2. Suspect

Nine days after eight-year-old Sarah Payne disappears, her face is everywhere and the incident room is drowning in calls. But unbeknown to the public, detectives have a suspect they cannot name — Roy Whiting, a convicted sex offender who lives nearby. Within twenty-four hours of Sarah vanishing, officers interview him and, unconvinced by his account of his whereabouts on the night she went missing, they arrest him. But they are unable to find any real evidence linking him to Sarah, and have to let him go.

Meanwhile the hunt for the missing child continues apace, and News of the World editor Rebekah Brooks decides to go down to Sussex herself to talk to Sarah Payne’s mother, Sara, in person. While she is there she learns, but cannot print, that Whiting is a key suspect. Then, after Sarah has been missing for 17 days, a farm worker clearing a field north of Pulborough finds the partially buried body of a child.

Shadow World: Gripping stories from the shadows — BBC investigations from across the UK.

Presenter and Series Producer: Edmund Coulthard
Producer: Joanna Humphreys
Sound Design: Iain Chambers
Head of Production: Stephanie Edwards
Production Coordinator: Neena Abdullah
Executive Producer: Innes Bowen
BBC Local Commissioning Editor: Alistair Miskin

A Forest production for BBC Radio 4