'Please call us,' police beg abductor

Police tonight made a desperate new plea for any abductor of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman to get in touch and say if the girls are still alive.

Detective Superintendent David Beck, leading the hunt, urged their captor to telephone before midnight tomorrow. "There are still two girls out there who I still believe to be alive," he said.

Mr Beck issued a video with a direct plea to the kidnapper. On it he said: "I appeal to you again to work with me to stop this getting any worse than it is. You do have a way out. I have left you a personal message and a text message on Jessica's mobile phone. Listen to that message. It will tell you how to contact me so that you can stop this now. You have the opportunity to speak to me. This is the time to use it."

Later at a press conference he added: "If it is the case these children have been abducted, and we must assume that this is a strong possibility, then any development where we can establish a dialogue with the abductor is vital. In the absence of any evidence to say that Holly and Jessica are not alive I have to assume that they are." The renewed hope that the missing 10-year-olds are not dead but being held against their will came after an allnight forensic examination showed two woodland mounds of freshly dug earth were not the shallow graves police had feared, but in all likelihood were badger setts.

The girls' families spoke earlier today of their rollercoaster night of anguish, before police were able to tell them this morning that they had not found the bodies of their daughters. Holly's father Kevin said the news had brought a "glimmer of hope" which would strengthen him and his wife Nicola, 35, as the search for the girls continues. Mr Wells, 38, said: "It has been an incredible rollercoaster of a night. We found out the news officially at about

6.30am. It has been extremely upsetting. We were obviously fearing the worst, but we are still here to carry on the fight and while there is still a glimmer of hope, we shall carry that fight on."

The two sets of parents had dreaded the worst after a jogger reported the disturbed earth less than 10 miles from the girls' homes in Soham, Cambridgeshire. He also said he had heard screams in the area on the night of the Sunday the girls vanished 10 days ago.

In a statement this afternoon, both families said: "The last 24 hours have been very emotional. We are desperate to have our daughters back safe and sound.

"Yesterday evening was very, very long. Yesterday night was a very, very long night - until we were told that the mounds of earth were not the graves of Holly and Jessica."

The families said that learning of the discovery of the disturbed earth in Newmarket "left us feeling numb, frightened, and dreading what would be found. Clearly for us to then be told that the girls had not been found dead and were therefore still missing has come as a tremendous relief and allowed us to continue in our hope and our belief that Jessica and Holly are still alive and will be returned safely very soon."

At 6.30am, after more than 14 hours of searching the woodland last night, Detective Chief Inspector Andy Hebb, leading the teams at the Warren Hill site, said: "We have not found anything here connected to the disappearance of Jessica and Holly.

"We must now regain our focus on to getting the girls back alive and well to their parents. My heart goes out to the parents at this time. It has been a very long and distressing night for both sets of parents."

Det Constable Brian Stevens, a family

liaison officer who spent last night with the Chapmans at their home, said: "It was a very long and intense evening. There was a vigil. No one slept. There was very little conversation. Just before 4am we were told the first area was of no interest to this inquiry. It appeared to be a badger sett and the second area was likely to be the same."

Det Sergeant Chris Mead, the Wellses' liaison officer, said: "When we got the call about the badger sett there was immense relief. I don't think they cared what it was, so long as it didn't contain their daughter."

Describing their night-long vigil for news, Holly's grandmother, Agnes Wells, 61, wept as she spoke of the "horrific" wait. She said that although Holly's parents were "coping badly" they were bearing up, with today's news giving them hope she may still be alive.

She went on: "Just imagine if you thought your grandchild was dead. Last night, they were dead but this morning we have a little hope. We had to prepare for the worst and it wasn't until this morning that we heard the news. It was one of the longest nights of my life." Crossing her fingers in the air, Mrs Wells wiped away tears as she said: "We are clinging on to hope."

Earlier, Mr Hebb had told reporters that a detailed search of the area, which he compared to an archaeological dig, had been carried out throughout the night.

Shortly after 1am, officers had put up a white tent on a metal frame and carried it into the trees on Warren Hill overlooking the town of Newmarket, intensifying fears they had found graves. The forensic science officers used powerful floodlights to help their examination of the two patches of recently dug earth lying 30 yards apart.

The girls' families were told to "brace themselves for the worst". The first clue that the search was to prove a false alarm came in the early hours when police said the initial search was "inconclusive".

The jogger had first gone to police last Tuesday to report what he thought were teenage screams sometime between 10.40pm and

11.10pm on 4 August. He returned to the Warren Hill area at 4.25pm yesterday, saw the mounds and alerted police, who immediately cordoned off a 300-metre-square area.

The police inquiry is now back at square one with little in the way of further progress or clues as to how or why the girls went missing. Police have now cast doubt on one of the key leads in the search. They said they were doubtful over the signicance of taxi driver Ian Webster's account of a man in a green car driving erratically and apparently struggling with two children near where the girls went missing. They formed this view after interviewing the three passengers in the taxi and appealing for other drivers to corroborate the driver's statement. Mr Webster said the driver was swerving from one side to the other of the A142 from Soham to Newmarket, shortly after Holly and Jessica went missing on 4 August.

Mr Webster, of Newmarket, said the driver was waving his arms around in a "demented" fashion. The man was described as white, aged 38-45, with black, wiry hair, tanned or Mediterranean-looking skin, and was dressed in dark clothing. No one has so far responded to police appeals for him to come forward.

Last night Mr and Mrs Wells, and Jessica's mother and father, Sharon and Leslie Chapman, were being supported by close family and friends at their homes just streets apart in Soham. As they waited to hear what police had found in the woods, the Wellses kept an open house, with family and friends coming in and out, Holly's 12-year-old brother Oliver playing in the garden and Mr Wells constantly on the phone. At the Chapmans' home, windows and doors remained firmly shut.

The foreboding spread throughout the town, with pubs closing in the early evening as news spread of the woodland search.

The discovery came nine days after police launched a missing persons inquiry which has become the biggest ever in Britain.

The two girls were last seen going upstairs to Holly's room during a family barbecue on the evening of 4 August. When Holly's family went to check on them at 8.30pm, they were gone.

Police discovered they had played on Holly's computer, then slipped out unnoticed. They were spotted in the centre of Soham by more than a dozen people. The last sighting was at 7.20pm.

Additional reporting by Patrick Sawer, Adam Blenford and Humfrey Hunter