'The Witness' Full Recap (Episodes 1-3): Why Did Robert Napper Kill Rachel Nickell?

Netflix’s new British drama series, The Witness, which is to be watched alongside the true-crime documentary film, The Murder of Rachel Nickell, delves deep into the psychological and legal effects to a terribly difficult crisis in which a boy of almost 3 is the only witness to the brutal murder of his beloved mother. The plot in this 3-part drama series follows the police investigation, as well as the efforts made by Rachel’s grieving partner, Andre Hanscombe, to keep his son far from the trauma and the pressure of the case. The Witness makes for a scary and harrowing watch, and also ultimately shines light on the psychological motives behind the murder.

Spoiler Alert

What is the show about?

The Witness begins on the morning of 15th July 1992, with Andre Hanscombe making a futile attempt at trying to help his young son, Alex, put on his clothes. The 2-year-old boy is restless and absolutely unwilling to be dressed by his dad, and instead runs to his mum in the other room. It is no surprise to Andre that his infant son is being so difficult, for Alex has always been extremely close to his mother, Rachel, and this ordinary morning is no different. But the day does not pan out like any other, as the deep bond of love and dependence between little Alex and Rachel is shattered forever. Working as a delivery agent, Andre zips around London on his motorcycle and then checks on his family by calling the landline at home. This is when he receives the shocking news about Rachel having been stabbed to death during her walk on Wimbledon Common.

Absolutely broken by this piece of news, Andre still has to keep himself contained, for he has to think about Alex, who had not only witnessed his mother’s murder, but had also clung to her dead body, resulting in his tiny shirt getting drenched in her blood. The man soon reaches the hospital where his son had been taken for treatment, as there were some minor injuries on the boy’s face. A psychologist meets and advises Andre first, about how to deal with the situation, and following his suggestions, he has to tell Alex the truth about his mother having died, and show she will never return. The lack of expression on Alex’s innocent face lays bare the sadness and confusion that he feels, but he is just too young to understand the gravity of the situation.

Meanwhile, the Metropolitan Police begin investigating the murder, and they interview as many people as they can find around the Wimbledon Common. The lack of forensic evidence means they have to rely entirely on statements, and so they quickly consider interviewing Alex, the only witness to the murder. The head of the investigation, DI Keith Pedder, takes special care to ensure that the boy’s mental health is not affected or hurt, but that is a difficult task when interviewing a child about their mother’s death, especially a brutal one like this one. Thus begins a difficult life for Andre and his son, who must always have to unfortunately choose between moving on from the matter and following the case to find out if the real perpetrator is ultimately caught.

How did the incident affect Alex’s life?

Despite the best efforts of the police and Andre, it was impossible to ensure that the incident would not have lasting effects on Alex’s life. Because of him being just about 3 years old, the child could not exactly understand what had happened or what it meant, but he did start to grasp that the situation was difficult. He felt the discomfort and anger that had made a place in his young mind already, but could not express it, quite naturally. Hence, Alex is seen throwing objects off the table and throwing a fit whenever the police officers come to ‘play’ with him, just a ruse to basically interrogate him. He does not like the fact that he is repeatedly questioned about the incident, and the absolute rage that already exists in him becomes apparent when he repeatedly stabs a piece of paper with a crayon one time. 

Both indicative of the brutal crime that he had witnessed, as well as the anger he nurtures for having witnessed such a brutal act against his mother, this incident is enough for Andre to realize that the investigation is having a bad effect on the child. After finally parting ways from the police investigation, Andre moves to France with his son, to give him a fresh start as well as to get away from the excessive media scrutiny back in London. However, as time passes, his own actions end up having negative effects on his son, for the two of them already perceive the tragic incident from their past differently. Alex remains sad about having lost his mother, but no single feeling or thought remains constant inside the developing mind of a growing child. He now has a new set of friends, and a life that he overall cherishes, but things are totally different for an adult who still carries the grief of having lost the love of his life. 

Therefore, Andre is ready to escape once again, as soon as the media back in England find out about his address in France, for he has always been prepared to move. A visible indicator of this is a duffle bag filled with clothes and a significant amount of money that he has kept ready literally at the door of his house from the very day he moved to the new country. He had told Alex that the bag would come in handy when they would have to leave in a hurry once again, just like they had in London, and this frustrates the boy. Alex is not able to understand why they are constantly on the move, but he does not share his thoughts with his father, also because Andre is still seemingly quite involved in following the police investigation. Things between father and son take a turn for the worse when Andre forces his will upon his son and they move once again, this time to Spain. Alex keeps growing distant from his father, and gets involved in drug abuse and petty crime. Instead of helping his son with proper advice, Andre is more concerned about the police finding out about Alex’s past, and that leading to the press hounding them once again. In an effort to find peace in Rachel’s murderer being punished, he ends up slipping in his role as a supportive and loving father.

