Woman found vital Sarah clue

A woman told today how she found a vital clue in the hunt for the killer of Sarah Payne.

Deborah Bray noticed Sarah's right shoe in the road not far from where her body was found - the only item of the child's clothing to be recovered.

The trial of Roy Whiting, 42, at Lewes Crown Court has heard that fibres found by forensic scientists on the shoe strap matched fibres from a red sweatshirt he was known to have worn. The sweatshirt was found in his van.

Today Mrs Bray said she had lived in the Coolham area all her life. On Monday, 3 July last year she was driving along the B2139 when she saw the shoe in the road. During the next three days she also saw the shoe as she drove by. "It was being moved across the road, probably by traffic," she said. "By Thursday it was in the gutter."

The day she first saw the shoe was two days after eight-year-old Sarah disappeared. She had been playing with her brothers and sisters near Littlehampton, nearly 20 miles away.

On 17 July Mrs Bray heard that Sarah's body had been found near Pulborough, not far from where she had seen the shoe. She contacted police and they asked if she could find it. The following day she drove to the scene and found the shoe.

"It was under the hedge, it was definitely the same shoe," she said. "I wasn't expecting it to be there. I picked it up with my little finger and thumb very carefully in case it was the same shoe." She put it in her car and handed it over a few minutes later to a police rendezvous point.

In a statement read to the court another witness, Mrs Sandra Berry, said she saw a similar shoe nearby. She was convinced it was a left shoe but despite a search, that shoe had never been found.

Earlier the trial heard that the shallow grave in which Sarah's body was found appeared to have been dug in a hurry. Police recruited a man to dig a hole of a similar size in the same field.

Two holes were dug, one in daylight and one in darkness and in each case the work was completed in less than five minutes. The trial was told that Whiting, who denies abducting and murdering Sarah, worked for a time for Mr Douglas Wawman in the Littlehampton area. He had carried out work in Golden Avenue, East Preston, near to Sarah's grandparents, whom she was visiting with her family when she disappeared.

Mr Wawman said of Mr Whiting: "Roy I would describe as a loner with few or no friends. He was not someone I had much if anything in common with."

He said Mr Whiting took his son's dog for a walk past fields in which the Payne children had played on the evening Sarah went missing. The case continues.