Earlier that morning, PC Pete Coll had ridden his rickety East German MZ motorbike back along the A27 from Seaford to resume the search. He had already learned from the local radio that the girls were still missing and he wondered what the response would be. As Moulsecoomb police box, at the foot of Wild Park, came into view, he battled to stay on two wheels. Police vans stretched as far as the eye could see on both sides of the carriageway. Hundreds of police officers milled around waiting for their orders while others were already making their way across the road, no doubt to question the thousands of friends, family and neighbours of the missing girls.
As he parked up on the verge he saw Superintendent Dave Tomlinson clearly running the show, with less senior brass scurrying off at his every command. This military-style operation was in full swing not twelve hours after he had raised the alarm. The lump in his throat was a devil to swallow. How proud he was that, just like in the Metropolitan Police he had recently left, his new force knew how to respond when tiny lives were at stake.
The fog had lifted and it was turning into a balmy autumn day. Officers had shed their jackets but the bleak shadow of two young girls having vanished off the face of the earth hung heavy. Pete was not alone in quietly fearing the worst. None would voice their concerns but few police officers anticipated a happy ending.
Over the years I looked for, and commanded the search for, countless missing children. They all start with a dreadful foreboding followed by a deep, personal and not entirely irrational fear of ‘but for the grace of God this could be my kids’. After the heart-wrench of dealing with a tragedy, or near miss, involving a child, I was not the only cop who would sneak into their children’s bedrooms to hug them a little tighter than usual.
Superintendent Dave Tomlinson’s choice of the police box as his command post was obvious; the locals treated it as their police station, rather than the actual one in John Street. However, the squat, single-storey building had neither the space nor the infrastructure for what would be Sussex Police’s biggest operation since Patrick Magee had tried to blow up Brighton’s Grand Hotel, and with it the government, in 1984.
Tomlinson summoned the force’s Major Incident Van to be trundled down from the headquarters in Lewes. With a maximum speed of around forty miles per hour, these Bedford MK trucks were never part of Sussex Police’s rapid-response capability. Yet once in place and set up, with their plug-in telephone exchange, bullhorn radio transmitters and reams of paper message pads, they were state of the art in command and control.
The superintendent needed information fast. This was the ‘golden hour’ – the misnomer given to the immediate aftermath of discovering or suspecting a crime; the small window of opportunity to find forensic evidence, track down witnesses and get the truth out of people. Normally it’s closer to twenty-four hours but when searching for missing children this window of time is even more critical. The majority of abducted children are murdered within the first hour. For those who are not, with each tick of the clock, their chances ebb away. Only a tiny percentage survive more than a day, and that milestone was looming.
The temptation when young children go missing is for the public to arrive in droves to search anywhere and anyhow. While having ‘boots on the ground’ is important, frustrating as it may seem, only a methodical and logical approach works. Otherwise chaos reigns. Rendezvous points apply that control. This way commanders can prioritize areas based upon the likelihood of finding the child alive.
Nowadays Police Search Advisors determine search parameters. Their training and experience make them experts in finding missing children – always aware that time is the enemy. In the 1980s, things were not so structured. When I was deployed from Gatwick to Horsham around this time to look for a missing man, our team of twelve was given a huge forest to search and told not to come back until we had. No one gave us a search grid or a photo nor checked how thoroughly we had looked.
Back in Moulsecoomb, everyone was scouring Wild Park and beyond. All that was on anyone’s mind was finding the girls safe and sound. Despite the police’s best intentions, working out what had or had not been searched must have been a nightmare. Among the first who seemed very keen – almost too keen – to assist in any way he could with the search was Russell Bishop.
The Moulsecoomb kids were familiar with every inch of Wild Park’s woodland. Perfect for making dens, having a crafty smoke or even some sneaky sex, it was an obvious place to apply a little local knowledge. Behind the rickety wooden pavilion where Pete Coll had searched the night before runs a hidden path leading to the roadway, through the copse and on to the back of the Coldean estate.
Still desperate and having been out all night, Michelle could not settle – who could? So just before 1 p.m., she resumed searching with a neighbour.
On reaching the entrance to Wild Park she saw Russell Bishop, dressed in a brown V-neck jumper, grey trousers and matching shoes. Standing with him were Marion Stevenson, Kath Measor and Bishop’s dog Misty, a brown and white terrier cross-breed. Kath heard Bishop announce that he had seen the girls the night before and that he ‘regretted going out’. This seemed an odd comment.
About fifteen minutes later Michelle saw Bishop again, this time with Dougie Judd. Claiming his dog was a tracker, out of the blue, Bishop asked her for a piece of Karen’s clothing so Misty could pick up her scent. She told him to go to her house and ask the policeman there for her white coat. A short while later he returned with the garment in a Sainsbury’s carrier bag. Today, this would be unthinkable. Even with no identified suspects and no certainty a crime had even been committed, disturbing victims’ clothing would be regarded as catastrophic.
Then a man turned up in a car and she heard the driver, Judd and Bishop discussing going with the dog to 49 Acres Field, some way from Wild Park, in case Misty could pick up a scent there. Michelle went in the car with them but never saw Bishop give the coat to the dog to sniff.
Around three-quarters of an hour later, after what must have been the most perfunctory of searches, Bishop was back at the police box. PC Chris Markham, on instructions from his inspector, walked into the park with him, Judd and Misty to resume his tracking. As they approached the park entrance, Bishop ruffled the coat in front of the dog’s nose, proudly explaining it would now have Karen’s scent. Eventually they got to Jacob’s Ladder, the steps leading from the park entrance to Coldean, and the dog lost concentration. The officer felt it was all a ruse and, doubtful the dog had any tracking ability at all, suggested returning to the box to join an organized search.
Bishop agreed, then unprompted blurted out, ‘I’d hate to find the girls, especially if they had been messed up.’ This shocked Markham as all the other helpers he had spoken to were optimistic that the girls would be found safe and well, despite the fears held by many officers. He made a mental note of this bizarre comment, especially from one who had been so keen to ingratiate himself to the police.