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Mr Justice Griffith Williams imposed a hospital order which is likely to see Napper remaining in Broadmoor high security hospital for the rest of his life.

Scotland Yard now admits that it missed several opportunties to arrest Napper in connection with a series of rapes in south-east London. The opportunities arose after Ms Nickell's death but before Napper went on to kill Samantha Bissett, 27, and her daughter Jazmine, four, in 1993. Napper was interviewed as a suspect for the rapes but police failed to take his DNA; he was also jailed for firearms offences.

Commander Simon Foy, the Yard's head of homicide investigation, said: "If all or any of these opportunities had been taken, it is probable that he would have been in custody and would not have murdered Samantha and Jasmine. We have been absolutely honest about this to Samantha and Jasmine's family and have told them that we deeply regret that this happened and have apologised to them."

Mr Foy said there had also been a chance to arrest Napper as early as 1989 when his mother reported that he had spoken of raping a woman in Plumstead, south-east London. Police could not trace the crime but it is now known to be a reference to an attack on a woman in front of her children in August that year.

He said: "That is the one event that predates the series of rapes, Rachel's murder and the murders of Samantha and Jasmine."

Napper, a paranoid schizophrenic, admitted the manslaughter of Miss Bissett and her daughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility in October 1995. He also pleaded guilty to raping one woman and the attempted rape of two others in 1992 in south-east London. He has been a patient in Broadmoor high security hospital since then.

Napper was born in Erith, southeast London in February 1966 the son of Robert Napper, a driving instructor, and his wife Pauline.

His parents' marriage was violent and unhappy and ended in divorce when Napper was 10. He was an introverted and obsessively tidy teenager - characteristics which are now attributed to his Aspergers Syndrome.

Napper was also sexually abused by a family friend at the age of 12. Since his arrest for the Bissett murders he has also been diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic. One psychiatrist who has examined Napper said the combination of the two severe mental illnesses was "particularly toxic".

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