Sarah Payne's siblings say they're scarred by her murder
The bereft siblings of murdered schoolgirl Sarah Payne today revealed her killer waved and smiled moments after abducting her and how they still blame themselves for not saving her.
Eight-year-old Sarah was abducted and murdered by paedophile Roy Whiting 17 years ago after running ahead of her brothers Luke and Lee and sister Charlotte on July 1 2000.Â
All three of them saw Sarah sprint through a gap leading to a road on the edge of the field after a game of hide and seek in Kingston Gorse, West Sussex, and she was not seen alive again.Â
Waiting on the other side was paedophile killer Roy Whiting, who threw her into his white van and waved and smiled at Lee Payne, who was 13, as he drove her away to her death.Â
Lee has spoken for the first time about the moment he realised his sister was gone and how he 'beat himself up' for years about failing to save his little sister.Â
He said: 'When it comes to feeling guilt about the situation, I did for a few years beat myself up that if I ran faster I might have caught up with her. Whiting drove the other way in his van and gave me a little wave as he went.'Â
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Haunted: Lee Payne, who was 13, says Roy Whiting smiled and waved at him after taking Sarah while his brother Luke, who was 12, broke down as he described the torment his sister's death has caused
Harrowing: Luke revealed how he dreads 'the night-time' because he is alone with his thoughts
Shocking: Sarah Payne, eight, left, was murdered by peadophile Roy Whiting, right, in 2000
Family: Lee, left, Luke, right, Charlotte, left, and Sarah, right, before Sarah was abducted
Sarah had been playing in this corn field with her brothers and sister shown here in a police photo taken by police just after her abduction
Lee also revealed how his father kept a sawn-off shotgun in the house after Sarah's murder and briefed his sons on using it on Whiting if he was released.
Sarah's sister, Charlotte, who was five at the time and also there, said she feels deep guilt about what happened, and said: 'Why was it her and not me?'
Speaking in a new Channel 5 documentary, Lee, Luke and Charlotte Payne appear alongside Sa rah's mother, Sara Payne, to discuss how their own lives have been devastated by her murder.
Lee Payne had no idea his sister had been snatched and was inside Whiting's vehicle. Instead he thought she was hiding in a crop field where they had been playing.Â
Mr Payne said: 'The corn was quite high, it was above our heads, and Sarah had fallen over. She decided she wanted to go home, so she stormed off.
'She beat me out of the field, walked around the road which is 100 metres, if that. By the time I was there, she was gone. I was literally 30 seconds, if that, behind her. As I was walking up the road, Whiting drove the other way in his van, gave me a little wave as he went.'
He added: 'He gave me quite a big smile ... very scruffy and dirty, kind of like a mechanic who hadn't washed in weeks. Horrible yellow teeth, and just looked like a really dodgy pe rson. The way he smiled was very uneasy, didn't make me feel comfortable at all.
'And the way he was kind of speeding past me, I mean I was a young kid walking down a country lane and he was kind of hurtling past me which was a bit intimidating. I knew there was something off about him, he wasn't up to any kind of good.'
Mr Payne said it took him until the day after Sarah's disappearance to think about having seen the van. He immediately told the police.Â
Sarah's brother Luke, speaking publicly for the first time, 17 years after his sister's death, sobbed as he described how he 'dreads the night-time'.
He says: 'I'm scared to sleep half the time so I work myself solid until I pretty much drop... because it's fears of what's there when I close my eyes. Eats me away [what happened to Sarah].'Â
He added: 'I always think a bout what she'd be like now, I see her friends about - some of them have got kids, others are working, one just got married - I always wonder what she would be doing'.Â
Life cut short:Â Lee Payne had no idea his sister had been snatched and was inside Whiting's vehicle. Instead he thought she was hiding in a crop field where they had been playing
Fond memories: Younger sister Charlotte Payne remembers singing with Sarah as a child. Charlotte, who was just five at the time, said she sometimes thinks 'why wasn't it me?'
Close:Â Sarah Payne, right, with her little sister Charlotte in a photo taken by their brother Luke
Michael and Sara Payne with their children Luke, Lee and Charlotte (left to right) - Sarah's siblings
The harrowing interviews see all of Sarah's immediate family - except her father Michael Payne, who died aged 46 in 2014 - discuss the moments leading up to Sarah's abduction near her grandparents' house in Kingston Gorse in West Sussex by Whiting 17 years ago.
