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#TheWimbledonKiller
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Short filmTranscript
00:00You
00:31We had identified Robert Knapper as the suspect in the murders of Samantha and Jasmine Bissett.
00:39They decide to put a surveillance operation on him.
00:44And what's quite striking about this is that they describe him as six foot two, but they say he has a stoop.
00:52So in actual fact his height is more akin to five foot seven, five foot eight.
00:58And this was the description given by some of the victims of the Green Chain Rapist.
01:07A dedicated surveillance team was following him around London where he visited various knife shops.
01:14It confirmed the suspicion that they were following a man with an unhealthy interest in weapons.
01:20A decision was taken that he was so dangerous an arrest had to be made as soon as possible.
01:29Robert Knapper
01:41Knapper was arrested at his home on Friday.
01:44He was living in Plumstead High Street, half a mile from where the killings took place.
01:49The investigation team searched Robert Knapper's flat.
01:54This revealed a red toolbox.
01:56The toolbox is so distinctive. It's pillbox red.
02:02And inside there were knives.
02:05They didn't match the stab wounds on Samantha.
02:09But there were receipts for two other knives.
02:12There was a piece of paper attached to the toolbox.
02:16And on the reverse side of that was a shoe mark which matched a mark left at the crime scene.
02:27When they look again in his flat, police find that there's not just one A to Z, there's another A to Z as well.
02:36They go through that and they find a dot.
02:42And that dot was Heathfield Terrace, the murder scene of Samantha and Jasmine Bissett.
02:49Everything was now pointing towards Robert Knapper as the man who killed Samantha and Jasmine.
02:57The A to Z had markings that were relevant to the Green Chain rapes and relevant obviously to Samantha Bissett.
03:09But there were others.
03:11Some in North London, the majority in South East London.
03:16And if you just study this map, here's a man who loves the open spaces,
03:20maybe looking for people to harm in these less populated areas.
03:27Each of those markings was a place where he was choosing to stake out and they were viewpoint areas really.
03:36This guy was watching people.
03:39He knew where to go to watch people.
03:43The markings showing where to sit and watch and where he could see into a number of addresses
03:50because people have got their lights on and their curtains open.
03:55The chilling thing is he was obviously planning these crimes for some time
04:00and who knows how many times he'd been standing there staring into somebody's home.
04:05Quite chilling.
04:11Having been arrested, at last we have Robert Knapper's DNA sample.
04:18And that DNA sample confirmed that he was responsible for the Green Chain rape series.
04:25In relation to Knapper, you had him charged with four rapes on the Green Chain walk series.
04:33You had him charged with the murder of Samantha Bissett and Jasmine.
04:39If you look at the timeline and the dates for the rape series,
04:43and when Samantha Bissett and Rachel Mackell were killed,
04:47you would ask yourself the question,
04:50is there a possibility that he was responsible for all those offences?
04:56And he did fit the timeline for the Rachel Mackell murder on the comment.
05:06Officers involved in Samantha Bissett's case went over to Wimbledon
05:12and spoke to the Rachel Mackell team over there.
05:15They said, well, Knapper's not an assistant, never heard of him, don't know what you're talking about.
05:21He lives miles away, you're in South East London.
05:24And we know who's done it, it's Stagg.
05:38By the time the Rachel Mackell case came to trial at the Old Bailey,
05:41Colin Stagg had now been on remand for over a year.
05:47Colin had been mostly at Wandsworth for 13 months.
05:52We turned up at the Old Bailey ready for the legal argument.
05:56Colin passed forward a note to me saying, what chance have I got?
06:01And at the end of the day, I said, I'm going to hand this back to you
06:04on the day you're acquitted at the Old Bailey.
06:06The reality was the prosecution's case rested entirely on the Lizzie James correspondence.
06:12These incredibly sexually explicit letters from an undercover officer
06:17were clearly the product of the investigative team
06:21in the hope that Colin would break down and confess all.
06:24If the correspondence was admissible, psychological profiler,
06:28all Britain would be allowed to give his opinion on it.
06:31Everything else was insufficient.
06:33The judge reviewed the evidence in chambers before the court sat that day.
06:38He called the prosecuting and defence councils in front of him
06:42and said, this case is nonsense.
