Police defend hunt for schoolgirls
Police today defended their hunt for missing schoolgirls Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman after it emerged that a potentially key witness contacted them four days before he was interviewed.
The man, a taxi driver, told police he saw a man apparently struggling with two children in a car near the spot the 10-year-olds went missing in Soham, Cambs, nine days ago.
That man has not come forward, despite a nationwide appeal and massive publicity, but police tonight appeared to downplay the importance of the sighting, stressing it was one of a number of lines of inquiry.
Officers are working round-the-clock to trace cars similar to the metallic dark green car, possibly a Vectra or Peugeot 405, and to track down sex offenders and follow up about 10,000 calls received since the inquiry began.
The sheer volume of information was blamed for the delay in contacting taxi driver Ian Webster, who said he initially tried to tell detectives what he had seen on Tuesday August 6, less than 48 hours after the girls vanished.
He went to a police station in Brecon, Powys, on Tuesday but was told by a member of the public that there were no CID officers there, returned the next day and spoke to police and was told one hour later that his report had been passed to Cambridgeshire Police.
The 56-year-old contacted detectives again on Friday after his return to Newmarket because he had heard nothing from police, stopped a mobile police unit on Saturday and eventually gave a three-hour statement on Sunday.
One of his passengers did tell police on Tuesday but no public appeal was made until Monday, he said.
Mr Webster said: “I was cross I didn’t get a response after the second prompting and even more cross after the third.
“The response to it – my views are that in something of this nature time would be of an essence and time was a priority.”
Mr Webster added: “I don’t want an explanation for it. I think that the parents of the children concerned might have to seek an explanation for it.”
He said his only regret was that he had not seen the car’s registration number but said the driver was behaving “like a man demented”.
A dark green car similar to the one driven by the man police want to trace was seen in Soham shortly before the suspected abduction, fuelling fears the driver was an opportunistic abductor on the prowl who now has the schoolgirls captive.
But Detective Chief Inspector Andy Hebb defended the delay, saying: “All I can do is reiterate that every piece of the vast amount of information we have received is extremely important and treated seriously.
“Each and every piece of information is assessed and prioritised according to the current direction of the inquiry.”
He went on: “That may mean information may subsequently become more significant and vice versa when assessed against other new information.”
Mr Hebb said the taxi driver’s call was treated as a high priority from the outset and that three passengers from the taxi, one in London, had been spoken to and said at least one corroborated some of the driver’s account of events.
More than 320 officers are now working on the search team and some people are even working 24-hours a day, refusing to go home and cancelling holidays.
Officers are scouring CCTV footage and speed camera films from along the route from Soham to Newmarket where the car turned off for any sign of the car or the missing girls.
All are now being treated as priorities and a green car spotted on CCTV footage which showed Holly and Jessica crossing the car park of a sports centre in Soham town centre has been traced and eliminated.
Mr Hebb said there had still been no contact from anyone believed to have abducted the girls and said officers were still hoping the abductor or abductors would contact them following a direct appeal on Monday night from the officer leading the inquiry.
He urged the driver of the dark green car – a white man aged between 38 and 45 with black, wiry, unkempt hair and Mediterranean, tanned skin, dressed in dark clothing – to contact police, stressing that they were not interested in his driving manner and that he would be eliminated from the inquiry if he was not linked to the disappearances.