Sarah's body was found at this spot in Pulborough - some distance from where she was taken from
Sarah had been with her siblings but ran ahead of them, dipping through a gap leading to a lane on the edge of the field â€" and was never seen alive again.
In the few seconds she was out of sight, she was snatched by Whiting and bundled into the back of his van. Whiting smiled and waved at Lee as he drove away.
The alarm was raised when Luke, Lee and Charlotte returned to their grandparents' house and Sarah wasn't there. Sarah was found dead two weeks later.Â
Luke, clearly still deeply troubled by the events that marked his early years, says: 'I'm scared to sleep half the time so I work myself solid until I pretty much drop... because it's fears of what's there when I close my eyes.'Â
He continues: 'I create things that didn't happen, things that didn't happen or things that could have happened. I make scenarios up in my head. Eats me away.'Â
Luke says he often thinks about what his sister might have done had she lived, saying she would have 'shined' at whatever she had chosen to do.
He says: 'I always think about what she'd be like now, I see her friends about - some of them have got kids, others are working, one just got married - I always wonder what she would be doing.'Â
Referring to his father's gun offered to his son Luke said: 'I don't know if I wanted to be involved [in potentially killing Whiting] in it or not - I just don't know how I feel about Roy Whiting.'
Sarah's oldest brother, Lee, then 13, recalls on camera how he watched Whiting, who was sentenced to life in prison on 12 December 2001, offer a cheery wave to hi m as he drove past in his white van with Sarah in the back.
Despite being so young when her sister was abducted, Charlotte still remembers the two of them singing and dancing along to Spice Girls' songs as they were growing up.Â
Charlotte, 22, now appears to be perched on the brink of pop success, with her video performances racking up thousands of views on Facebook.Â
Emotional: Mother Sara Payne also speaks during the television documentary and revealed that she had waved off her children not knowing it would be the last time she saw Sarah
Sara and Michael Payne made an emotional televised appeal for her safe return in 2000, but she had been murdered
Sarah Payne was eight when she was abducted and killed by convicted paedophile Roy Whiting in West Sussex in 2000.Â
She had been playing near her grandparents' home in West Sussex on a summer evening in July when she was preyed upon by Whiting.Â
Her parents, Sara and Michael, went on to campaign for the implementation of what came to be known as 'Sarah's Law', which would see parents notified if a paedophile moved into their area.Â
MICHAEL PAYNE SPENT HIS LAST DAYS ALONE
Michale Payne battled alcoholism and depression and spent his last days alone, blaming himself for what happened to his daughter.
His body was found in a chair at his flat in October 2014.
The 45-year-old's father, Terrance, said his son had let his 'demons' get the better of him.Â
He told the Daily Express at the time:Â 'He turned to drink because of what happened, for the fact he wasn't there to protect her.
'After the incident we all went downhill a bit, but we managed to pull ourselves together whereas Michael really struggled. We all knew Mike had demons but it's sad it has come to this.
'Mike always had his moods, but he was a good dad and a great laugh. He was the life and soul of the party.'
Whiting was sentenced to life behind bars in January 2001, in what became one of Britain's most high profile child murder cases.Â
It later emerged that Whiting was already on the Sex Offenders Register after abducting and sexually attacking another eight-year-old. Â
After his conviction was entered, the court heard he had a previous conviction for the kidnap and indecent assault of a nine-year-old girl.
The jury, who had been unaware of the previous sex conviction, were told Whiting had been sentenced to four years in jail for the sex attack in June 1995.
Revelations Whiting already had a history of child abuse prior to the killing of Sarah prompted a national debate about how paedophiles are dealt with in the justice system.
Mr and Mrs Payne began actively campaigning for a law change, piling pres sure on ministers to allow people to know about convicted paedophiles living in their area.
In the wake of Whiting's sentencing, Mrs Payne said: 'The Government only can make this decision. Right now, we have got a lot of work to do and it doesn't stop here. It just begins. You know what change I want, Sarah's Law.'
The rule, eventually introduced in 2011, allows concerned parents or grandparents to contact police to find out if a new boyfriend, or a neighbour, who has contact with a child, has a history of child sex offending.
The scheme is a watered-down version of similar laws in the U.S. under which details of where convicted paedophiles live are actively publicised.
In 2008, Mrs Payne was awarded an MBE for her tireless campaigning on the issue.Â
Sarah Payne: A Mother's Story airs tomor row night at 9pm on Channel 5.