06:47He was scathing. He called it deceptive conduct of the grossest kind.
06:52In terms of judicial language, it could not have been more excoriating
06:57about the conduct of the operation.
06:59He said that this case is built on sand.
07:02There's no evidence here to put this man on trial.
07:05I'm not going to put him in front of a jury.
07:07There's not a shred of worthwhile evidence in this bundle here.
07:11I'd never been at a case where a judge had said such a thing
07:15or had been so critical of the police.
07:18And with that, he basically terminated the trial there and then.
07:23He was acquitted.
07:24In his ruling, Mr Justice Ognell described the police operation
07:28as misconceived, unjust and manipulative.
07:31As the judge was delivering his judgment,
07:34I stood up and walked across and handed Colin's note back to him.
07:37And he said, it wasn't until that moment when Jim handed me the note back
07:41that I realised I'd won.
07:45I do remember going outside to see what was going on.
07:48It was a bit of a shock.
07:49I'd won.
07:53I do remember going outside court very vividly.
07:57He'd been in custody for 13 months. He had no money.
08:01He wanted to see his dog.
08:03And the police wanted him to go out the back door.
08:06And Colin said, I'm not going out the back door,
08:09I'm going out the front door with my head held high.
08:11And he was coming out of the Old Bailey
08:14to what was, in those days,
08:16an absolute madhouse of press interest.
08:20All there to condemn him, not to cheer him.
08:29And Colin read a short press release.
08:32My life has been ruined by a mixture of half-baked psychological theories.
08:36The judge recognised that there was never any evidence against me.
08:39No forensic evidence, no confession evidence, nothing at all.
08:42And then we bundled him into a taxi and took him off.
08:48So Rachel's father makes an emotional speech outside the Old Bailey
08:53after the trial has been thrown out.
08:56The law has been upheld, but where is the justice?
09:00I understand that the police will now keep the files
09:04on my daughter's murder open,
09:06but they are not looking for anyone else.
09:08Utterly tragic that Andrew Nickell believed what he was saying
09:12because he had been fed a complete falsehood as to who was guilty.
09:19The police were never going to say at this stage,
09:22we're sorry, we got the wrong guy.
09:24Because as far as they were concerned, they didn't get the wrong guy.
09:27Certainly the police that I spoke to afterwards,
09:30both, you know, all said to me,
09:32you know, we think Colin Stagg's a very lucky guy.
09:35He's got away with it.
09:37There was a huge sense of betrayal, really.
09:42Everybody felt really let down.
09:44We had the man who did it.
09:46Everybody was convinced he did it.
09:48And of course, people blamed the police then.
09:52I mean, the big scapegoat was the woman police officer.
09:56Everybody felt she'd overstepped the mark.
09:58I think she got thrown under a bus because she was only doing her job.
10:01But everybody thought, well, the police had blown it.
10:04They'd completely blown it.
10:07There was a blame game going on between the various parties.
10:11But at the end of the day,
10:13the killer of Richard Nickell was still free.
10:32In the autumn of 1995, Robert Knapper goes on trial at the Old Bailey,
10:38charged with the murder of Samantha and Jasmine Bissett.
10:42And he pleads guilty to manslaughter,
10:46but not guilty to murder on the grounds of diminished responsibility.
10:52And the reason for that is that when he was on remand,
10:56he would have been assessed by a psychiatrist
10:58who determined that he had paranoid schizophrenia.
11:02So clearly what he was saying was that he was mentally ill,
11:07not in control of his faculties at the time.
11:12There was some indicators in his background when it was dug into.
11:17He had a long history of psychiatric illness.
11:22He was brought up in an atmosphere of domestic abuse.
11:29His father was aggressive and violent towards his mother.
11:34He was sexually assaulted by a family friend while on a holiday.
11:43And this led to a striking change in behaviour.
11:46He became very withdrawn. He became obsessively tidy.
11:50In a sense, his personality changed almost overnight.
11:59Knapper is convicted of the manslaughter of Samantha Bissett
12:04and her daughter Jasmine.
12:07He is also convicted of a couple of the Green Chain rapes.
12:12And instead of going to prison, he was sent to the world-famous
12:16secure psychiatric hospital at Broadmoor in Berkshire.
