All language subtitles for Britains.Most.Evil.Killers.S02E05.WEBRip.en

-On Saturday,
July the 1st, 2000,

8-year-old schoolgirl
Sarah Payne

was snatched from the street

in front of her
grandparents' house

at Littlehampton
in West Sussex.

For the next fortnight,

the whole of the U.K.
was gripped

as the police desperately
searched for the little girl.

-Everybody wants to find that
child because a missing child

is every parent's
worst nightmare.

-But Sarah would
never be found.

She had been abducted
and murdered by a 41-year-old

convicted pedophile
called Roy Whiting.

-This was a girl he didn't know
who fell into the hands

of what could only be
described as a monster.

-Whiting was
the number-one suspect,

but the police had no evidence

and had to release him
back into the public.

-I mean, I had nightmares
about it.

I literally had nightmares
over the first few weeks.

What happens if he takes
a third child?

-The whole of the U.K.
wanted to see justice

served upon Roy Whiting,

one of the world's
most evil killers.

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

It was a news story that broke
hearts across the nation.

When the body of Sarah Payne was
found on the 17th of July, 2000,

it brought the search
for the 8-year-old girl

to a devastating end.

She had been missing
for over 2 weeks

after being snatched
from the street

by a known pedophile
called Roy Whiting.

The search for
the blonde schoolgirl

had captivated
the whole of Britain.

-She's a soft,
gentle little girl.

She hasn't got a horrible
bone in her body.

Somebody out there
must have seen her.

They must have seen her
on that road.

They must have seen her.

-Sky News anchorman
Jeremy Thompson

was just one of those
following the story.

-The scale of the search was
huge, right across the country.

Everybody was looking
for Sarah Payne,

hoping that they might
help police to find her.

In the end, of course,
as so often happens

in these sort of cases,

the perpetrator was right
under the police's nose,

just a few miles away from where
Sarah Payne had gone missing.

-It was a case that affected
everyone involved,

including lead detective,
Martyn Underhill.

-That picture shows innocence.

It also shows happiness.

Those eyes, those beautiful eyes
are smiling at you actually.

They show completeness,
and all that was taken away.

And her photo will live forever.

-The murderer, 41-year-old
Roy Whiting,

had long been suspected
as her killer,

but it took over 7 months to
gather all the evidence needed

to finally put him behind bars.

-He was a loser who was a loner,

and he'll always be remembered
for the wrong reasons,

which is he was a monster
who killed a little girl.

-This killer's story begins
almost 60 years ago.

Whiting was born on
January the 26, 1959,

in Horsham in West Sussex,

and he grew up
in nearby Crawley.

-It was a family that was beset
by quite a lot of tragedy.

So there were six children, and
three of them died in infancy,

so an awful lot of trauma

to cope with quite
early on in his life.

-Life for the young man
didn't get any easier.

Whiting's parents,
George and Pamela,

divorced when
he was in his teens.

-Roy Whiting left school

without any qualifications
whatsoever.

He was somebody who didn't
really get along in school.

He wasn't particularly academic.

He didn't really fit in at all,

whether socially or
in terms of his studies,

so he was always
a bit of an outcast.

-Whiting was clearly a bit
of an oddball, a loner.

Friends described him as
a bit of a Billy-no-mates.

-When you combine that
with the insecure attachments

he had within the family

that the lack of relationship
with his mother,

the disrupted relationship
with his father,

it does start to write
a bit of a script.

-As he entered adulthood,

Whiting found
a passion for cars,

and he began working
in a local garage.

-In 1986, he married
a woman he'd met

when she was working as an
attendant at a petrol station,

and they had a child together,

but they separated
and ended up getting divorced.

-By 1990, 31-year-old Whiting

was living alone
in his hometown of Crawley.

-It's pretty clear to me
that Whiting

developed an increasing
interest in young girls,

girls in their early years,

and he, I'm sure,
fought to some extent

to control that obsession.

-Pedophilia is actually
a sexual-social disorder

that manifests itself
in deviant behavior.

That's what it is.

It's like you have a disturbance

of sexual disorder
in your brain,

and instead of doing
nothing about it,

you go and you attack kids.

-I think he probably
recognized it in himself

but didn't quite know
how to handle it,

and so I think you got
that classic mental conflict

that afflicts pedophiles and
indeed affects serial killers.

Part of them thinks, "I want to
do it," and part of them thinks,

"No, you mustn't."

