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POLICE chiefs were told that two officers
involved in the hunt for Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman were on a list of
child porn suspects before the girls went missing.
Cambridgeshire police scheduled a meeting to
discuss the document from the FBI on August 5. But it was overshadowed by
the girls' disappearance on August 4 and cancelled.
Det Con Brian Stevens, 41, was assigned to
counsel Jessica's family. PC Tony Goodridge, 34, became an exhibits
officer.
Both men were arrested on Thursday as a part of
a worldwide inquiry into pay-to-view paedophile sites on the internet.
;)
CHARGED: Stevens and Goodridge
in court
They were charged with child pornography
offences last weekend.
Yesterday they were released from Norwich prison
after a judge granted them bail. It also emerged yesterday that detectives
misplaced Holly and Jessica's dental records three times.
They turned up on Sunday, nearly a month after
their bodies were found.
The FBI's list of suspected child porn users was
passed on to the
National Criminal Intelligence Service who sent
it to the relevant police forces.
Cambridgeshire is believed to have received 300
names of people alleged to have gived their credit card details in
exchange for passwords to sites.
It is believed the list was not studied in any
detail but a meeting was set up to discuss how to conduct an
investigation. It was only examined properly last week.
DC Stevens and PC Goodridge's names set off
alarms bells and the West Midlands force was drafted in to conduct an
inquiry. Both men were arrested at their homes last Thursday and their
computers taken away.
DC Stevens helped comfort Jessica's family
through their ordeal as they waited for news, then after the bodies of she
and Holly were found.
PC Goodridge and DC Stevens, both family men,
were yesterday granted bail on condition they surrender their passports
and report daily to local police stations.
They are due to return before magistrates on
November 11.
Yesterday Cambridgeshire police said there would
be no investigation over the lost dental records. They said the girls were
identified by DNA and there was nothing sinister about the records'
disappearance.
A spokesman said: "PC Goodridge and PC Stevens
are not being investigated for anything other than the charges that
already stand.
"We are confident all the evidence in the
investigation has been handled properly and the inquiry team will find
nothing wrong."
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