April Jones one month on: police search continues

The police officer leading the search for the body of April Jones answers without hesitation when asked how long the operation will continue.

“We’ve not got an end date”, Superintendent Ian John tells me over the phone. “We’ll continue as long as we’ve got viable lines of enquiry to follow”.

There is no trace of weariness in his answer to a question he must have been asked countless times over the last four weeks. The media coverage of this desperately sad case may have lost its intensity long ago, but the momentum maintained by the residual police operation remains notable.

The mountain rescue teams were stood down weeks ago, but there are 17 police search teams still involved in this exhaustive exercise. In a police context, that’s only a few teams short of what they were deploying at the height of the search efforts last month. It involves approximately 150 officers from all the Welsh forces, rotating on five day cycles.

Supt Ian John remains in overall charge, but the day-to-day running of the operation is supervised by a handful of Dyfed Powys Police’s senior police search advisors (PolSAs), periodically assisted by specialists from the Police National Search Centre (PNSC).

Just over three weeks ago, as our Channel 4 News team was heading towards Machynlleth from Aberystwyth, we pulled over by the side of the road to follow several fire service units down to the banks of the River Dyfi. It was a striking scene. As the early morning mist rose above the spectacular Dyfi valley, fire crews quietly, methodically, threaded their way along the banks, while others, peering over the sides of their inflatable boats, with ‘aquascopes’ pressed to their faces, studiously examined the river beds.

Read more: ‘Selfless’ commitment of April Jones searchers praised

This aspect of the search operation, so conspicuous in the myriad news reports of that first week, appears to have been closed down. Fire crews are still being deployed, but their involvement now is limited to no more than eight people, I’m told, assisting in “restricted space” searches (such as caves and mines).

The focus of the search has shifted away from the river towards a 60sq kilometre area surrounding the village of Ceinws (previously home to Mark Bridger, the man charged with April’s abduction and murder). “It’s a really deep search operation here and quite destructive,” Mr John explains. He describes how their teams, in this latest phase, are now adopting a much more forensic approach to the searches, often in dense woodland. Specialist dog teams are still involved, some of them trained to detect recent movements in the soil.

There appears to have been no dramatic shift in the intelligence guiding the search.

The timescale for this operation, according to Dyfed Powys police, remains constantly under review, but the significant attempts by the police to find April Jones at present show little sign of being abandoned.

Such efforts were acknowledged today by April’s parents, Coral and Paul Jones, who said they been “overwhelmed” by the resources used in the search for their daughter.