Mother and child died together in ‘ritual’ slaughter

In contrast to Rachel Nickell's high-profile death, the frenzied killing of Samantha Bisset and her four-year-old daughter Jazmine went largely unnoticed.

Yet the deaths of Ms Bisset and her daughter were every bit as bloody and brutal as Ms Nickell's.

Ms Bisset, 28, who with her long blonde hair bore more than a passing resemblance to Ms Nickell, was sexually assaulted and butchered 15 months after the killing on Wimbledon Common.

On 3 November 1993, Robert Napper forced his way into Ms Bisset's one-bedroom basement flat in Plumstead, stabbed her by the front door, and sexually assaulted and suffocated Jazmine. He dragged Ms Bisset's body into the lounge, stripped it and disembowelled the corpse, taking part of it away as a trophy. Napper arranged her body on a cushion, stabbing, cutting and carving her body more than 60 times, leaving her as if "gift-wrapped like a present".

The scene was so horrific the police photographer was two years off work. Napper, who lived in Plumstead, was a serial "peeping tom" and rapist. Ms Bisset's fate was sealed after she failed to close the curtains while having sex with boyfriend Conrad Ellam in their living room.

Ms Bisset grew up in a middle-class Dundee household and had travelled around Europe and in the peace convoy to Stonehenge, before having a child with a New Age traveller.

But in the period before she died, she had settled down with Mr Ellam and was devoted to her daughter. The couple were trying to save money for a deposit on a new house. Speaking 15 years after the killing, Mr Ellam, now 46, told how he was for a time "driven off the rails". He now lives in France and works as an environmental consultant. "Even now, it's hard to comprehend that Sam and Jazmine are gone," he said.

Ms Bisset's stepfather Jack Morrison said: "I think about them all the time. When Samantha first died I was so angry that if I'd got my hands on a gun I would definitely have killed Napper.

"I just hope that he never gets out. That day should never come."

He remains angry that Napper was not caught after killing Ms Nickell, or carrying out the string of rapes, because of police blunders. "I know if they'd kept Napper behind bars Samantha would still be here today."

His despair is intensified by the death of his wife, Ms Bisset's mother Margaret, two days before Napper was due to go to trial in October 1995.

Mr Morrison, 74, a self-made millionaire who lives in Angus, Scotland, said: "Napper took three people away from me. He's just as responsible for Maggie's death as he is for Samantha's and Jazmine's.

"Maggie couldn't live with it. When something that devastating happens to you the body begins to shut down."

THIS ONE'S BEEN LOOKED AT

Kiran Randhawa and Paul Cheston