-But Whiting struggled to
control his depraved urges.

-Eyewitnesses, neighbors,

people in the vicinity
where he lived talked later

about how they believed
that he was seen

quite often
"scouting for girls,"

somebody said, that around
school going-home time

that he would set off in his van

and head off to local schools
to see what he could see.

-So he's probably doing two
things at this point in time.

He's fantasizing about
what he would do

if he was on his own
with one of these children.

He's also identifying
vulnerabilities.

He's getting familiar
with this victim group.

He really is a predator getting
ready to pounce on his prey.

-At the age of 36,

Whiting couldn't resist
his urges any longer.

-On the 4th of March, 1995,

he gave in to what you might,
I suppose,

describe as the wolf within him
and abducted a young girl.

-He literally scooped her
up off the street,

took her away to a wooded area
where he sexually assaulted her,

so this was a really
horrendous crime.

-Soon after the abduction,

Whiting had sold his car
to avoid detection,

but the police soon
tracked it down,

and forensic evidence within
left them with little doubt.

-It became abundantly clear
to the police

that this was indeed the car

in which the poor girl
had been abducted.

They arrested
and charged Whiting

with a sexual attack
on a young girl.

-In June 1995,

Roy Whiting was sentenced
to just 4 years in prison

for the kidnap and assault
of a 9-year-old girl.

-Before he went to trial,
a psychiatrist examined him

and came to the conclusion that
Whiting was not a pedophile,

that this was a one-off event

and that he was
very unlikely to re-offend.

While he was in prison, however,

there was a second
psychiatric report

which suggested that not only

was he likely
to re-offend again,

but he was certain to,
effectively,

that this was a man who was
obsessed with young girls.

-Whiting served just 2 1/2
years of his sentence,

and in 1997,
he was back on the streets,

albeit with a mark
against his name.

-He was one of the first people
to get placed on what was then

a new thing called
the sex-offenders' register.

Registered sex offenders
have to be known to the police,

and where they live
is important,

and there has to be
an accurate record of them,

and they have to report to
the police on a regular basis.

-Whiting didn't return
to Crawley and instead headed

for Littlehampton
on the south coast of England.

-Well, after leaving prison,

Roy Whiting moved
to a seaside town,

a town full of families,
a town full of children,

and this was no accident.

And essentially
he tried to blend in

on a superficial level
in terms of jobs,

in terms of appearing
to be an average guy,

but this wasn't going to last
because he was very intent

that he was going
to offend again.

-They know they can
never curb the urge.

They can postpone
the urge for years,

but they will come again,
and they will attack again.

-He was quite, I think,
ashamed of who he was.

He didn't like himself
very much,

and he wanted to exert power.

He wanted to exert control,

and that's what turned him
into the predator he became.

-On July the 1st, 2000,
Sara and Michael Payne

had taken their four
children to Kingston Gorse

in Littlehampton
to visit family.

It would be a day that would
change their lives forever.

In the late evening,
8-year-old Sarah

was playing with her
brothers and sister

in a field opposite
her grandparents' home

when she suddenly vanished.

-It seemed that Sarah was a few
yards behind the others,

and they were out playing,
and suddenly they look around,

and she was no longer there.

She had disappeared.

It was well into the evening
before the family got concerned

enough after they had
searched themselves

before they raised the alarm.

-Sarah's older brother, Lee,

told police that he saw a man
in a white van speeding away

just after losing
sight of his sister.

There was a real possibility
that she had been snatched.

-This was something that
happened very, very quickly.

It was a real blitz abduction.

There was no grooming.

There was no kind
of manipulation.

It was something that
happened very, very fast.

-The best advice
we had was a child

abducted by a pedophile
will be dead within 6 hours.

-The police had to work fast.

They needed to track down
the man in the white van.

Their hope was he would lead
them to the 8-year-old girl,

and Sarah Payne
could be brought home.

Her distraught
family dialed 999.

-The call came in at
9:00 p.m. on a Saturday night,

and by 10:00,
the balloon had gone up.

And that's a policing term
for you escalate

it right to the top to
the assistant chief constable,

the deputy chief constable.

The balloon goes up.

Everybody is called in.

And within 2 hours of
Sarah Payne going missing,

there were over 100 cops
involved in the case.

-Officers search
through the night,

but by morning,
they had no luck.

As news broke across
the country,

the media reached Littlehampton
in their droves.

