Police ‘missed chance’ to find remains

DETECTIVES gave Nathan Matthews a week to cover his tracks after missing a chance to solve the Becky Watts case sooner, a former policeman suggested last night.

Rowland Stone, a former Metropolitan Police sniffer dog handler, asked why detectives took six days to use animals in their search for Becky’s body.

Blood traces in Becky’s bedroom and in Matthews’s bathroom would probably have been picked up if dogs went in earlier, claimed Mr Stone, who worked at Scotland Yard for more than 20 years.

“He [Matthews] has had a whole week to get as much evidence out of there,” said Mr Stone, who now works for a private security company, Tyler Security. “The dogs are an excellent tool and sometimes they are left to the last minute, which is a shame. It would seem Matthews got a head start, which I can’t really understand.

“Nathan’s obviously the sort of lad that the cleaning up process wouldn’t have been a good one so I’d be very surprise if the dog hadn’t picked it up.”

Avon and Somerset police were alerted to Becky’s disappearance on Feb 20. Officers spent hundreds of thousands of pounds on the force’s largest missing person investigation before her remains were discovered in the early hours of March 3.

Midway through the search, police called at Matthews’s house but found the curtains drawn and there was no answer at the door. They spoke to Matthews on the telephone and he said he and his girlfriend would not be returning until the next day, giving them more time to destroy evidence.

Mr Stone said dogs would “almost certainly” have found evidence of Becky in the bathroom. He added: “With so many knife wounds, I’m surprised they didn’t pick something up through the dogs. If he’s cutting her up and putting her in the bath, he would have had to remove the U-bend as there would have been deposits of tissue still in there, even with drain unblocker.”

The force did not return requests for comment yesterday.