With time, Alex also starts blaming Andre for not having been able to protect his mother, which is obviously an insensitive and unwise perspective. But his opinion drastically changes, almost shattering, when Andre eventually tells him that Rachel had most possibly sacrificed herself to ensure that the perpetrator would not hurt him. Throughout this British coming of age series, Alex goes through all the normal trials of childhood and adolescence, before ultimately realizing things about his parents that he had not been privy to earlier. His situation is obviously much tougher because of the experiences he has had since childhood, but ultimately, The Witness does present him and his relationship with Andre like any normal father-son bond, which is a beautiful attempt at treating them as normal humans, and not just the aggrieved family members of Rachel Nickell.

Why did Robert Napper actually kill Rachel Nickell?

Ultimately, around 2004, the police find solid evidence to suggest that a man named Robert Napper had killed Rachel Nickell, because of his severe mental illnesses. It has been clear to the police, ever since his arrest in 1994, that Napper suffers from mental illnesses, the most evident sign of which is his habit of talking about himself in 3rd person, and also talking of absolutely improbable and fictional things as if they were gospel truth. According to Napper, he had received money for featuring in or making a Star Wars film, and his father had received a Nobel prize. But beyond these illnesses was possibly a very troubled childhood, some of which the psychiatrist who oversaw his case shares with Alex towards the very end of The Witness.

Following his arrest, Napper was diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome, which meant that he had been on the autism spectrum but possessed average intelligence, and did not have trouble with language development. Because of the lack of these early signs of autism, he was never considered to have a neurodevelopmental condition, even though he did suffer from severe difficulties in social interactions and nonverbal communication. Had his condition been taken seriously and diagnosed in his childhood, he perhaps would not have turned into a vile criminal. In what seemed like a case of Stockholm syndrome, Napper developed strong feelings of love and respect for his father, who would regularly abuse him and his mother. It all went wrong when the father eventually abandoned the family, with Napper, still a boy, growing angry with his mother for this uncomfortable situation. He felt that it was his mother’s fault that his father had left, and this eventually gave rise to a sense of severe hatred against mother figures. The hatred was possibly triggered when he witnessed mothers spending loving and cherishing time with their young children, which he had never experienced and therefore craved. 

It was possibly for this very reason that most of Napper’s victims, even from his serial rapes back in 1989, had been attacked in the presence of their children. Plus, he always wanted to punish his mother for having failed to save her marriage, and so his act of killing only women who had become mothers was like a repeated act of punishing his own mother. As an adolescent boy, he had also been sexually assaulted by a relative, which possibly made him do the same against the women he targeted. Something that needs to be mentioned in this regard is that the entire theory is presented by the psychiatrist, and she does not state it to be the truth. We don’t know if this conversation, between the psychiatrist and Alex, even took place in reality, for the show admits at the very beginning to having added certain fictional moments for the purpose of dramatization. 

Why did Napper plead guilty?

The assessment by the psychiatrist, as well as the overall manner in which Robert Napper is presented, obviously paints him as a cruel and vile man, quite understandably. But The Witness also tries to leave us with a question about whether Napper was really not in control of himself till the very end. On the one hand, Napper had a habit of confessing to crimes he was charged with, which is what he did in the Rachel Nickell case as well. During the court trial, Napper pled guilty to the charge of homicide, which made it seem like he felt somewhat guilty for his actions. However, there was also the contrasting point, that Napper confessed to his crimes only when he felt that there was significant evidence against him, and therefore pled guilty only for a shorter sentence.

Does this not suggest that the man was aware enough about the brutality of his acts and their repercussions? Could he still be simply considered a mentally unstable man who did not fully know what he was doing? I think not. After all, we see Napper constantly denying having had anything to do with the murder of Rachel until his boots match exactly with the prints found at the crime scene, and the weekly schedule from his workplace clearly shows that he had been on leave on the 15th of July, 1992. Only then does his memory suddenly seem to come back to him, and he pleads guilty. The DNA evidence was obviously the most concrete proof of his crime, but since he did not understand it properly, the police had to look for other evidence to present in front of him, so that he would finally confess to the crime. Even if Napper was indeed affected by childhood trauma so much that he wanted to punish his mother by assaulting and killing other women, what, other than vile perversion, could have made him sexually assault the 4-year-old Jazmine Bisset? He is heard softly apologizing to the little boy whose life he had turned upside down in 1992, Alex Hanscombe, when being escorted out of the court, but this single act of honesty does not do anything to change my perception of him as an evil criminal.

What happens to Napper and Alex?

At the time of the trial, Robert Napper was already held at the high-security Broadmoor Hospital, serving his sentence of indefinite detention for the murders of Samantha and Jemima Bisset. He was sentenced to another term of indefinite detention for the assault and murder of Rachel Nickell as well. At present, Napper is 60 years old and still held at Broadmoor Hospital, with no chance of him ever getting out. Meanwhile, The Witness concludes Alex’s story in a satisfying manner, as the teenager learns to have empathy even for the man who had killed his mother, but more importantly, he understands how his father’s love and care has protected him from emotionally breaking. Thus, he reconciles with his father and becomes best friends with him. At present, Alex and Andre live in Catalonia, Spain, where they continue to be very close to each other. 

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