The murder of Sarah Payne was a major/high profile murder case in Kingston gorse, west Sussex.

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The murder of Sarah Payne

The murder of Sarah Payne was a major/high profile murder case in Kingston gorse, west Sussex. The victim was last seen on 1st July 2000. She was murdered by a car mechanic Roy William Whiting. There was forensic evidence left at various scenes/ places (van, shoe, sweatshirt, clown curtain, hair and other fibers') that was found within two months of Sarah Payne being reported gone. Eventually the case was solved and Roy William Whiting was convicted to abduction/murder and was given life imprisonment.

Sarah Payne, born on the 13th October 1992 was only eight when she was violently assaulted and murdered. Her family described her disappearance at "just pure horror"(murder uk). This shows that Sarah Payne was loved very much by her family and the memories of her will never be forgotten.

Sarah Payne disappeared on the 1st July from a cornfield near the home of her grandparents in Kingston Close, west Sussex, England. Sarah had been playing with her brothers and sister only a few minutes away from her grandparent's home. A nationwide search was underway within 48 hours and by then her parents had already made television appeals for her safe return. It was only later that month on the 17th July that a farmer reported to the police that he had found a body in a field near Pulborough, which was 15 miles away from the village of the disappearance of Sarah Payne.

It wasn't long till somebody was put into the frame for the abduction and murder of Sarah Payne. Whiting was brought into custody and questioned about the disappearance of Sarah Payne. The cornfield of where she disappeared was only a matter of 5 miles away from Whiting flat. When they were questioning him they found out that he had been put on the sex offenders list and were suspicious of his lack of concern/ sympathy for the abduction/murder of Sarah Payne. At first Whiting was let go free of charge because there was no concrete evidence of that his had any connections to do with the murder. Later on that week he was seen in his van attempting to drive away from his home town but was stopped by the police in which they found a receipt for petrol from 'Buck Barn' garage near Pulborough which contradicted with his alibis statement of being at a funfair in Hove at 5.30pm and then returned to his flat by 9.30 pm on the night of Sarah's disappearance.Whiting was released on bail and went to live with his father in Crawley while his flat in St Augustine's Road was being searched by forensic scientists. No evidence was found in Whitings flat to suggest that Sarah had been there. Again on the 2nd July 2000, Whiting was arrested on suspicion of abduction. He was then again released on police bail. On 17 July 2000 Sarah Payne's body was discovered and Roy Whiting was subsequently re-arrested on 31 July 2000. Although Sarah's body was found just 3 miles from the service station where Whiting had bought fuel on the night Sarah disappeared, Whitings failed to confirm his alibi. There was still not enough evidence to press charges and Whiting was released on bail once again.Roy William Whiting was born on 26 January, 1959, in Horsham Hospital, in West Sussex. The son of George Whiting, a sheet metal worker and his wife, Pamela, a former cook, he grew up in the Langley Green area of Crawley with his brother, Peter, and sister, Gillian. As a teenager, Whiting struggled at school, leaving on his 16th birthday with no qualifications.On 4th March 1995; Whiting abducted and sexually assaulted a girl of only eight years old on the Langley Green estate in Crawley. He was arrested a few weeks later after a man who knew Whiting came forward after he heard that the abductor's car had been a red Ford Sierra. Three months later Whiting admitted the he did abduct and assaulted the girl and was sentenced to four years in prison. Whiting was released from prison in November 1997 and had only served 2 years and 5 months of his four year sentence. Whiting was one of the first people in Britain to go on the sex offenders' register. Whiting, knowing that he would not be welcome back in Crawley, moved some 25 miles (40 km) away to Little Hampton on the West Sussex coast, where he rented a flat in St Augustine's Road. Two years later he moved into another flat in the same road. On 2 July 2000 officers from Sussex Police visited his flat making inquiries into the disappearance of Sarah Payne.
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Shortly after Sarah had disappeared new evidence had come to light. Sarah's brother Lee had noticed a white transit van passing along the lane. It was noted that Whiting had brought a white van only a week before Sarah disappeared. When the police took the car for forensics they found a red sweatshirt, a pair of socks, a checked shirt, a clown- patterned curtain and a petrol receipt proving that Whiting had been around at around the tine that Sarah was taken.

The first of evidence that was taken into consideration was the shoe. This shoe ...

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