-It is possible that she
moved some distance

that she could still be
hidden somewhere,

but we do have to consider
there is a growing possibility

that actually she has
been abducted.

Time is still of the essence,
and for that reason,

we are prioritizing
that line of inquiry.

-It was probably 24 hours
after the little girl

was reported missing that police
started to put out word

that they were concerned
that there was a missing girl,

which has the effect of
recruiting the general public

to be out there
as extra eyes and ears

to perhaps keep an eye out

for this little girl
to search for her.

I'm sure in the first 24 hours,

most people were looking
in the vicinity

of the grandparents'
home thinking,

"Well, she's just
got herself lost.

She's wandered into the woods.

She's in the field, or she's
wandered off down the road."

And it would have
been only slowly

that the concern would
have started to dawn

that perhaps she'd been abducted

rather than just
wandered off and got lost.

-The police only had one
lead to work with.

Sarah's 13-year-old
brother had seen a man

behind the wheel
of a white van

driving away
from the scene of the abduction.

-He was very clear that Sarah
fell over and cut her knee.

She ran diagonally across
the field to go back to Nana

because Nana was
at the end of the field,

but her house overlooked it,
so Sarah runs across the field.

Lee thinks, "I'm going to
get in trouble

because I'm the oldest child.
I need to supervise this."

Sarah disappeared into a hedge.

When Lee came out through
the same hedge seconds later,

there was no Sarah,

and there was a white van
driving on the road.

-As the police search
for potential suspects,

the hunt for Sarah continued.

-Within a couple of days, I can
remember the scale of this story

started to escalate
quite rapidly.

The way the police
were describing this,

they were really concerned.

In other words,
abduction quite quickly

had become a possibility,

and they were asking
the public to help.

And very soon, the public around
the area in West Sussex

were out in quite big numbers
sort of combing fields and woods

and trying to look
for this girl.

-Within a couple of hours,

we had over
100 police officers involved,

and by the Sunday morning
and Sunday afternoon,

there were 500
police officers involved.

And by that Tuesday, so 3
or 4 days into the incident,

there were over 1,000
police officers involved,

so at one stage,

one in three police
officers in Sussex

were working on this case.

It was staggering.

-Everybody wants to help.

Nobody wants to see
a child missing.

Everybody wants to find
that child

because a missing child
is every family,

every parent's worst nightmare.

-A school photograph
of a smiling Sarah Payne

was splashed across
front pages in a bid

to try and find the little girl.

-That photo of her
in her school uniform

just swept the world,

and I think there's not
many things as a police officer,

after all the service I've had

and the murders
I've investigated that shock me.

I was really surprised to see
so many satellite vans

outside Littlehampton
Police Station, from Japan,

New Zealand,
America, Sweden, Norway.

Every country in the world
sent a satellite van

to report on this case.

-As the search continued,

the police were
focusing their efforts

on one suspect in particular.

Just 24 hours after
Sarah Payne's abduction,

they had visited with
a local man who had been placed

on the sex-offenders'
register 3 years previously,

41-year-old Roy Whiting.

-We knew where he lived,
and he was being

regularly visited
by our sex-offender team.

He didn't have
a white van, though.

He was clearly the most
appropriate person to look at

because of what he did
in Crawley a few years before,

where he'd abducted a child
and then sexually abused her.

The only bit of the jigsaw
missing was the white van,

and, of course, when the
officers finally traced Whiting

on the Sunday afternoon,

less than 24 hours
after the abduction,

there was the white van
that no one knew

he had just bought
from Southampton.

-They chatted to him.

He said he'd been
at a funfair in Hove

just down the coast at the time
that Sarah went missing,

and so he couldn't have possibly
been anywhere near the scene.

-I think that the way
that he actually told that lie,

the fact he had
the confidence to tell that lie,

that suggests to me

that he thought he was going
to get away with this.

He thought the police
wouldn't dig too deeply.

-But as they left,
they both said,

"I'm not very happy about this.

Let's keep an eye on him
and see what he does,"

and they sat in their police car
outside the address.

Literally minutes later,

Whiting comes out
and goes to the white van

and goes to open the door

and out falls a receipt.

-The two detectives immediately
got out of their car

and headed back towards Whiting

for a closer look
at the receipt.

It was from a petrol station
on a road far from Hove

dated Saturday,
July the 1st, the day

Sarah Payne had been abducted.

-The receipt clearly shows
that he lied

because the A24 is
several miles north of the A27.

