A successful part-time model, Rachel Nickell was building a happy life with her partner and their young son.

She had cut back on modelling to concentrate on life with Alex, 2, her boyfriend Andre Hanscombe and the couple’s dog, Molly, which she would take for long walks near their home in Tooting, southwest London.

A keen swimmer, Ms Nickell would often visit the local leisure centre with her son while Mr Hanscombe, a semi-professional tennis player, took a job as a motorcycle courier in the City to support his young family.

The couple were regulars at an Italian restaurant near their home and were described by the manager as always appearing “close and in love”.

The destruction wrought by Napper on this family - and Ms Nickell’s relatives – was total. In an impact statement read at the Old Bailey yesterday, Andrew Nickell, Rachel’s father, said that everything he and his wife had hoped for in their future had been smashed. After the murder, Mr Hanscombe moved abroad with his son to start a new life – first to France, then northern Spain – and the couple do not see their grandson.

“The greatest loss is your future,” Mr Nickell, 64, said in the statement. “All the things that any family hopes for and expects are completely smashed. There will be no daughter to talk to in our old age, no grand-children to love and admire. At a stroke all this has been removed.

“The next loss is your anonymity. Your life is trampled on by the media. You are gawked at in supermarkets. You are avoided by so-called friends who think some bad luck will rub off on them.

“Your son is devastated as he is very close to his sister. He avoids any close relationships because he fears losing someone else. Your mother, in her eighties, cries every day and wishes she had been taken instead.

“Your daughter’s partner retreats into pain and blame without the guidance and love of your daughter. After a few years he moves abroad and later you are stopped from seeing your only grandson.

“You become ever more wary of strangers. You reveal nothing because they might be media or have contacts with the media. Copies of your phone bills are obtained and friends abroad ring up to try to discover where your grandson lives.

“You come out of a coma months/ years later having lived through a period when you were not really conscious of what was going on but you keep on automatically breathing and eating.

“When you come to you gradually realise what you have lost.”

Turning to Robert Napper across Court 1, he added: “To say that one man has destroyed our lives is too strong. But that one man has changed it for ever. You learn to accommodate these changes but the pain remains with you every minute of every day.

“Every day Rachel’s name is mentioned, her photograph published or her home videos shown, everything comes flooding back. We hope the man who committed the crime will spend the rest of his life in prison. That is the sentence he has given us.”

Outside the court, with his wife by his side, Mr Nickell said that this was the last interview they would do as they wanted to regain anonymity.

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