MURDERED BY NICKELL PSYCHOPATH

THE news came as a sickening blow to Conrad Ellam. He opened a newspaper last week to discover that the man who murdered his lover and her little girl was suddenly the prime suspect in the Rachel Nickell case.

For Conrad, it brought back the terrible trauma of the moment he walked into girlfriend Samantha Bisset's flat and found a scene of almost unimaginable horror.

Samantha, 27, and her four-year-old daughter Jazmine were sexually assaulted and butchered by a Peeping Tom pervert - paranoid schizophrenic Robert Napper, 39.

The grisly murders took place in November 1993, just 15 months after Rachel - who bore a strong resemblance to Samantha - was stabbed to death in front of her two-year-old son on Wimbledon Common.

Colin Stagg was originally arrested for Rachel's murder but was cleared after his trial sensationally collapsed.

Last night Conrad, 42, said: "When I heard this week that Napper is now the prime suspect in Rachel Nickell's murder I felt sick to the very pit of my stomach. I can't help thinking if the police had got him after Rachel's murder, Sam and Jazmine would still be here with me now."

New DNA techniques used on a sample retrieved from Rachel's underwear are said to give a strong indication that Napper - now in Broadmoor for Samantha's killing - also killed Rachel in July 1992.

The test is believed to indicate odds of five million to one against the DNA belonging to anyone else.

In the autumn after Rachel's death, Napper twice failed to turn up at a police station to give a voluntary blood test sample after being questioned over a five-year series of rape attacks across South-East London.

If he had given the samples, could Sam and Jazmine have been saved?

Napper killed Samantha after spying on her making love to Conrad in her basement flat in Plumstead, South East London.

Conrad says: "We were scraping money together to buy a house near a school we wanted Jazmine to go to. Sam's one-bed flat was cramped, so we used to have sex in the living room while Jazmine slept in the bedroom.

"It never crossed my mind that someone might have seen us through a gap in the blinds. One day Sam told me she'd seen a face at the window, but we just thought it was a one-off. But a week later they were dead."

Conrad can hardly bear to describe the moment he discovered their bodies. He says: "I had stayed the night with my dad in Sidcup and arrived at the flat expecting them to have gone swimming. There was a huge stain on the hall carpet. Then I walked into the kitchen and there were piles of clothes all over the floor.

"In the living room was another pile of clothes, with Sam's arms and legs sticking out. They were covered in stab wounds. I didn't lift the clothes off - I knew she was dead. I rushed to the bedroom to check on Jazmine. She was almost completely covered by a duvet but I could tell she wasn't breathing. I was in shock, totally numb and I hadn't even seen what had been done to them."

Napper had stabbed Sam eight times, cutting her spinal cord, before sexually assaulting Jazmine and smothering her with her duvet. He then propped Sam's body on a cushion in the position he had watched her make love in - and sliced open her body, cutting it 60 more times.

Conrad says: "I can't imagine what they went through, especially Jazmine. Sam was an ex-hippy and against smacking kids, so all Jazmine knew was a lovely world where everyone was nice to her. Suddenly she was being sexually abused and suffocated in her bed."

When Napper was arrested six months later, it emerged he had previously been arrested for spying on a woman through her bedroom window and was suspected of a string of sex offences. But police probing the murder of Rachel, 23, didn't take a DNA sample because Napper, who walked with a stoop, wasn't the same height as the suspect in their "profile".

Conrad became a suspect himself in the Sam and Jazmine killings, but says he is not bitter about that. "I don't blame the police for suspecting me," he says. "I worked at a plastics factory and had red stains on my hands and nails. I was locked up for 24 hours before I was cleared.

"There were lots of strange twists in the case. I later found out that after the murders Napper had got a job in the plastics factory across the road from mine. We would be having a tea-break outside at 8am, and we'd nod to the workers changing shift across the road. It chills me to think that Napper was one of them. Police had him under surveillance from my factory, but my bosses must have thought they were watching me.

"When Napper was arrested, people would make a point of coming up to me and I realised they had been thinking I was the killer.

"Even now, it's hard to comprehend that Sam and Jazmine are gone. I had always imagined us staying together. Jazmine was the only child I've ever bonded with. She was so bright and creative. Sam was even annoyed that the first stick person she ever drew was of me!"

Dundee-born Sam had been a New Age traveller but settled down when Jazmine was born following a relationship with a fellow traveller.

Despite being happy with Conrad, she put ads in a local paper as a model and escort. Conrad says: "Sam was a devoted mother and hated being poor. I don't like to think she slept with clients, but she was headstrong."

Detectives eventually arrested Napper with the help of a criminal psychologist. He has been in Broadmoor since 1994 after admitting manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility.

He also confessed to two attempted rapes and beating and raping a 22-year-old mother in front of her two-year-old daughter in a park. Doctors said he was, "highly dangerous and posed a grave and immediate risk to the public". Conrad says: "I started to drink too much to block out my feelings just to get through the trial. It's taken a while for me to sort myself out."

Now Conrad is slowly rebuilding his life. He says: "It's always there in the back of my mind, and it made me think about what I was doing with my life and I'm finally doing what I really want."

At 32, he took a degree in environmental sciences and is now an environmental consultant.

He says: "If I could just have one more day with Sam and Jazmine, I'd take them to see the wildlife. Jazmine would love it - and I think they'd be proud of what I'd done."

Copyright 2004 MGN LTD
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