He's going towards Crawley,
and it's nowhere near Hove.

So that small receipt
falling out the door

as the officers stepped up
to question him again,

the second time they had
spoken to him, showed,

one, he lied about where he was
on Saturday night,

and, two, that he'd been
in a different location

to where he said he was.

And those officers made
a very brave decision

to arrest him
on suspicion of abduction.

-Police seize the white van
for forensic testing,

and Whiting was taken in
for questioning,

but he wasn't telling
the detectives anything.

-We know you're a pedophile,
and we know you lied

about where you
were Saturday night.

But, of course,
we didn't have Sarah.

We didn't know if she was
alive or dead.

We didn't know where she was,
and he was going, "No comment,"

so the inevitable happened.

We had to release him.

-Throughout, he doesn't explain
at any point to the police,

doesn't help the police
with their inquiries.

He does his best
to conceal his guilt.

He does in no way tries
to relieve any of the suffering

that Sara and Michael Payne
were going through.

Heartless would be a pleasant
way of describing Whiting.

-At a press conference
on Monday,

July the 3rd, 2 days
after her disappearance,

Sarah Payne's parents
made an emotional appeal

for her safe return.

-We need her home now today
as quickly as we possibly can.

She's our life.

-The thing that
impressed everybody,

and the thing that made
people cry in the room

was her undying belief,

her unswerving belief,
that Sarah was coming home,

and every day
in every press briefing

she spoke to Sarah and said,

"We were coming. We know
you're there. We love you."

Well, I'm getting
emotional doing it now,

and she did that day in,
day out for a long time.

And it was hugely emotional,
and it was also hugely genuine.

People saw it for what it was,
and it was incredible actually.

-Sarah, if you're watching,
Mommy loves you.

And we miss you,
and we're looking for you,

telling you we're
going to find you.

We're going to find you.

-Two weeks pass without
any sign of Sarah Payne.

Chances of finding the
missing 8-year-old girl

were becoming slim.

-As long as there's no news,
there's always hope that a child

who has vanished
will be found again,

but as every policeman
and expert will tell you,

if they're not found within
the first 24 or 48 hours,

there is a law
of diminishing returns,

the chances of
finding them alive and well

start to reduce quite radically.

Everybody was desperate
that this bonny little child

who they'd seen in pictures,
who they heard from the parents,

they had heard from her
brothers and her sister,

they all wanted her
to come home safe,

but you knew that behind that,

people's hopes were finding
it hard to maintain hope.

The longer it goes on,

you know that that hope
is perhaps ill-founded.

-The police were certain that
convicted pedophile Roy Whiting

was responsible
for Sarah's disappearance,

but they have so far
found no evidence

to link him to the crime.

-I lost sleep over this.

I mean, this is a guy
who had abducted a little girl

and horribly abused
her sexually.

This is a man who is
suspected of abducting

and possibly sexually abusing
another little girl

who could still be alive
and we can't find her,

and we've got to let him go

because there's not enough
evidence to charge him.

And what happens
if he takes a third child?

I mean, I had nightmares
about it.

I literally had nightmares
over the first few weeks,

but you have to work
within the law,

and we didn't have
enough to charge him,

and he was bailed and released.

And a few of us held our breath.

What's going to happen next?

-Over a fortnight
after the disappearance

of 8-year-old Sarah Payne,

the police were sure
that a local man, Roy Whiting,

was responsible
for her abduction,

but they had no solid
evidence to prove it.

As the search continued
for the missing schoolgirl,

breaking news on
July the 17th, 2000,

confirmed what everyone
had been dreading.

-Then came that day
that we'd all feared,

I'm sure the whole country
had feared.

The police announced that they
had found the body

of what they believe
was a child about 30 feet away

from a relatively
main trunk road,

the A29, partially covered
just off a foot park.

And I think we all held
our breath collectively

in news studios and newsrooms

and around the country and homes
right across the nation

hoping that it wasn't the worst

but fearing
that it probably was.

-The first thing I can confirm
with you now is,

as a result of the postmortem
that was carried out

in the early hours
of this morning,

this is now a murder inquiry.

[ Camera shutters clicking ]

The second thing that you
will obviously

be wishing to anticipate

is that we have been able
to identify that the body

in the field a half a mile
from here is Sarah Payne's.

-That was a black day
for the inquiry

and a black day
for the country really

because everyone
was still living

in hope of the little girl
coming home,

and she didn't come home.