12:22Broadmoor is not a prison. It's a psychiatric hospital.
12:26He is a patient. He is not an inmate.
12:30When I heard that he was being sent to Broadmoor,
12:34I guess that I felt that it was case closed.
12:36When I heard that he was being sent to Broadmoor,
12:39I guess that I felt that it was case closed.
12:42And at least there was some justice for this poor woman and her child.
12:48Thank God that man's off the street.
12:51But it's not going to bring Samantha back.
12:54And whatever sentence he was given wasn't enough.
13:07Scotland Yard have announced the reopening of the Rachel Nickell murder investigation
13:13almost a decade after her death.
13:17When Rachel Nickell was killed, DNA analysis was still in its infancy.
13:22They did have some material, but they couldn't link that to a killer.
13:29When technology moved on and low-copy DNA became available,
13:33in other words, be able to identify someone from much less genetic material,
13:38the police went back and looked at the Rachel Nickell case.
13:45The review team discovers another identity within the DNA.
13:50We had a mixed profile. We now had Rachel's profile.
13:55But there is another email identity.
13:59In fact, police were able to look through the DNA samples of more than 500 suspects.
14:06All were eliminated, apart from Robert Knapper.
14:15Detectives are apparently keeping an open mind over whether Robert Knapper
14:19was in any way connected with the murder of Rachel Nickell.
14:22If we had gone to court with the enhanced DNA profile,
14:26in the state that it was in,
14:29the defence would have beaten us to death with a big stick.
14:34He has an alibi because he's at work that day,
14:38and they only have a partial DNA match.
14:41And that's not enough to stand up in court.
14:44They desperately need more evidence.
14:47They had taken samples from Rachel Nickell's son Alex's hair,
14:52and they included tiny flecks of red paint.
14:58When they look again at the case, they find some photographs
15:02that they'd taken when they searched Knapper's bedsit.
15:06Having looked at the photographs of the room,
15:10I could see a very bright red toolbox.
15:15The toolbox was analysed to see if we could find a match.
15:19They send the paint off for testing,
15:23and the results come back,
15:26and it's a match with the flecks in Alex's hair.
15:30So, therefore, Knapper's at the crime scene.
15:37There was also a shoe mark found at Wimbledon Common near the murder scene.
15:42The police had taken Knapper's shoes,
15:45but it looked like those shoes were too big.
15:49However, the scientists were asked to go back to the scene,
15:54recreate similar marks in similar conditions.
15:58They found out there was a suction effect,
16:01and the mark itself contracted by one size.
16:05And, therefore, the mark and Robert Knapper's shoes matched.
16:10We now have two strong pieces of physical evidence against him,
16:14and now we move on to the alibi.
16:18Robert Knapper stated he was at work on the day of Rachel's murder.
16:24The foreman, who kept a very detailed year planner of staff movements,
16:29had moved on.
16:32I received a phone call from him,
16:35in which he basically said,
16:37you'd better come and get this year planner,
16:40otherwise I'm going to throw it in the bin.
16:44When we recovered the year planner,
16:47we immediately looked for July the 15th, 1992.
16:51Much to our delight,
16:54we could see that Robert Knapper had been marked up as being sick
16:58on the day of the Rachel McHale murder.
17:01And, therefore, he didn't have an alibi.
17:04We decided we were now in a strong enough position
17:08to go to Broadmoor Hospital and interview him,
17:11in the hope that he would confess.
17:14This is the first time I had sat down face-to-face with Robert Knapper.
17:22I spoke to him briefly.
17:25He was quiet. He wasn't aggressive.
17:29He didn't look like he was going to say anything.
17:31He was quiet. He wasn't aggressive.
17:34He avoided eye contact.
17:37I presented all of the evidence that we had,
17:40and he declined to comment.
17:45A file was presented to the Crown Prosecution Service,
17:49and they agreed that there was now sufficient evidence
17:53to charge Robert Knapper with the murder of Rachel McHale.
18:02The day of the trial,
18:05it was a full house at No. 1 Court at the Old Bailey.
18:09You had to have almost a ticket to get in.
18:14The public gallery was full.
18:17We were expecting a trial that would last for weeks,
18:21so there was no indication that Robert Knapper was going to plead to anything.
