Stolen shop curtain ‘is vital link to Sarah killer’
Filed Under Curtain Rods | Posted on December 15, 2007
A CLOWN-PATTERNED curtain stolen from the baby changing room of a high street store emerged as a vital link between the man charged with the murder of Sarah Payne to his alleged crime, a jury was told yesterday.
The curtain was found in the van driven by Roy Whiting, 42, who denies the kidnap and murder of the eight-year-old girl.
Scientific examination revealed that one fibre from the curtain was found on the Velcro strap of Sarah’s shoe, the only item of her clothing recovered after her body was found in July last year.
Whiting refused to tell police where the curtain came from, the jury at Lewes Crown Court has been told.
Detectives appealed for information on the BBC Crimewatch UK programme and Trudi Nesbitt contacted police to say she believed it to be one stolen from the mother and baby changing room at the branch of Boots in East Grinstead, Sussex.
In a statement read to the court Miss Nesbitt said that a friend of hers took it from under a pile of nappies in the changing room and gave it to her. She used the curtain in her son’s bedroom for two years and then stored it in a bin bag.
In the summer of 1999 she gave it to her former boyfriend, Dean Fuller, to use to protect furniture he carried in his white Fiat Ducato van. The court has been told that Mr Fuller later sold the van to Whiting, a builder from Littlehampton, West Sussex, and the curtain was among several items left in the vehicle.
The prosecution alleges that Sarah, who was visiting her grandparents’ home at Kingston Gorse, West Sussex, was snatched by Whiting and carried away in the van. He then killed her in what has been described as a “sexually-motivated homicide”.
Shane Gething, who worked for Mr Fuller in his removal business, told the jury that he recalled the curtain being used to cover a hole in the front passenger seat of the van. He said that a red sweatshirt also found in the van after Whiting was arrested, was also left by Mr Fuller.
The sweatshirt has also been forensically linked to fibres found on the shoe strap, the court has heard. In a statement read to the jury, Paula Stewart admitted stealing the curtain in 1992 and giving it to Trudi Nesbitt.
Sally O’Neill, defending, suggested that another witness, Kevin Bruce, had been mistaken when he identified the check shirt as having belonged to him.
Miss O’Neill said that Whiting had answered “no comment” to questions asked after his arrest on suspicion of abducting and killing Sarah, on the advice of his solicitor, Gill McGivern, who believed his arrest to be unlawful.
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