The heartbreaking secret Wimbledon Common victim Rachel Nickell took to her grave

Rachel Nickell was stabbed 49 times while taking her toddler son for a walk in Wimbledon Common in 1992.

The 23-year-old mum was murdered by Robert Napper, who was linked with several more violent assaults for which he was not held accountable.

Now her boyfriend André Hanscombe has revealed in a major interview she may have been pregnant at the time of her death.

A ‘loving mother’, Ms Nickell had always walked around frightened she would be attacked from behind, Mr Hanscombe, 63, said.

She had in fact become expectant around eight seven months before her death.

Worried about the further pressure another child would bring, the family opted for an abortion – a decision Mr Hanscombe said he lived to regret.

But despite the intervention, he believes Ms Nickell was pregnant yet again when she was stabbed.

‘More than once I asked her if anything had happened to her. She always said no. But I will never be sure’, he told Daily Mail.

He added that it was ‘very early on’ but the caring mother would not have chosen to abort again.

He added that the couple were ‘hanging by our fingertips’ as they struggled to make ends meet.

Ms Nickell’s son Alex was days away from his third birthday when tragedy struck. He is now 36.

On the morning of the attack, Mr Hanscombe had left for work as a motorbike courier, having kissed his partner knowing she would be taking their son and dog Molly for a walk in Wimbledon Common.

However his routine twice-daily call home while working was answered not by Ms Nickell, but a policeman, advising him of an ‘accident’.

Mr Hanscombe would take the officer’s refusal to tell him whether his partner was alive correctly as confirmation she was dead.

The pain was ‘indescribable’ and heartbreaking, he said.

Alex had been found covered in blood clinging to Ms Nickell’s body as she was stabbed and sexually assaulted.

He emerged from the attack with just minor injuries.

The heartbreaking events have now been recounted in a new Netflix documentary entitled The Murder of Rachel Nickell, as well as three-part drama series The Witness.

In a bid to escape the media storm surrounding Ms Nickell’s death, Mr Hanscombe and his son moved to a countryside home in the south of France, an area where he had dreamed of living one day with his partner.

The lack of internet at the time meant the pair were able to live there undisturbed for three years.

But it was also the place where Alex began to come to turns with the terrible events which had brought them there.

Mr Hanscombe recalled his son’s body ‘contorting’ in bed at night.

A clip of them both shows Alex asking for help to draw a picture of ‘mummy’ before recalling details of the ‘bad man’ who ended her life.

They then moved to India for three years, before relocating to Spain.

Back at home, Colin Stagg, who was in Wimbledon Common at the time and matched the description given to police, had been charged with Ms Nickell’s murder.

Despite the case being thrown out by a judge in September 1994, Stagg’s name would not be cleared in public for another decade after police announced they were not looking for further suspects.

However, six months after Ms Nickell’s murder, another young mother, Samantha Bisset was brutally assaulted to death along with her four-year-old daughter Jasmine.

In 1995, Robert Napper was held at Broadmoor Hospital in Berkshire for killing the mother and daughter.

It would not be until 2008 that he pleaded guilty to stabbing Ms Nickell to death.

He is now sentenced indefinitely under the Mental Health Act.

A leaked CPS dossier further revealed the extent of both police failures of the time and Napper’s criminal activities.

It suggested the murderer may have raped as many as 90 women before he was imprisoned in 1995.

For Alex, authorities had both failed to do to their job and had subsequently ‘covered it up’.

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