She was found lying dead
in a field,

and she deserved
better than that.

-Sarah had been found

in a shallow grave
on the edge of a farmer's field.

-Experts believe
that the burial site

where Sarah's body was found
was dug by Roy Whiting

very soon after
he'd murdered her,

so here is a sexual offender

who wants to get this
all over with very quickly,

and it's almost as if he's just
closing that chapter, saying,

"Right. That's done.
I'm moving on."

There's absolutely
no sense of remorse,

no sense of empathy
with Sarah whatsoever.

He's got what he wanted,
and he's finished.

-There was no forensic evidence
on Sarah's body,

so once again, the police
were left frustrated.

They had a receipt that proves
that Roy Whiting

was in the region at the time,
but that was all.

They needed some hard evidence,

and a 999 call
soon gave them that.

-The day that her
body was found,

that prompted the lady
to pick up the phone

and say,
"I should have told you before,

but I saw a child's shoe
at the Coolham crossroads,"

and that shoe
transformed the case.

-This innocuous tip-off
led police

to the small hamlet
of Coolham in West Sussex,

just 8 miles from where Sarah's
body had been discovered.

They were certain the shoe
could help unlock the case,

and about 150 meters
from the road

where it had first been spotted,

they found it,
discarded in a field.

-That was a very emotional time
because Sara and her family

were just coming to terms
with losing Sarah,

and then you do what
every cop dreads to do,

which is walk in with
a plastic bag, an evidence bag,

and say, "I'm sorry,
but is this yours?"

And we realized the significance
of what we had.

We had a man who was going,
"No comment."

We had a man that we just
didn't have enough to charge,

and suddenly, we found the shoe.

It was on a direct route
from the petrol station

to where she was found murdered.

It was hugely important and very
emotional for the family to say,

"Oh, my God.
That's my daughter's shoe."

-The small child-size-13 shoe
was sent off

for forensic testing.

Martyn was confident they would
find something

they could use as evidence.

-It was a Velcro shoe,
and Velcro is one of

the most aggressive
forensic capturers

you will ever find.

A piece of Velcro will grab
hundreds of things a day,

and that's what this did.

This strap on this girl's shoe

had literally
hundreds of fibers,

bits of grass,
bits of earth, hair.

-The number-one suspect,
Roy Whiting,

had moved back
to his hometown of Crawley

and was living with his father.

Rumors of his involvement
in Sarah's murder

had spread like wildfire.

-By this time,
Whiting was known locally

as a person of interest
in the inquiry,

indeed the possible
killer of Sarah Payne,

whose body has then
now been discovered.

Vigilantes attack
Whiting's father's house.

They threw bricks
through the window.

They shout outside, and so
Whiting takes himself off

and, of all unlikely things,
goes to camp in a tent

not all that far
from the estate in Crawley

where he abducted
the girl in 1995.

-Feeling the pressure,
Whiting's next move

was a bizarre one.

-Whiting is clearly tormented,

and during this period
of the summer of 2000,

he decides to steal a car.

-And then when the police
went to stop him,

he drove off at speed

and in fact drove down
a road the wrong way,

and a high-speed chase ensued.

-Faster and faster, Whiting,

driving this rather tired
Vauxhall as quickly as he can,

eventually crashes it
into another car.

♪♪

He's caught by the police
who chased him,

and, of course, is charged
with stealing the vehicle.

-This really is quite
kind of out of control.

It's quite reckless.

And it's because he's not
thinking that far ahead.

He hasn't actually considered
the eventuality

that he needs to get away,

and when he does realize
that that's a possibility,

he does the most
ludicrous things

because he hasn't got a plan.

-On July the 23rd, 2000,

Roy Whiting was arrested and
charged with dangerous driving.

He would have to remain
in custody until his hearing.

-And that was
an amazing moment for me

because the risk level,
the threat to the public,

disappeared,

and we knew we had him.

And all I had to do was keep
that man in prison

until we could prove he killed
or abducted Sarah Payne.

-Whiting's time in custody
would give detectives

the chance to build
a case against him.

They knew that if they were
going to arrest him

for Sarah's murder,
they had to get it right.

-While he's in prison,
police go back

and re-examine
his white Fiat van.

Bear in mind, a white van
had been seen in the lane

where Sarah had gone missing.

And they find in it,
eventually, through very,

very meticulous
forensic testing,

a blonde hair.

