BRITAIN: A computer is yielding 'significant' information on the disappearance of two schoolgirls, writes Sarah Hall in London
As search for missing English schoolgirls Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman enters its seventh day, the investigation has become one of the largest police hunts in British criminal history, second only to the search for Sarah Payne (8) two years ago.
Over 250 officers from 10 forces are pooling their resources in a hunt which Det Supt David Hankins described as "a complex jigsaw", ranging from fingertip searches of farmland to intricate analysis of computer records, trawling of waterways and psychological profiling.
Detectives have profiled the type of abductor they believe is holding the youngsters, with the help of Det Insp Chuck Burton of Derbyshire police.
Mr Burton, an expert on child abductions and murders, runs the Catchem system (the Centralised Analytical Team Collating Homicide Expertise and Management), in which he has recorded statistics from 40 years of child offences.
A team of child psychologists is believed to have pinpointed a paedophile who "grooms" children for abduction, rather than snatching them in a chance abduction. That kind of offender looks increasingly likely if the girls e-mailed or met someone through a chatroom.
Detectives, who believe the abductor may well be in the Soham area of Cambridgeshire in eastern England, given that the girls were apparently taken from there, are reticent about releasing the full details of the profile.
But a senior detective on the case said of such offenders in general: "These people tend to have some previous history of offending, some sexual history behind what's happened . . . We are looking at sex offenders, registered people with previous convictions for sex offences, in the area."
They believe the abductor, who they are sure is a man, may be anxious about where to turn having committed the offence.
Hence the two direct appeals to him - yesterday and on Thursday evening - in language calculated not to intimidate.
According to Det Supt Hankins, "The number of officers we've been using would surely by now have discovered these girls [if they had had an accident]. Given that they haven't, and that there have been no firm sightings beyond Sunday evening . . . it looks increasingly likely they've been abducted."
The physical search is now focused on waterways around the market town. However, most of the officers are focusing on the intelligence side of the investigation.
They are pinpointing, observing and interviewing known sex offenders in the area; analysing mobile phone and computer records; building up a profile of the girls' interests and backgrounds; and contending with each shred of information being offered in over 3,500 calls.
Meanwhile, at the hub of Operation Fincham at police headquarters in Huntingdon, three police computer experts, with additional expert back-up, have been working around the clock on "significant" information gleaned on Holly's computer, which the girls were using in the half-hour before they left the Wellses' modern detached home, and are now analysing Jessica's computer.