Sarah Benford: Police fail to find missing girl's body

Northamptonshire Police spent two weeks searching land in Kettering

Police searching for the body of a teenage girl who disappeared more than 20 years ago have failed to find her, despite saying they were "positive" she would be located.

A murder investigation was launched after Sarah Benford, then 14, went missing from a Northampton care home in April 2000.

Officers spent two weeks excavating land in Kettering.

The officer in charge said: "Sadly we haven't found Sarah in this location."

Sarah was last seen by her mother in Kettering on 6 April 2000, two days after absconding from the care home.

Sarah was last seen by her mother two days after disappearing from a care home

Nobody has ever been charged over her disappearance, despite a number of arrests and searches taking place in Kettering, London and Wales.

"Significant intelligence" gathered by the force's Major Investigation Team led to the search of an area of land in Valley Walk, in Kettering, which started on 15 November.

Det Supt Joe Banfield had said he was "positive" Sarah Benford's body would be found

During the search, Det Supt Joe Banfield said: "Sadly we haven't found Sarah yet, but I remain positive that we will find her - it's just going to take some time."

However, at a press conference on Tuesday he said the initial search area had been "expanded... just to allow us to have that high degree of certainty that we had encompassed and dug in every area that we possibly could... in an effort to locate an indication of human remains.

"Sadly, we haven't found Sarah in this location here."

He said: "We really were hopeful that we would be able to return Sarah to her family as a result of what we're doing down here, and we're very disappointed we haven't been able to do that."

A family video shows Sarah singing and dancing about 18 months before she disappeared

The detective said policing in the 20 years since Sarah disappeared had changed "immeasurably".

"So yes, an investigation - if it happened tomorrow - would be very, very different, but that's as a result of the learning that's happened over 20 years, it really is a generation of policing."

He said the search had "triggered people to come forward with information that they may not have come forward with before, so we've got a number of other bits and pieces of information that we're going to look at".

Equipment used during the search was being moved off the site on Tuesday

Potential new witnesses had been identified, he said, and officers would be speaking with them in the coming weeks.

He added: "I'm very clear that whilst we don't know how Sarah died, and we don't know where she's buried, what we do know is there are a number of people locally - there must be - that know exactly what happened.

"My plea to them is they should come forward now, and end the family's suffering."