Police accused of 'catalogue of bad decisions' over Nickell murder

A SERIES of "bad decisions and errors" by police left Robert Napper free to kill Rachel Nickell, a report revealed yesterday.

Officers missed a series of opportunities to take the violent psychopath off the streets, the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) said.

The lives of Samantha Bisset and her daughter, Jazmine, aged four, would also have been saved if police had acted on tip-offs, including one by Napper's mother after he confessed to rape.

Rachel Cerfontyne, of the IPCC, said police failed to investigate the 1989 report that he attacked a woman on Plumstead Common, in London, and no record of the telephone call can be found. She added that officers "inconceivably" eliminated Napper over a series of rapes in south London because he was thought to be too tall.

She said: "It is clear that throughout the investigations into the 'Green Chain' rapes and Rachel Nickell's death there was a catalogue of bad decisions and errors made by the Metropolitan Police."

Miss Nickell was sexually assaulted and murdered on 15 July, 1992, in a frenzied knife attack on Wimbledon Common, in south London. In early November 1993, Samantha and Jazmine Bisset were killed in a violent knife attack at their home in Plumstead, south London.