Inside Sarah Payne's tragic final moments as twisted killer is attacked in jail
Sarah Payne was just eight years old when she was snatched from a quiet country lane next to a cornfield, assaulted and murdered.
It was the summer of 2000, and Sarah had been staying at her grandparents' house in Kingston Gorse, West Sussex, with her two older brothers, Lee and Luke, and sister Charlotte. After hitting her head during a game of hide and seek, young Sarah ran off crying, never to be seen again. Her brothers had been mere metres away, but out of sight, when she was kidnapped.
A desperate search ensued, but it took 16 agonising days before Sarah's body was finally discovered, naked in a shallow grave just a few miles away. The police soon suspected Roy Whiting, however, it would be months before they were finally able to bring him to justice.
As The Mirror exclusively reported, Whiting, 65, has been attacked behind bars at Wakefield HMP - a notorious Category A prison in West Yorkshire, often referred to as 'Monster Mansion'.
The killer, who is serving 40 years for Sarah's murder, was set upon and stabbed in the maximum security jail over the weekend, with guards rushing to rescue and treat him. It's believed his injuries aren't life-threatening. A source said: "Whiting is hated in prison. He was stabbed and was covered in blood. They were trying to kill him."
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Sarah and her siblings had been staying with their grandparents in West Sussex (PA)
Her body was discovered after a frantic 16 day search (PA)Roy Whiting was 41 in July 2000. A convicted paedophile, he had previously been jailed for four years for a sex attack on a nine-year-old in 1995. She was kidnapped, threatened with a knife, stripped, and indecently assaulted. But he stopped short of killing her. Police put Whiting under observation after Sarah's disappearance.
It was not until February 2001 that they finally gathered enough forensics to build a case and he was charged - which he denied. Whiting's trial was held at Lewes Crown Court in November 2001. The evidence was unremittingly grim.
Jurors heard how the paedophile had turned his van into a ‘moving prison’ equipped with knife, rope and plastic ties looped like handcuffs. The most poignant evidence came from Sarah’s brother Lee who described how he had seen Whiting’s van pulling away, its wheels spinning and skidding with a screeching sound.
Roy Whiting had attacked another child in 1995 (PA)Lee saw Whiting grinning and waving. "He was quite scruffy, looking like he hadn't shaved for ages. He had little white stubbles on his face and little bits of grey in his hair. He was greasy and stuff,” he said.
"He had yellowish teeth when he grinned and his eyes were really white and stood out from his face. His hair was really rough and hadn't been brushed. It was sticking up."
Pathologist Vesna Djurovic told the court Sarah had suffered a ‘violent’ death, probably asphyxia - in a 'sexually motivated' attack. She described how decomposition had made it impossible to say what injuries the child had suffered. The little girl had dry vegetation attached to her body. Most of her hair had come away with the roots.
It was this ball of hair that was to prove conclusive in the case against Whiting. It contained 200 fibres of material - two which matched the red sweatshirt found in his van. Eleven came from socks found in the Fiat and one fibre matched the passenger seat front cover. A blue fibre found in the hair matched a fibre in the sweatshirt.
DNA found on the sweatshirt was a match for Sarah's (PA)Britain's leading forensic expert, Raymond Chapman, told Whiting's trial that out of 47 hairs found on the sweatshirt, only one provided a DNA profile that matched Sarah. He added: "The chances of obtaining a match if the hair came from somebody else is in the order of a billion to one."
The jury found Whiting guilty. He showed no flicker of emotion as he was sentenced and told that he would never be freed. Mr Justice Curtis said: "I am quite satisfied that you indecently assaulted her in it. As we all know, you stripped Sarah naked and you suffocated her and buried her and got rid of her clothes - you are indeed an evil man. What is more you did the same thing in 1995, but that girl you mercifully did not kill."
The judge referred to a psychiatric report produced after the first attack which described him as a 'high-risk' repeat offender. He added that Whiting had claimed to police when first quizzed over Sarah's disappearance that he had 'learned his lesson' from his previous offence. The judge said: "Nothing could be further from the truth."
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Sarah's mother Sara went on to campaign for parents to have controlled access to the sex offender registry (Press Association)Describing the murder as "truly appalling" he added: "You are every parent's and every grandparent's nightmare come true. You are and will remain an absolute menace to any little girl.
"It's one of the rare cases where I shall recommend to the appropriate authorities that you be kept in prison for the rest of your life so that no further child is added to the list of your victims and the lives of a third family are not ruined."
Whiting has subsequently been attacked in prison numerous times by fellow inmates. The little girl’s mum, Sara, went on to win a change in the law allowing people to ask the police if someone with access to their child has a record for child sex offences. The child sex offender disclosure scheme in England and Wales is also sometimes known as 'Sarah's Law'.
Sarah Payne's father, Michael, suffered from depression following the disappearance of his daughter. He separated from his wife of 18 years in August 2003, and subsequently became an alcoholic, leading to a 16-month jail term for attacking his brother with a glass in December 2011, during a drunken incident. In 2014, Michael was found dead at his home in Kent. He was 45 years old.
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