes and murders 28-year-old Samantha Bisset, and Jazmine, her four-year-old daughter.
May 1994: Napper is placed under police surveillance.
September 1994: The case against Colin Stagg collapses as Mr Justice Ognall condemns the "honey trap" as "deceptive conduct of the grossest kind".
October 1995: Napper admits manslaughter due to diminished responsibility.
1998: ‘Lizzie James’, the undercover detective, now 33, takes early retirement.
2001: ‘Lizzie James’, the undercover detective receives £125,000 from the Met in an out of court settlement. Alex Hanscombe, Rachel’s son, receives just £90,000 from the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority
September 2003: New DNA profiling matches Napper to the Nickell killing
Summer 2007: Colin Stagg receives a record compensation payment of £700,000 from the Home Office
December 2008: Robert Napper pleads guilty to Nickell’s murder on the grounds of diminished responsibility. For the first time, the Met police apologise to Colin Stagg when assistant commissioner John Yates writes to him and makes a public statement of regret.
June 2009: The Independent Police Complaints Commission release a damning report concluding that the Met had missed many opportunities to stop Napper before he killed Rachel.
2010: Andre and Alex Hanscombe lodge a complaint over the Met’s failure to capture Napper with the European Court of Human Rights.
2011: Alex Hanscombe gives his first ever interview to the press. The little boy whose earliest memories are of seeing his mother murdered, and who has spent the rest of his life abroad as a result, comes across as a young man remarkably lacking in self pity, bitterness, or the need for revenge.