A solitary nine-inch blonde hair and a lone sandal: The items that proved Sarah Payne's remorseless murderer was guilty beyond all doubt
Paedophile killer Roy Whiting denied stealing away Sarah Payne but damning forensic evidence and the little girl's abandoned shoe would see him jailed for 50-years.
A solitary nine-inch blonde hair belonging to the eight-year-old was discovered on a red sweatshirt in the back of Whiting's white Fiat Ducato van.
The chance of that hair not being Sarah's was a billion to one, forensic expert Ray Chapman said.
In addition 22 'indistinguishable' fibres from five items discovered in the van were found in two clumps of the schoolgirl's hair recovered from her burial site in a field just off of the A29, near Pulborough, West Sussex.
Roy Whiting is swept away from Lewes Crown Court after being found guilty of kidnapping and murdering Sarah Payne on July 1 2000
A driver found Sarah's shoe by the side of the road close to where she was buried and fibres on the Velcro linked her killer to her abduction
Roy Whiting was waiting in this lane and threw her into his white van and waved and smiled at Lee Payne, who was 13, as he drove her away to her death
Four fibres from the red sweatshirt and a single fibre from a clown-patterened curtain retrieved from the van were also found on Sarah's shoe - the only item of her clothing ever to have been recovered.
The court heard that the man who abducted and later killed Sarah Payne grinned and waved at her elder brother Lee, then 13, before speeding off in his white van.
The eight-year-old had been playing an innocent game of hide and seek with her sister Charlotte and brothers Luke, then 11, and Lee in a cornfield near their grandparents' home in Kingston Gorse, West Sussex, on July 1 last year.
When Sarah received a knock to the head she ran out of the field and despite at tempts by her brothers to stop their sister from leaving she disappeared through a gap in a hedge and was snatched away.
In video evidence Luke said he had been just 10 seconds away from the clutches of her killer.
Sarah's naked and decomposed body was found on July 17 in a shallow grave just six inches deep by farm labourer Luke Coleman. The court heard that her make-shift burial site would have taken just six minutes to dig.
Pathologist Vesna Djurovic, who analysed Sarah's body, told the court that eight-year-old had met a 'violent death' and she was the victim of a 'sexually motivated homicide'. The most likely cause of death would have been asphyxiation.
When Whiting, formerly of St Augustine Road, Littlehampton, took the witness stand he told his defence barrister Sally O'Neill QC that he was there to 'tell the truth to the jury'.
Roy Whiting threw Sarah into his Fiat Ducato van after stealing her away after she played hide and seek with her siblings
The van was packed with critical forensic evidence that would prove Whiting had abducted the little girl
He told the court that he had not gone straight home after going to a funfair in Hove on the day Sarah vanished but had in fact gone north to see his father but later changed his mind.
He denied clams that he had been 'prowling for children' when he had drifted from park to park on the day of Sarah's disappearance or that he had changed his appearance the day after her abduction.
Whiting denied killing the little girl - but it later merged he had already abducted a nine-year-old girl
When Mr Langdale said to Whiting: 'You were the man who kidnapped the girl, you were the man who killed that child and you were the man who buried her body.'
Whiting replied: 'It wasn't me.' Under intense cross-examination a hunched and irritable Whiting claimed that the fibres found in matted clumps of Sarah's hair matched items in his van by 'pure chance'.Â
But it was him that snatched her away away.
A motorist found one of Sarah Payne's shoes the day after her body was discovered and gave police one of the most vital links to Whiting.
For several days after the eight-year-old's disappearance, Deborah Bray noticed the black shoe in a road as she drove near the Sussex village of Coolham.
When Sarah's body was found in a nearby field, she contacted police and went back to hunt for the tiny, sandalstyle shoe described by the prosecution as one of the 'most important exhibits' in its case against mechanic Roy Whiting.
When scientists examined the Velcro strap they found four fibres which matched those from a red sweatshirt worn by 42-year-old Whiting, the Crown told the jury.Â
Whiting had abducted a nine-year-old girl in the Ifield area of Crawley, West Sussex.
He told the jury how the defendant threw the child into the back of his dirty red Ford Sierra and locked the doors.
Sarah's parents, Sara and Michael, went on to campaign for the implementation of what came to be known as 'Sarah's Law', which would see parents notified if a paedophile moved into their area.
Whiting was sentenced to life behind bars in January 2001, in what became one of Britain's most high profile child murder cases.
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