I suffered a memory blank, says accused in Sarah trial

The man accused of murdering Sarah Payne told his murder trial courtroom that he had "memory blanks" about the night she disappeared, despite being first spoken to by police the next day.

Roy Whiting, 42, went into the witness box yesterday to give the first full account of his alleged movements more than 17 months and 13 police interviews after he was first held on suspicion of kidnapping Sarah.

He told Lewes Crown Court that he wanted to tell the jury the truth and said he had nothing to do with the kidnapping and killing of the eight-year-old, whose naked body was found dumped in a field more than 20 miles away.

Mr Whiting, of Littlehampton, West Sussex, told the court: "I want the jury to hear what I have got to say and they can judge me on what I say. I have got nothing to hide and I have told them the truth."

He said only a series of coincidences linked him to the crime. They included the similarity of his van to the one used to snatch Sarah and the fact he had previously been in both the area from where Sarah had been taken and that where her body was abandoned.

However, during cross-examination by the counsel for the prosecution, Timothy Langdale, he admitted that he had stonewalled police when they tried to find out where he had been on 1 July last year when Sarah was taken from East Preston, West Sussex.

Mr Whiting, an unemployed motor mechanic and labourer, was first spoken to by police at his flat the following day.

He claimed he could not remember where he had been because the officers had been "harassing, badgering and hectoring" him and he signed a false account of his movements to get them out of his flat.

Mr Langdale asked him: "Are you saying on that Sunday evening you had some kind of memory blank as to where you had been after 8pm on Saturday?"

Mr Whiting replied: "Yes, I could not remember where I had been."

Mr Langdale continued: "Just over 24 hours later?"

Mr Whiting said: "I had a lot on my mind, if I was going to move out of the area, stay in the area or change jobs. I was basically driving around on autopilot."

Mr Whiting had claimed he was bored and spent the afternoon and evening driving to parks, a funfair at Hove and then towards his father's home before changing his mind. He said he then drove home, stopping for diesel on the way.

Mr Langdale asked if it was "just coincidence" that the places he visited were normally frequented by children and if he had been "on the prowl". Mr Whiting denied it.

But when he first spoke to police officers, he told them he had driven straight back from the funfair and had returned home in the early evening, the court was told.

However, an officer found a receipt in his van, timed at about 10pm, which showed that he had bought fuel from the Buckbarn garage, within a few miles of where Sarah was buried. Her body was not found for 16 days.

Mr Whiting said yesterday that he did not tell police about stopping for fuel because he had forgotten about it. He then accepted he had been shown the receipt during questioning after his arrest.

Mr Langdale said: "Please do yourself justice. You couldn't have forgotten you had got a receipt when the police showed you a copy of it."

"Sorry, yes," Mr Whiting replied. Mr Langdale continued: "The real reason you weren't going to say about the Buckbarn garage receipt was you were the only person who knew then where Sarah Payne's body was buried."

"No," Mr Whiting replied.

The court has heard that he replied "no comment" to most of the questions during three days of police questioning.

"For over four hours of questioning on those three days, you stonewalled didn't you?" asked Mr Langdale.

"Yes," Mr Whiting replied.

Mr Langdale claimed that another indicator of his guilt was that, throughout questioning, Mr Whiting never asked exactly when and where Sarah had been snatched.

Mr Whiting was in the witness box for all of the hearing yesterday, the opening of the defence case.

Wearing a red sweatshirt and jeans, he accepted that he was unable to provide any evidence at all of where he had been before he bought the fuel just before 10pm. Mr Langdale asked Mr Whiting if a bottle of baby oil found in his van after his arrest had anything to do with "sexual activity". Mr Whiting denied it.

He also denied that a small knife found in his van was for "any purpose like threatening or frightening" a child. Mr Whiting said it was "pure chance" that he also had plastic ties and a shirt stained with semen inside his van.

Sarah's parents, Michael and Sara, listened as he told the court that that he ripped out his van's interior and replaced the doors on Saturday morning, before Sarah was kidnapped.

For the first time yesterday, police heard his claims that he dumped the debris at a local tip and used a power spray to clean the inside of the "filthy" van. He denied it was because Sarah had been inside.

The prosecution claims that he altered the appearance of the van the day after the murder to try to disguise his role. The doors and interior of the van have never been found.

Mr Whiting denies murder and kidnap.

The case continues today.