Police 'lack skills' for child murder inquiries

A senior officer in the Sarah Payne case and an adviser on the Soham double killing has criticised police training, claiming it fails to equip detectives with the skills to handle high-profile murder investigations.

Detective Chief Inspector Martyn Underhill, of Sussex Police, said yesterday that mistakes could be made when relatively inexperienced officers were "thrown into the lion's den" and had to deal with huge, complex inquiries. He called for a national list of highly trained detectives who could be called upon to cope with the most difficult murder and child abduction cases.

The effect upon some officers who had been removed from high-profile inquiries as well as those who had to cope with huge media pressure and the public demand for the police to get a conviction was "devastating", he said. He added that he had undergone counselling for the stress of dealing with the successful investigation into the murder of Sarah Payne.

Det Chief Insp Underhill said chief officers were sometimes to blame by responding to media pressure for a quick result. The effect, he said, was often to undermine the inquiry and reduce police confidence in the investigation.

The Sussex officer is among Britain's most experienced murder detectives, involved in more than 40 inquiries. He was second-in-command in the inquiry that convicted Roy Whiting for the abduction and murder in June 2000 of eight-year-old Sarah Payne. He has also advised the investigations into the killings of 10-year-olds Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman; Amanda Dowler, the 13-year-old whose remains were found in a wood last month; and Danielle Jones, the 15-year-old who disappeared in June last year near her home in Essex.

The officer wrote in Police Review magazine: "I believe the training may not properly equip a senior investigating officer with the tools to run inquiries such as the investigation into the abduction and murder of Sarah Payne or the investigation into the deaths of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman. The sheer size of the inquiry, and the profile they attain, means that sometimes a relatively inexperienced officer, albeit one who has attended national courses and therefore been 'accredited', is thrown into the lion's den. No surprise then if these individuals could sometimes make mistakes or attract press criticism."

He told The Independent that without specialist training and back-up the pressure of running a high-profile murder inquiry could be immense. "On the Sarah Payne case, I suffered enormously as an individual because I was not given the training to deal with it. I had counselling. I suffered a lot of sleepless nights.

"I kept wondering if I had done the right thing during the inquiry. It is partly the pressure from the media and partly the pressure on the officers to get a result. Worryingly, the response of chief police officer ranks in these [high-profile] cases is often to 'replace' the officer, usually amid huge press comment."

The Home Office has already dismissed the idea of an FBI-style national murder inquiry team.