POLICE searching for a missing Scots mother are planning new sea and land searches after receiving confirmation of a “violent episode” at the home she shared with her suspect boyfriend.
Murder squad detectives are set to hire specialists to help them hunt for Lisa Brown’s body using ground-penetrating radar and underwater electronic equipment.
The 32-year-old, from Alexandria, Dunbartonshire, is feared dead after disappearing from her expat home in Guadiaro, near Gibraltar, on November 4 last year.
Her boyfriend Simon Corner, 34, has been held in jail on suspicion of killing her since being detained in Denmark on a European Arrest Warrant in April and extradited to Spain.
Civil Guard officers have previously searched woodland and a river near her home, but are now set to step up their efforts with a hi-tech search across a wider area involving external experts.
The development follows confirmation from Madrid-based forensic specialists, who have analysed DNA found in blood stains at Ms Brown’s home, that a violent incident involving her and Mr Corner took place at the property.
DNA tests on her Ford Focus car, which Mr Corner used, have also come back with what detectives believe to be positive results for their probe against the Liverpool-born former convict.
They are now preparing to analyse data from three mobile phones which the Briton, jailed for three months in Gibraltar in May 2014 for possession of an offensive weapon after a nightclub altercation, was spotted throwing into a harbour in Copenhagen before being arrested.
It was reported earlier this year a witness had watched him launching the phones into the water and it was thought the information they contained had been destroyed. But a source close to the criminal inquiry, which is being coordinated by a judge based in the town of San Roque, confirmed the data on them had been recovered.
The source said: “The phones had been in the water for several hours by the time they were recovered and officers feared they had been rendered worthless.
“But police specialists have been able to recover all the information on both the SIM cards and the handsets.
“Investigators are about to start analysing the material and are hopeful it will prove useful in the search for Lisa and the efforts to make sure those behind her disappearance face justice and punishment if proven guilty.” Another insider added: “The new searches are imminent. There have been other searches conducted since the ones that took place immediately after Lisa’s disappearance but none as extensive and hi-tech as the ones scheduled for the next few weeks.
“The investigation has taken a major step forward with the DNA confirmation a violent episode involving Simon and Lisa took place inside her home.
“Investigators believe Lisa’s body could have been disposed of at sea but are not ruling out the idea she may have been buried on land and will probe both possibilities when the searches begin.”
Mr Corner was born Dean Woods but changed his name
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