Convicted killer Robert Napper, who was at large at the time teenager Claire Tiltman was stabbed to death, may have been responsible for her murder, a court has heard.

Colin Ash-Smith, 46, is alleged to have carried out the attack in an alleyway off London Road, Greenhithe, as Miss Tiltman walked to a friend’s house in January 1993, four days after her 16th birthday.

Defence counsel Allister Walker told Inner London Crown Court that another man, Robert Napper, may have attacked Miss Tiltman.

He said: "I want to tell you about a man who killed two women, both young mothers and a four-year-old child. His name is Robert Napper.

"In early January 1993 he was released from serving a short sentence of eight weeks, imposed upon him in the late part of 1992 in Woolwich, for firearms offences.

"He had been arrested with a handgun and 200 live rounds of ammunition.

"He was released from that sentence in January 1993. Unfortunately the police national computer got it wrong.

"The police national computer showed he was still in prison serving that sentence.

"It got it wrong - Robert Napper was at large."

Mr Walker added: "He lived in Plumstead and various addresses for a number of years.

"On the night of November 3, 1993, only a matter of months after Claire Tiltman was killed, he quite literally butchered a woman of 27 in her flat in Plumstead.

"He stabbed her 30 times in the throat and in the neck and after she was dead he mutilated her body and took part of her abdomen, and not content with that he suffocated her four-year-old daughter.

"There is very little evidence he sexually assaulted Samantha Bisset, horrifically the same cannot be said of the four-year-old."

The court heard Napper was arrested for the crimes in May 1994 and in October 1995 pleaded guilty to two counts of manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility, as he suffered from severe mental illness.

He also pleaded guilty to one offence of rape and two of the attempted rape of young women.

Mr Walker added police, later on, proved Robert Napper killed another woman, Rachel Nickell, as she walked on Wimbledon Common on July 15, 1992, months before Claire Tiltman was murdered.

He said: "Rachel Nickell was walking with her two-year-old son, before Robert Napper stabbed her 49 times.

"After she was dead he committed a serious sexual assault on her.

"While he committed most of his offences in the Woolwich area, he travelled quite a long way from home to kill Rachel Nickell."

Mr Walker said the fact Napper travelled to commit this offence was not the only thing that might connect him with Claire Tiltman's murder.

Earlier in the trial, witness Danny French said he saw a man in a light-coloured jacket walking ahead of Miss Tiltman in London Road, shortly before she was killed.

Mr Walker said: "We know he (Napper) would plan the location of his crimes in advance with considerable care.

"If the man he (French) saw was Claire's killer, he was walking ahead of Claire along the London Road, not behind.

"If that was the killer he wasn't following Claire to the alleyway, he was making his way to the alleyway.

"If it was Napper he would have already travelled to the Greenhithe area and he would have found a location in Greenhithe which would have provided a very suitable, ideal location for what he had in mind when he came to Greenhithe."

Mr Walker, talking of the prosecution's case that Ash-Smith committed the murder, added: "This is all guesswork, guesswork is not enough.

"There is no evidence to support any of this, it is all inconsistent with any of the evidence that witnesses have provided."

Ash-Smith denies murder.

The trial continues.