In the hours after the murder, my dad thought about ways of ending our lives
THE murder of his mother on Wimbledon Common in 1992 may have been the defining moment of Alex Hanscombe’s life – but since then he has completed a remarkable journey to forgiveness.
Alex, now 27, has every reason to hate Robert Napper, the psychopath who knifed his beautiful, happy and devoted mother, and the Metropolitan Police – whose scandalous errors allowed the killer to roam free for years after the attack. And yet, in an exclusive interview to mark the publication of his new memoir, Alex declares: ‘Accepting all that life has handed me and then forgiving the person responsible has allowed me to let go. Napper being put behind bars brought me no sense of satisfaction. I never harboured resentment.
‘Even as a child, I understood. There was no one magic moment of forgiveness. When I reached adulthood I was able to look back and see I had already let go naturally and gradually.
‘I can take a step back and see where Napper was coming from: a difficult childhood, a violent household, being abused, in psychiatric care. He tried to commit suicide after his first attack. No matter how dysfunctional that may seem to us, it was him reaching out for help.’
It’s a humbling response to the question of justice and revenge. But speaking to Alex, it’s clear that the killing which tore apart his childhood has not corrupted his adult life. Instead, he’s a man at peace with himself. He says:
myself. There had been all sorts of claims made about what would happen to me in the wake of the attack: that I would never talk again, end up living under a bridge or even repeat the violence I had witnessed.
I began to seriously question why some people consistently stumbled into difficulties while others were able to glide through life.
Was there a reason for my mother’s death that went deeper than simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time? I wondered about her fear of being attacked and came to understand that, if we focus more on the things we don’t want rather than those we want, we inevitably draw them into our lives.
I promised myself that I would strive to leave all negativity behind and make a new start. I was certain I had seen the depths of darkness and was determined to learn the lessons life had handed me.
I can’t pinpoint exactly when I forgave my mother’s killer.
For me it was a process that happened gradually over time. Just as the nightmares faded when I was a child. I was no longer the little boy who screwed up paper cutouts representing ‘the bad man’ and pounded them into the rubbish bin. I forgave him long before he even had a name...
IN SEPTEMBER 2004, a month after my 15th birthday, my father was given a shocking piece of information from a senior police officer that threw everything we’d been led to believe out of the window.
A cold case review team had used new DNA techniques on samples from the scene of my mother’s murder. They had found a match, not to Colin Stagg, but to a man called Robert Napper.
In 1989, Napper had raped a woman near Plumstead Common in South London. Napper, consumed with guilt, confessed to his mother and she told police, but he was never even questioned.
His arrest would have stopped him from committing a string of further crimes.
In May 1994, Napper was finally arrested and charged with the brutal murders of a young mother called Samantha Bisset and her daughter Jazmine.
He pleaded guilty to manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility, also pleading guilty to two counts of attempted rape and one of rape relating to attacks in South London where a staggering series of violent sexual attacks on more than 80 women took place between 1989 and 1994. He was sent to Broadmoor indefinitely.
In December 2008, 16 years after the attack, Napper was convicted of the manslaughter of my mother on the grounds of diminished responsibility.
Two years later, a damning report was published by the Independent Police Complaints Commission concluding that, without the police’s mistakes my mother’s murder and attacks on countless other women could have been avoided.
Finally we received our first apology from the Metropolitan Police. It was signed by Cressida Dick, then assistant commissioner (now commissioner).
In 1994 my family had received £97,000 from the Criminal Injuries Board for the loss of my mother. Given that Colin Stagg received £700,000 for spending ten months in prison on remand, it appeared that being wrongly accused was calculated to be of much greater significance than my mother’s life.
There had already been other occasions where the police had used taxpayers’ money to compensate victims of crime for their incompetence. Stephen Lawrence’s family had been paid £320,000 in recognition of the seven-year delay in apprehending his assailants.
Why, then, would the police refuse to even reimburse our legal costs? In my mother’s case, not only had the failure of the police to apprehend Napper led to her murder, but their lack of professionalism led to a delay of 16 years before his conviction.
Many argued that the underlying reason behind the payment in the Lawrence case was because the police were being condemned as ‘institutionally racist’ and the payment would help clean up their public image.
Numerous women suffered at the hands of Napper because of the direct mistakes of the police. I believe Scotland Yard feared that making any kind of payment to us would set a precedent – with expensive repercussions.
‘I took drugs and had run-ins with the police’
I RETURNED to Wimbledon Common, 23 years after my mother’s murder. I reached the spot where the attack took place and knelt down on the soft earth.
I placed my hands together in prayer and closed my eyes, thanking my mother for everything she gave me.
‘Molly, Molly!’ Suddenly I was brought back to the moment. Was I dreaming? I stood up and turned. Yards away I spotted a man calling his dog. I was certain.
A higher power was watching over me, making sure everything was perfect and letting me know by sending a sign.
In the blink of an eye, I saw my life’s journey flash before me.
Abridged from Letting Go: A True Story Of Murder, Loss And Survival by Alex Hanscombe, published by Harper Element on Thursday, priced £7.99. Order a copy for £5.99 (25 per cent off) until May 21 at www.mailbookshop. co.uk or call 0844 571 0640.