The blonde hair was a 10 million
to one shot

that it had to be Sarah Payne.

There was really
very little forensic doubt.

-The blonde hair discovered
on Whiting's sweatshirt

was a huge breakthrough
in the case,

and more strong evidence

was still to come
from the forensic teams.

-We found fibers in that shoe
which linked Whiting to the shoe

and linked the shoe to Sarah.

I think it was the icing
on the cake for the case.

It was the missing piece of the
jigsaw, and then we had him,

and we had him big time.

-And slowly they were able
to build

a strong enough case
against Roy Whiting

to charge him with the abduction
and murder of Sarah Payne.

-It felt good actually.

I just kept thinking,
"You can't do this anymore now.

We're not going to let you
do this anymore

because it's not okay,
what you did."

And then the hard work started.

We had to get the case
to trial.

-On February the 6th, 2001,

while serving 22 months
for the car theft,

Roy Whiting was arrested
in his prison cell

and charged with the abduction
and murder of Sarah Payne,

7 months after the disappearance
of the schoolgirl.

-Soon after being arrested
in Kent this morning,

Roy Whiting was driven in
a people carrier back to Sussex.

As he arrived
at Bognor Police Station,

an egg was thrown at the vehicle
by one of several onlookers.

-I got home and cried.

That was the culmination
of months of work

to not just deliver
for Sarah's family,

I had built a relationship
with the Payne family.

I respected the Payne family,
and they deserved us doing this.

They deserved justice,
and so lots of emotions

going through me.

I've done this
for the Payne family.

I've also done this
for the public

because by charging
this monster,

we're keeping a third kid safe.

-But Roy Whiting wasn't going
to go down without a fight.

The 42-year-old
was going to deny

all the charges against him.

His trial was set
for November 2001.

He was going to plead not guilty
to the murder of Sarah Payne.

Detectives hoped that the three
key pieces of evidence

they had would be enough
to convince the jury

to put him behind bars forever.

-When you look
at the Coolham shoe,

and when you look
at the red sweatshirt,

I mean, there was a lot
of either luck or fluke

in the way this case
came together

because we only found out
months into the inquiry

that he spent Sunday morning

steam-cleaning
the back of that van.

Now, we'll never know because
he's never spoken to us,

why didn't he steam-clean
the front of the van?

If he'd steam-cleaned the front
of the van as well,

the red sweatshirt
would have gone,

and we would have lost
a crucial piece of evidence,

arguably the most important bit
of evidence against Roy Whiting.

And the Buck Barn receipt,
I mean,

he could have just thrown
that away at the time.

The chance of it falling out on
the floor and an officer saying,

"What's that? Let me
look at it," was incredible.

All those three things
came together to create

a pretty convincing
piece of evidence,

but it's never lost on me

that actually all those three
things could have disappeared,

and we would never
have solved that case.

-Prosecutor Timothy Langdale QC
came up against a wall

of denial from Whiting.

-Well, his defense,
to put it bluntly, was,

"I didn't do it,

and I have no idea how there
would be a hair of Sarah Payne's

on anything in my van.

And I'm not responsible
for her death."

-The judge had ruled the jury
were not allowed to know

about Whiting's previous
conviction for sexual abuse

on a child in 1995,

which made the case
against him harder to prove.

It was an emotional 19 days
in the courtroom.

-I think one of the most
moving moments at the trial

was when it was put to him that
effectively he threw

this poor, innocent girl

into the back
of a white Ducato van,

which he turned into
a moving prison.

It defies imagining
what she must have suffered.

There is no possible way
anyone could forgive

that kind of atrocity,

that kind of depraved behavior.

This was a girl he didn't know,
entirely innocent,

cheerful, smiling,

as every picture
always showed her,

who fell into the hands

of what could only be
described as a monster.

-After 9 hours of deliberation,

on Wednesday,
December the 12th, 2001,

the jury had reached
their decision.

Roy Whiting was guilty
of the murder of Sarah Payne.

-I can't believe for one moment
that had he got off

the killing of Sarah Payne

he wouldn't have returned
to the same modus operandi

that he'd used in 1995 and 2000.

It would have been a tragedy.

-The 4-week trial was torturous
for the Payne family,

who were in
the courtroom throughout.

-The pressure in particular
on Sarah's mother, Sara Payne,

must have been enormous
hearing all this evidence

about the terrible death
of her daughter

and having to sit there
and listen to Whiting.

