£150,000 reward for Sarah's killer

In this story: Police take 800 statements Private funeral service RELATED STORIES, SITES

LITTLEHAMPTON, England -- A £150,000 reward is being offered in connection with the abduction of an eight-year-old girl whose murder sparked a national debate about -- and protests against -- paedophiles and sex offenders.

Sarah Payne was abducted from a field near her grandparents' home close to East Preston, West Sussex, on 1 July.

One of the biggest manhunts ever seen in the UK was launched after she was reported missing.

Her naked body was found two weeks' later by a farm worker in a field off the main A29 trunk road near Pulborough, West Sussex.

At a press conference on Wednesday, Detective Superintendent Allen Ladley, said a white van seen near where the little girl was abducted at the time she disappeared remained "a major line of inquiry."

Ladley said the reward was made up from contributions from media groups, organisations and individuals.

He also renewed appeals for witnesses who were on the beach at Kingston Gorse on 1 July, where the Paynes spent some time together before their children went to play in fields.

"We do not know where the offender first saw Sarah. It could have been on the beach...or he may have decided to snatch her just seconds before," said Ladley.

He said the inquiry team had fielded 35,000 calls, interviewed 4,000 members of the public and taken 800 statements.

"Sixty officers are still permanently seconded to the investigation and that will continue," he said.

He said that "strangulation or suffocation" was the probable cause of death, adding "a second post mortem didn't throw any light on the circumstances of Sarah's death."

A 41-year-old man, from Littlehampton, West Sussex, has been arrested twice in connection with the murder, but on both occasions he has been released without charge.

At a memorial service earlier this month at Guildford Cathedral, in Surrey, attended by the dead girls family and 800 mourners, the Bishop of Dorking Ian Brackley said: "This young child has become the focus of the nation's grief and sorrow. The very shortness of her life intensifies the preciousness of the gift she was.

"There is a great sense of outrage at the appalling murder of a young child, a natural feeling of revulsion and disgust at the manner of her death."

A private funeral service will be held near the Payne's family home in Hersham, Surrey, on 31 August.

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Emotion charged memorial service for murdered schoolgirl
August 12, 2000

Sussex Police

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