18:26The moment came where he came up the steps.
18:32There was a gasp from some of the people in the court.
18:38His barrister said that there had been a change of plea,
18:42and that his client had now decided, on all the evidence,
18:47that he was guilty, and he wished to plead guilty to the crime, which he did.
18:53Robert Knapper does confess to the Rachel McHale killing,
18:58and he is found guilty of manslaughter
19:02on the grounds of diminished responsibility.
19:06Mr. Knapper has been found guilty of Rachel's murder.
19:11We sincerely hope, whatever the court says,
19:15that he will spend the rest of his life in a totally secure environment.
19:19That he will spend the rest of his life in a totally secure environment
19:23to protect all other people.
19:26There was a sense of relief
19:29that he had at last been convicted of this horrendous murder.
19:36He's in Broadmoor for life,
19:39and that's only the place for him.
19:43When Knapper eventually did plead guilty,
19:45it didn't receive one-tenth of the publicity
19:49that Colin Stagg's acquittal for the killing of Rachel received.
19:52So there'll be many people who didn't even notice
19:55that Knapper pleaded guilty.
19:58And so I think many newspapers were embarrassed
20:01if they'd been very anti-Colin.
20:03The Daily Mail still to this day says they championed him.
20:06That's just absolutely ridiculous.
20:11It's funny that Robert Knapper's name
20:13isn't nearly as prominent in the public mind as Colin Stagg, unjustly.
20:18But Colin Stagg is a name that you always remember.
20:21Somehow Robert Knapper isn't quite so memorable.
20:23I don't know why that is.
20:25There are other cases where more could and should have been done.
20:29Had more been done, we would have been in a position
20:33to have prevented this and other very serious attacks by Knapper.
20:38After Knapper was convicted in 2008 for the Nickell murder,
20:43that gave me added confidence.
20:46Because having read several books and numerous newspaper reports
20:50covering these cases and studying these A-Zs for quite some time,
20:55I believe there's unfinished business as regards Knapper and his activities.
21:00There are far more markings than they have reports.
21:04And the simple question you ask yourself is, what else has he done?
21:23Well, I personally had just been involved in a murder on the Isle of Sheppey.
21:28And I was conducting a debrief on the murder of a young boy
21:32and I was conducting a debrief of the team that evening.
21:37During the course of that debrief, all the crime officers' pages were going off.
21:42And I knew then, something's happened somewhere in the county.
21:48It was dark. It was January the 18th.
21:52There is a 16-year-old schoolgirl called Claire Tiltman.
21:57She'd just turned 16, four days earlier.
21:59She'd been to college with her friends, she'd undergone her mock exams.
22:04She lived about a mile from Greenhithe in Kent,
22:08up near a corner shop, just off the London Road.
22:11She'd arranged to go and visit her friends, an award she'd done many times.
22:16A well-used road, reasonably well lit, not an isolated area at all.
22:23She had to walk through this alleyway towards the estate where her friend lived.
22:28Normally it should have been lit, there should have been street lighting,
22:32but at the time it was dark, the lights were not working.
22:35Someone, unknown at this stage, confronted her and stabbed her, multiple times.
22:43She staggered back out of the alleyway and fell over at the side of the road.
22:49A motorist who was driving past with a colleague from work
22:54spotted what they thought was just this black package on the pavement.
23:00They went to investigate and Claire was gasping, she was gasping for breath.
23:07They tried mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.
23:10She sadly, tragically died in their arms.
23:19It was an awful crime, a dreadful crime.
23:24Sixteen-year-old Claire Tildman had been stabbed repeatedly
23:29in a vicious and apparently motiveless attack.
23:32We heard about the murder on the news and we were shocked.
23:37We didn't know straight away who it was and when we did find out,
23:40we were absolutely horrified because we knew the family,
23:42we knew her mum and dad and we knew Claire.
23:48It was the following day or a couple of days after
23:50and they said the request went out from the police,
23:53you know, if you were in the area, can you let us know.
23:56As, you know, people who were in the area, that's what we did.
24:01One such person who came forward was a man called Colin Ash Smith
24:05who was the son of the local mayor, Diane Smith, and her husband, Aubrey Smith.
