'Jigsaw of evidence proves guilt'

A compelling jigsaw of evidence proves Roy Whiting is the man who kidnapped and murdered eight-year-old Sarah Payne, a court heard today.

Though not all the pieces were present, enough were there to ensure a clear picture of his guilt had emerged, said Timothy Langdale, QC, prosecuting.

Whiting, 42, denies kidnapping Sarah at Kingston Gorse, West Sussex, in July last year before burying her in a shallow grave near the A29 at Pulborough.

Mr Langdale, in his closing address at Lewes Crown Court, said that Whiting's appearance in the witness box over the last two days had done nothing to diminish the force of the evidence against him. "If anything it has in some respects strengthened it," he said.

Mr Langdale said forensic scientist Roy Chapman had described a particular fibre as "part of the jigsaw" and the analogy was particularly appropriate.

He added: "The prosecution cannot provide you with every single piece - it would be astonishing in any criminal-case if the prosecution could do that." He said that Whiting was not going to allow himself to be actually seen kidnapping and killing Sarah Payne.

"Nobody is going to allow themselves to be filmed or recorded when they bury a body at dead of night in a field," he said. "But there are so many pieces of the jigsaw available that the picture itself emerges with clarity, the picture of this defendant being the man who seized Sarah on that Saturday evening, killed her and buried her body in that field."

Part of the jigsaw was that Sarah's 11-year-old brother Lee saw a white van driving down the lane where she had disappeared a few seconds earlier.

The fact that Lee spotted the rear-wheels spinning when Whiting's Fiat van was frontwheel drive did not mean all his evidence was wrong.

"People may give accounts which are inaccurate or wrong in some respects and right in others," he said. Mr Langdale added: "Is is coincidence that Roy Whiting had a white van? That is what he would have you believe. The sighting by itself is hardly enough of the jigsaw to provide a picture with any sort of clarity at all but there is more."

He said Whiting not only owned a white van but had been out and about in it that Saturday evening and had then the following day given an account of his movements which differed sharply from that he gave in the witness box this week."

Sarah's parents, Sara and Michael, were in court today as they have been throughout the trial. Mr Langdale said: "The pieces of the jigsaw get more and more revealing of the true picture as we move along, not just because of the facts they reveal but also because of this defendant's evasions and deceits."

He said that Whiting appeared to be the victim of "another unlucky coincidence" in that the spot where Sarah's body was found happened to be a place he knew well.

"He knew it down to the details of tracks," he said.

All the places Whiting stopped at on the day Sarah was kidnapped, according to his evidence, were places where children were likely to be, said Mr Langdale.

The trial continues.