And one member of the family,
I seem to remember,

and again one can perhaps
hardly blame him, said,

"May you rot in Hell,"
or something to that effect,

but that was the only time
anybody gave vent

to any kind
of emotional response,

and that was after Whiting
had been convicted.

-On December the 12th, 2001,
Judge Mr. Justice Curtis

sentenced Whiting
to life imprisonment.

He was sent to Wakefield Prison.

It was only after the trial that
Whiting's previous conviction

was read out to the court.

-The judge said he'd be
recommending

that Whiting be kept in prison

for the rest of his life.

This was met by the loudest
cries of, "Yes," in court.

Whiting was taken away to begin
that sentence tonight.

-This doesn't make us happy,
but justice has been done.

Sarah can rest in peace now.

But let's make sure
that this stops happening

time and time again.

-It's always shocking to think
that somebody

can be convicted of an act

as awful as a pedophile attack,

to be put away in prison,

to be put on the
sexual-offenders' register

and yet to be free to harm
again not that long after.

It's 5 years later.

Surely our system
is better than that,

that it should better
prevent these repeat offenses

this Whiting
managed to carry out.

-The reverberations surrounding
the tragic murder of Sarah Payne

can still be felt today.

-One thing I think in the news
we tend to forget about

is the aftermath
of these terrible cases,

and it was a long time
afterwards

you start to be more aware
of the tragic impact

that a child's
abduction and murder

has on all those around them,

the whole family,
probably friends as well,

traumatized by it,
never to be the same.

And in the case of the Paynes,
Sara, the mother,

appeared to be very strong

and pushed through her
great political campaign

to get legislation changed.

-To have something in this
country called Sarah's Law,

which was the equivalent
to an American device

called Megan's Law.

In other words, you had
the right to know

where registered sex
offenders lived in your area,

and Sarah Payne's mother
campaigned with the help of

"The News of the World"
to introduce this right.

-But it seemed that in the
struggle to do that,

to compensate for
the loss of her child,

that immense pressures were put
on the marriage with Michael,

and eventually he had
problems with alcoholism,

mental issues, depression.

-And, sadly, Michael
left us too early,

and there's no doubt about it

that the contribution
of Sarah's abduction,

of Whiting's murder
of his daughter,

and the stresses and strains

that produced led
to his early death.

I hope he's now with Sarah.

-Sarah's mother had a stroke,

now walks with some
considerable difficulty

and has throughout behaved
with the most enormous dignity

and complete grace
to this utterly poisonous man.

I think her behavior
has been exemplary.

-I have the utmost
respect for Sara.

She was incredible,
and my admiration for her

in the way she steered
her family,

her children and her friends
through this was incredible.

-The abduction and murder
of Sarah Payne has become

one of the most infamous
crimes in British history.

-I think murders like this,
the murder of Sarah Payne,

captures so much attention

because this could have
been anybody's child,

anybody's sister,

yeah, anybody's daughter,

and it's about
that idea of risk,

that idea of stranger danger

as being something
that really feeds

into the paranoia of parenting
in contemporary society.

-It was a watershed
because it changed the way

the police and society
look to child abduction.

I think it really brought
the horror of child abduction

into everyone's house
for the first time.

It was about the time
that 24/7 TV arrived,

and it was a massive case,
and it still is actually.

People still talk about
the Sarah Payne case.

It's changed history.

Her legacy is that a lot
of children are now safer

than they were in 2000,

and that's a hell
of a legacy for any person.

-Since Roy Whiting
has been in prison,

he's been viciously attacked on
two occasions by fellow inmates.

He will be eligible for parole
in 2041 at the age of 82.

-I tend to think of him as
being more pathetic than evil,

but in the end,
he did the most evil of acts.

He killed another human being,
and in this case,

he killed an 8-year-old girl.

There are few worse crimes
in our society,

so he will go down
as an evil man.

-I think the family
need closure even now.

They would want to know
what happened to their daughter.

There are various
unanswered questions.

I don't think Roy Whiting
will ever speak now,

and I hope he rots in Hell.

-The whole of Britain
was heartbroken

when the body of 8-year-old
Sarah Payne

was found in July 2000.

Everyone had hoped
she would return home safe,

but there was to be
no fairy-tale ending.

Thanks to persistent
police work,

Roy Whiting is now behind bars,

and the memory and the legacy
of Sarah Payne

will long outlive
her sick killer.

♪♪

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