24:11My son Colin and I were in Greenhithe that previous evening
24:16and that's why we gave witness statements.
24:21More than 200 friends, well-wishers and family members
24:25packed Eltham Crematorium in south-east London today
24:28to pay their respects to Claire Tildman.
24:31Claire's funeral, there was so many people there,
24:34it was quite a good turnout to sort of honour her memory
24:39and support her mum and dad, that was mainly what it was for.
24:42And we were aware of the press being there and cameras
24:45but we just ignored them and, you know, we paid our respects.
24:53Really, of course, it was one of those cases where, forensically,
24:57the evidence was difficult.
25:00The scene is compromised in terms of potential forensic
25:04because there would have been dozens, if not hundreds of people
25:07walking through this alleyway having decamped from the trains
25:10that call at Greenhithe.
25:11Lots of people brought in, lots of people being interviewed
25:15but nothing of any significance that we could say,
25:18that's our man, so...
25:25It's a fatal stabbing at Greenhithe.
25:28Unfortunately, there'd been another stabbing
25:31not very far away in the Swanscombe area in 1988.
25:36The victim and her husband lived in a bungalow.
25:40She goes in the garage and there's this man covered in balaclava
25:45and he drags her off to a local area where he tried to rape her.
25:51He then tried to strangle her with a tie.
25:55And this tie had broken, it snapped,
25:58so half of it's around her neck and the other half disappeared.
26:03She was stabbed five times in the back and had been left for dead.
26:07The DNA database wasn't created until some seven years after this event.
26:12So the main line of inquiry on that investigation was
26:16that this school tie had been used
26:19and it was a school that was local in the Gravesend area.
26:24That case was still open but there was nothing to connect
26:28to the Clare Tilghman case at that stage.
26:32I was aware that the young girl had been killed in Greenhithe
26:36and that case went on for quite some time.
26:41We had descriptions of the potential attacker.
26:44There had been an eyewitness account.
26:47It was a boy who had seen somebody fitting Robert Knapp's description
26:50at the train station
26:53and that the train from Plumstead would have got in just after six.
26:59Greenhithe railway station is probably
27:02a 20-25 minute direct route from where Robert Knapper
27:06was living at the time in Plumstead,
27:09just a few stops down the line.
27:12Operation Artists for the Clare Tilghman murder
27:15were aware of Robert Knapper.
27:17I think common sense would tell you that.
27:20But the Police National Computer told them
27:23he was in prison serving this sentence with a firearm charge
27:27for which he was arrested in October 1992.
27:30Clare murdered on the 18th of January.
27:33Couldn't have done it. Thank you very much. Move on.
27:37You never stop trying.
27:39But the issue is unless you get witnesses come forward,
27:42we were in a very difficult position.
27:52It was two years, nine months after Clare's death.
27:56Phone goes in the car.
27:59We've had another stabbing.
28:01About 300 yards away from where Clare was killed.
28:05An innocent young woman.
28:07She was 21, a health worker, just about to go on her way home.
28:11Attacked out of nowhere.
28:13She saw a young man walking towards her on the same footpath.
28:18When he was 10 foot away, he seemed to drop something.
28:22He bent down to pick something up
28:25and as he stood up, he pulled a knife and held it against her throat.
28:30I remember her saying to me,
28:32every time he stabbed me, I screamed
28:35and every time I screamed, he stabbed me.
28:37So I thought, if I collapse on the floor
28:39and stop screaming, he might stop, which actually happened.
28:44She was stabbed multiple times.
28:46Fortunately, in this case, it was not fatal.
28:52There was a guy who had left the Pier Hotel
28:55where this woman had been herself with a friend earlier
28:58and he'd seen a car parked up under the bridge,
29:01a very distinctive white Ford Capri
29:04and he knew instantly whose car that was.
29:07He said he saw what was the local milkman,
29:10a man who turned out to be the son of the local mayor, Colin Ash Smith.
29:17It was from that point on that Colin Ash Smith
29:20suddenly came to the forefront of the investigation.
29:24The following morning, Colin's girlfriend was banging on the door,
29:28wanted to be let in.
29:30Colin's been arrested.
29:32We said, what for?
29:34Couldn't understand what it was for.
29:36We couldn't think of anything he'd done wrong.
