Detectives from Sarah inquiry to help hunt for Milly

Senior detectives from the Sarah Payne murder investigation have been drafted in to advise officers searching for the schoolgirl Amanda Dowler.

Police also made an appeal on the BBC's Crimewatch programme last night as hopes were fading of finding the 13-year-old alive.

Sarah, eight, whose paedophile killer Roy Whiting was jailed for life last year, grew up in Hersham, within miles of the Dowler family.

Amanda, known as Milly, was last seen starting on the 15-minute journey home from the train station in Walton-on-Thames, Surrey. The police have still not found any firm leads despite a huge search and hundreds of calls from the public since she went missing eight days ago.

Superintendent Alan Sharp said the search would continue to concentrate on a three-square mile area between the railway station, her home and Hersham train station. Officers were continuing to pick through allotments, gardens, streams and culverts.

The search is expected to be broadened with new areas being targeted from aerial photographs.

The Dowler home was cordoned off yesterday as police began a routine search there for clues to her disappearance.

A spokeswoman for Surrey Police said: "It's a routine search of the house and garden. There are no plans to dig up the garden. They're just trying to find anything that might explain why she ran away, if that's what happened. But the family are not being treated as suspects."

Amanda's parents, Robert, 50, and Sally, 42, made a public appeal on Wednesday for her return. They said they feared she had been abducted.

The couple were in London for the Crimewatch programme last night while officers worked at their home. Mr Sharp said the television appeal was to alert those living outside the Surrey area. "She could be anywhere," he said.