‘I can’t tell you how she died and I can’t tell you where she is’
Police confidence falters as dig for remains of missing Kettering teenager ‘fails’
By Sarah Ward
A renewed effort to find the remains of missing teenager Sarah Benford has not unearthed her body, leading the detective in charge of the investigation to say the two-week dig was a failure.
Officers and forensic specialists have been scouring the parkland site in Valley Walk, Kettering, for the body of Sarah after ‘credible community intelligence’ indicated this was the spot where she had been buried after disappearing in April 2000.
However after 14 days of activity the police have now called time on the dig and detective superintendent Joe Banfield yesterday told national and local media at a staged press conference that it was ‘futile’ to move the search beyond the 70m by 70m cordoned off boundary - the search had focused on a 20m square within that space.
He said the information given had been specific to that 20m patch and the scientists and experts had given him a high level of assurance that Sarah was not buried in that area.
An…
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