29:39We went to where they were living
29:42and the police were there and they wouldn't let us in.
29:44We said, why not?
29:46This is a crime scene. What crime?
29:48They said a woman had been attacked
29:50and Colin had been arrested.
29:52I couldn't believe it.
29:54I just kept thinking, this is like a nightmare.
29:58It'll be over.
30:00He'll be home soon.
30:02I thought he'd be coming home
30:04because I couldn't understand.
30:06My son attacking a woman,
30:08I just couldn't believe it.
30:11Not at all.
30:14During the course of the search of his premises,
30:17we find, taped underneath the bed,
30:19where there was a drawer,
30:21a diary.
30:23Obvious, he didn't want anybody else to see it.
30:26I've seen the entries in that diary.
30:29There was four assault plans.
30:32The first entry on this attack plan
30:35was making a recce,
30:37what he could do to a young girl at a railway station,
30:40where he describes how he was going to attack her,
30:43perhaps rape her, kill her,
30:46but he never came to fruition.
30:47Nothing happened.
30:49I think in his mind, at that stage of his life,
30:53he wanted to have control over women.
30:57He wanted to be seen and respected,
31:00or in inverted commas, by women.
31:03In reality, he wasn't.
31:06The one he describes as his masterpiece
31:09is the 1988 attack in Swanscombe, Kent.
31:12He has written about the stabbing in 1988
31:16with the old school tie,
31:19giving comprehensive details of how he did it,
31:23including listening the next morning
31:26about how the police had said
31:29there was this attempt murder in the Swanscombe area,
31:33and he'd written in this diary,
31:35damn it, she survived.
31:37I'd better do a better job next time.
31:38During the course of the search of his car,
31:41we find the other half of the old school tie
31:46from the 1988 attack.
31:50Physical jigsaw match, exactly the same tie.
31:54And he kept that in his car for something like seven years.
31:59These people get satisfaction out of knowing
32:02that they've got this trophy that they've won.
32:04These people get satisfaction out of knowing
32:07that they've got this trophy that they can touch
32:10or get another kick out of, or whatever, for whatever reason.
32:15Colin Ashmith had been remanded in custody,
32:18had been charged with both stabbings.
32:22They'd sent him to one of the prisons in Sheppey.
32:26We had to go down there to see him.
32:28And I just said, did you do it?
32:30And he said, yes, Mum, and that was it, really.
32:35I just couldn't understand it.
32:37It was the sight of him, I just didn't know.
32:41But even now, I look at him and I just think,
32:44I can't believe that you did something like that.
32:48But he's my son, and I love him very much,
32:51and he's all I've got, you know.
32:58It's fair to say that Colin Ashmith
33:01made unequivocal admissions to prison.
33:04He was charged to both offences.
33:06But my attention was very quickly, as you'd expect,
33:10drawn to the murder of Claire.
33:14Two, three hundred yards where this current victim
33:17had been stabbed.
33:19Very similar MO in terms of upper body stabbing.
33:24And I'd be neglecting my duty if I didn't think
33:27it was worth investigating.
33:29Now, obviously, at this stage, you're thinking,
33:31this is the guy who's attacked Claire too.
33:34And he was interviewed over it.
33:36Where were you on the night of Claire's murder?
33:41So I was in that area, dropping my mum off,
33:44who's delivering council leaflets.
33:46By six o'clock, I was in my house, in Milton Street,
33:50with my mother, with my father.
33:52He came in from work about four or five o'clock,
33:56and he took me about quarter to six, six o'clock,
33:58down to Greenhive.
34:00And we drove back, and we were back indoors
34:02by about quarter past six.
34:05And I keep saying, and I will always keep saying,
34:08that I was with Colin the night Claire was murdered,
34:12and he didn't do it.
34:17Colin R. Smith was convicted for the two attempted murders,
34:21serious assaults on the two girls.
34:23In the general location of the Claire Tilghman murder,
34:28where were you?
34:31Well, we had a situation where,
34:33although Colin R. Smith was suspected,
34:36and I was convinced had committed the murder of Claire Tilghman,
34:39absolutely nothing was found whatsoever, forensically,
34:43to connect him with Claire Tilghman.
