Police searching for two missing schoolgirls, Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman, yesterday evening began examining two mounds of earth, feared to be shallow graves, less than 10 miles from where they were last seen. Report by Sarah Hall and Nick Hopkins, in London
Last night police said preliminary searches had proved "inconclusive", and that forensic experts planned to work through the night, with the aid of arc lights.
Scene-of-crime officers and forensic experts with tracker dogs were called to a woodland area on the outskirts of Newmarket, in Cambridgeshire, known as Warren Hill, after a man out jogging discovered recently disturbed earth yesterday morning.
The same man had contacted police the previous Tuesday - and had been immediately interviewed - to report that, on the evening of the girls' disappearance, he had heard screams between 10 p.m. and 11 p.m. from the same area while out walking his dog.
Last night, the girls' parents, Sharon and Leslie Chapman and Kevin and Nicola Wells, were bracing themselves for bad news after being visited yesterday afternoon by family liaison officers.
Cambridgeshire police spokeswoman Ms Kim Perks said: "The families have been told to prepare themselves for potentially bad news. It is a difficult time for them right now."
The mounds of earth are 30 metres apart in the wooded area and around 300 metres from the main road from Newmarket to the village of Moulton.
The copse is in a part of Warren Hill known locally as The Gallops, where locals in the horse-racing town train horses, walk dogs and go jogging.
Ms Perks said: "The families are in a hell of a state as you can imagine and are very distressed at the thought that this could be it. But it could be a false alarm and we have to try to keep things in proportion." Last night, scene-of-crime officers were photographing the mounds and surrounding areas, searching for anything that may have been discarded and looking for footprints and other external marks before forensic experts could begin their investigation.
"As distressing as we know this is for the family, it is a very slow process. We hope this is not Jessica and Holly, but if it is we need to find them and maintain as much physical evidence as we can. It's a very time-consuming and very scientific process," said Ms Perks.
Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman, both 10, vanished from their home in the Cambridgeshire market town of Soham at around 7 p.m. on Sunday, August 4th.
Between three and four hours later the jogger heard screams coming from the woods bordering The Gallops and believed they were those of teenagers or possibly mating foxes. But two days later, when he heard that the girls had vanished, he went to Newmarket police station and reported the screaming.
- (Guardian Service)