METROPOLITAN Police Commissioner Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe has defended the force's much-criticised search for missing schoolgirl Alice Gross, saying officers could not have worked harder.
Scotland Yard has come under fire for delays in finding the 14-year-old's body and that of prime suspect Arnis Zalkalns.
Around 600 officers, including search experts from the National Crime Agency and other forces, were involved in the operation - the biggest police search effort since the July 7 bombings in 2005.
But it took police more than a month to find Alice's body in the River Brent last Tuesday before Zalkalns's was discovered hanging from a tree in Boston Manor Park, west London, on Saturday.
Sir Bernard announced that the case was under review, but added that he was "not sure what more we could have done".
Speaking to BBC London Radio, he said: "No one wants to walk away not having found her. We wanted to find her and the person we regarded as a suspect.
"We worked incredibly hard and we had searched a park where he was eventually found.
"But the area where he was found had been marked for further search because it was really difficult to get into.
"This was not a case of a person hanging in a tree to be seen from 100 metres away, this was an enclosed area.
"Of course we all want reassurance that we did it as well as we could, that we did it efficiently and effectively. We are in the process of reviewing that and at the end of it we will be in a better position whether we could have done it differently.
"I'm not sure what more we could have done but we would have loved to have found them both quicker."
Alice, 14, from Hanwell, west London, went missing on August 28. Zalkalns, a convicted killer, who was spotted cycling behind Alice, went missing six days later.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article