34:47There was nothing, there was no forensic,
34:49there was nothing, absolutely nothing.
34:51They had it in their minds that he did it, but he didn't.
34:55Claire's case was still open.
34:58But in terms of potential for anyone being charged,
35:02or arrested and charged,
35:04unfortunately it didn't go anywhere at that time.
35:20Kent Police got some information
35:22from a cellmate of Colin R. Smith.
35:25Apparently Colin R. Smith had told the cellmate
35:26that he remembers attacking a young girl
35:29that he'd seen crossing the road on a zebra crossing.
35:34The fact that in that statement
35:36he uses the zebra crossing phrase,
35:39that's what switched the light on with certain officers.
35:42Well, that ties in with what we think happened.
35:46He saw Claire near the zebra crossing,
35:49parked his car in the legion,
35:51followed her down the hill, stabbed her in the alley.
35:57But also, before 2003,
36:00juries were not allowed to know
36:03things about what they call bad character evidence
36:06about the man or the person
36:08standing in the dock in front of them being tried.
36:11From 2003 onwards,
36:13if it was thought to be relevant or germane
36:16to the case that they were about to hear,
36:18what they'd done previously in life
36:20could be put in front of a jury.
36:23And what that meant was
36:24that they could introduce his past to attacks.
36:28And there was also this cell confession.
36:31So, therefore, they charged Colin R. Smith
36:36with the murder of Claire Tiltman.
36:43The jury were hearing evidence
36:45about two previous brutal stabbings,
36:49along with the stabbing and the murder of Claire Tiltman.
36:54And it's hard to see
36:56how they wouldn't somehow be influenced.
37:01That notion of previous bad character
37:04should be used to support real evidence.
37:07In this case, against Colin R. Smith,
37:10from my perspective, that's all they have.
37:13There is nothing else.
37:15No forensics, no eyewitnesses.
37:19His own bad character
37:21and the fact that he had attacked two girls
37:25close to Claire Tiltman's murderer.
37:29That's it against him.
37:33Colin Ash Smith was eventually convicted
37:36of the murder of Claire Tiltman.
37:39But what stood out was that his defense
37:43highlighted the fact that on the night of her death,
37:48a young boy had seen somebody
37:51who fitted the description of Robert Knapper.
37:56Operation Artist, the Claire Tiltman murder,
37:59were aware of Robert Knapper.
38:01And the record showed that he was in prison
38:04for other offenses at the time of the Claire Tiltman murder.
38:08So, his best alibi in the world,
38:11he was locked away, so he's not your man.
38:18I did some research on the details of Knapper's conviction
38:22and sentencing at the end of October 1992.
38:25Because of the time served on remand,
38:28he was eligible for early release
38:30and he was released on the 18th of December.
38:33A month later, Claire Tiltman was killed.
38:37So, he should have been a red-hot suspect early on, really.
38:42The nine knife wounds inflicted upon Claire,
38:45five alone would have been fatal, those single blows.
38:49And they were going into 14, 15 centimeters deep.
38:53So, the two attacks that Ashmith rapidly put his hands up to,
38:58neither of those were as brutal as that inflicted upon Claire.
39:03Colin Ashmith's diary wasn't found
39:06until nearly three years after Claire's killing.
39:08And there is no reference at all to Claire's murder in that diary.
39:14As far as I'm aware, he didn't write anything about Claire Tiltman.
39:18I feel sure that if he did, it would have been all over the papers,
39:22the police would have been waving it around,
39:24look, look, look, this is what he's written.
39:26He didn't write anything about Claire Tiltman.
39:28Colin Ashmith, born and bred in the area, very well known.
39:32And yet, of all the witnesses from the night Claire was killed,
39:36there was not a single witness who pointed out anyone
39:40who looked like Colin Ashmith.
39:43Nobody.
39:45Three young lads down near Greenhithe Station,
39:48they gave a statement, especially one of them,
39:50that described a man coming towards them
39:53from the Riverview end of Station Road.
39:56As if he was racewalking was the phrase.
39:59The strange walk, the loping, pronounced gait,
40:02the physical descriptions of the suspects at Wimbledon,
40:06Greenchain, at Claire Tiltman.
40:10In all of those cases, there is a suspect with similar features,
40:14with similar characteristics, Robert Knapper.
