Video hope in search for missing girls

LONDON - The two little girls looked as if they were setting off on an adventure, laughing and larking about as they tumbled down the road.

Three days later schoolmates Jessica Chapman and Holly Wells are still missing and police fear they have been abducted.

The case has sparked a huge police search and gripped the nation. Yesterday several newspapers offered rewards totalling more than £1 million ($3.42 million) for vital information about the two 10-year-olds who left a family barbecue to buy lollies in their village in the early evening.

The Sun and the News of the World offered a joint reward of £150,000 to anyone who has information to help solve the mystery centred on Soham, near Cambridge.

Express Newspapers offered a £1 million reward to anyone with information that leads directly to their safe return, or the arrest and conviction of those responsible for their disappearance.

Smiling in their Manchester United shirts, a picture of the two missing girls was taken just 90 minutes before they disappeared.

The photograph was released by police hoping to find anyone who may have seen the two 10-year-olds. It was taken by Holly's mother, Nicola, in the front room of their home in Red House Gardens during the family barbecue.

Holly changed into her football shirt, with the name Beckham and number seven on the back, after her best friend arrived. Jessica put on Holly's brother's identical shirt and black shorts.

The two girls were Manchester United fans.

Manchester United Star David Beckham, with his team mates, has issued a public appeal for the girls to come home.

"Please go home. You are not in any kind of trouble. Your parents love you deeply and want you back," said Beckham, who has a son himself.

Last night, Cambridgeshire police were examining footage of four adults and two girls caught on CCTV camera in the centre of Soham on the day of the girls' disappearance. A police spokesman said the footage was being shown to the families to see whether Holly and Jessica were on the film. The spokesman stressed that the people in the tapes were not being treated as suspects.

Detective Superintendent David Hankins told the BBC: "We're still working on the footage. It does look interesting.

"We're hoping it will be able to jog a few people's memories."

He added: "The images are not very clear. We need to check with the parents to be 100 per cent that the images are of the two girls.

"We are very positive, very optimistic about this piece of videotape."

Earlier yesterday, 250 police officers searched fenland, waterways and farm buildings. Officers with experience in child abductions, including two of the detectives involved in the Sarah Payne murder inquiry, were also providing their expertise.

Hankins, the officer in charge of the inquiry, admitted: "We are having to consider the possibility of abduction."

"From the outset we thought this might be a prank, we thought there might have been an accident.

"Sadly this inquiry is rapidly turning from a missing persons inquiry to an investigation of criminal abduction."

A white van was seized yesterday and examined, although police later dismissed the incident as a routine search.

Considered sensible, bright children, everyone who has known them has stressed how "out of character" it is for them to have disappeared without warning.

Beryl Badcock, who lives in the town and knows the Wells family, said: "Everyone feels so helpless. I can't imagine what the parents are going through we all feel for them. I just hope the whole thing is a prank by the girls."

Police family support officers are trying to give comfort to the girls parents. But for Sharon Chapman and her husband Leslie, and Nicola and Kevin Wells, the agony goes on as they wait for news of their daughters.

Nicola Wells said: "We just want them home."

"Anyone who is a parent must know what we're going through."

The two families both said their daughters would react if anyone tried to grab them or drag them into a car.

Sharon Chapman said: "Jess is not a quiet child. She would scream."

The youngsters were believed to have been spotted on Tuesday. But Hankins said yesterday that the sighting might have been misplaced.

He said: "It does cast some doubt as to whether this was Jessica and Holly by the fact that nobody else has come forward."

- AGENCIES