40:20Colin Ashmith committed two offences,
40:23Crown say he's committed a third,
40:26but even if he hadn't committed a third,
40:28it doesn't make any difference in his human history.
40:32It doesn't in a pessimistic way.
40:34For me it does, because it's not the truth.
40:36Look, there's two guys who have both attacked women,
40:39they're both locked away, why bother?
40:42But I turn it around and say,
40:44if it was your daughter, would you be satisfied?
40:46It turns out that they've got the wrong man.
40:49You would want the right person put away.
40:59What's so tragic
41:00is that all those murders, a catalogue of terrible crimes,
41:03could have been prevented
41:05if only there hadn't been a catalogue
41:07of tragic missed opportunities.
41:10It's accepted there were mistakes made.
41:14The fact of Knapper not turning up
41:17when he should have done to have his DNA test,
41:20perhaps the first time the 80 Z's were found.
41:25The fact that you don't get DNA
41:27and you don't go chasing the guy for it is wrong.
41:30Knapper should have been chased.
41:33When Robert Knapper was detained in the Samantha murder,
41:36his mother disclosed to the detectives
41:39three or four years ago,
41:41my son told me that he'd raped a woman on Plumstead Common.
41:45And I felt so bad about that,
41:48I came and told you all about it.
41:51They looked into this incident
41:53but could find no record of it.
41:56And the reason for that was
41:57it wasn't actually on Plumstead Common,
42:00it was at a property backing onto Winds Common.
42:05And this was where the first Green Chain rape occurred.
42:11The officers investigating the South West London crime
42:15don't appear to have looked at the links
42:17to the South East London crimes.
42:20And if they had, perhaps Robert Knapper
42:23would have been arrested before Miss Bissett was killed.
42:26Samantha's daughter was present when she was attacked.
42:29Some of the Green Chain rapes,
42:31children have been present.
42:33Rachel's little boy was present.
42:36I had experienced homicide investigators saying,
42:41do you know how vanishingly rare it is
42:45for a woman to be attacked when she's with a child?
42:49How can you possibly rule out
42:52the likelihood that these two cases are linked?
42:58If they'd have had the systems they had in place now,
43:01I think it wouldn't have got as far as losing Samantha Bissett.
43:07I think they would have caught him
43:09because everything would have been in play,
43:12DNA would have been taken
43:14and things would have been matched a hell of a lot earlier.
43:17When you look back at Knapper's A to Z
43:21and his markings in it,
43:24there are still those that relate to parts of London
43:29and across London, not just South East London.
43:33And it begs the question,
43:36are these attacks that he carried out
43:39and nobody came forward,
43:41or do they still exist?
43:43He most certainly had it in him to commit other offences.
43:48There are gaps in our knowledge of his activities
43:52which have not been looked at in the depth
43:55that they need to be looked at.
43:57There were many marks yet to be explained by him
44:01and he was evasive.
44:04We're looking for reasons why these marks are out there.
44:07Well, what else happened out there?
44:09Well, we're looking for reasons
44:10why these marks are out there.
44:12Well, what else happened out there?
44:15I'm very curious in particular
44:18about three unsolved murders.
44:21They all have the markings on the A to Z's
44:24in the areas where these people lived
44:26or were found dead.
44:28The most westerly mark
44:30is just north of Heston Services.
44:33In 91, Annie Bell,
44:35she was murdered reasonably close to that mark
44:37and it's not too far from where
44:39Jean Bradley was murdered in 93.
44:43And there was two other marks at Friend Barnet.
44:47Patricia Parsons found murdered in June 1990.
44:51It's where she lived.
44:53There is some kind of connection.
44:57And here I am today still trying to answer questions
45:00about what Robert Knapper has done
45:03because I feel he's definitely done
45:05more than what we know.
45:08There's probably a lot of victims out there
45:12that he's not going to admit to, is he?
45:19In some ways it angers me
45:21that he gets his photograph shown on TV or wherever
45:25and it's almost like the victims are forgotten.
45:30The beautiful photograph of Samantha and Jasmine
45:34and the photographs of Rachel
45:38that's more important to remember than him
45:42because he's not worth it.
46:07© transcript Emily Beynon