Police stage Alice reconstruction
Detectives investigating the disappearance of teenager Alice Gross are to stage a reconstruction of her last-known movements to encourage more witnesses to come forward.
The 14 year old was last seen on CCTV on August 28 and although the investigation team has followed 729 lines of inquiry, spoken to 1,067 people and had more than 1,000 calls, there have been no confirmed sightings past that point.
The prime suspect in her disappearance, convicted killer Arnis Zalkalns, has also disappeared and detectives have been sent to his native Latvia in the hope the country's authorities could help locate him.
Police are reconstructing missing Alice Gross' last movements (Metropolitan Police/PA)
Yesterday Scotland Yard said it was also carrying out a review of the early stages of its investigation "as quickly as possible" after coming under fire for delays in asking for Latvian assistance in finding Zalkalns.
Alice was captured on CCTV on August 28 walking alongside the Grand Union Canal in west London back towards her home in Hanwell and has not been seen since.
Thursday will be four weeks on from the day that Alice left home as usual and was last seen, so detectives will be staging a reconstruction along the route that Alice last walked in a bid to trace any further information or witnesses to her last sightings.
One of the Met's Volunteer Police Cadets (VPC) will play the part of Alice.
A spokesman said: "The purpose of the reconstruction is to jog people's memories by recreating her last movements, prompting people to contact us with any information."
Speaking about the attempts to gather intelligence in Latvia the spokesman added: "Obviously we are trying to get information on him, his potential whereabouts and speak to the Latvian authorities."
But the head of the Latvian police international cooperation bureau, Edgars Strautmanis, told the Daily Telegraph his officers would be unable to detain Zalkalns if he was found in the country.
He said: "There are no legal grounds to put him in a cell. He has not committed any criminal offence in Latvia. There are no grounds to search him under Latvian law.
"He can walk into any police precinct. He would definitely not be arrested. It is a law-abiding country in the democratic EU."
Zalkalns, who served seven years in prison after he was convicted of bludgeoning and stabbing his wife Rudite Zalkalns to death in his native country, was seen on CCTV cycling past the same spot 15 minutes after the teenager.
He vanished on September 3, six days after Alice was last seen and after murder detectives took over the investigation into her disappearance. He became the prime suspect after two people had been arrested and eliminated from the inquiry.
Specialist teams, including divers, continued to search a river near where the missing schoolgirl was last seen yesterday as a knife found in the water underwent forensic analysis.
It is the biggest use of search resources since the July 7 bombings, with investigators so far having searched 25sq km of open land, 5.5km of canals and rivers, and more than 30 properties including houses, derelict buildings, outbuildings and empty houses.
Scotland Yard has insisted it has no evidence to suggest that Alice, who suffers from anorexia, has come to harm.
Zalkalns, who works at a building site in Isleworth, west London, is thought to have come to the UK in 2007, but authorities here apparently had no record of his murder conviction.
He was arrested on suspicion of indecently assaulting a 14-year-old girl in the UK in 2009, but no further action was taken. The general labourer is white, 5ft 10ins and stocky, with dark brown hair that he normally wears tied in a pony tail.
A reward of up to £20,000 is being offered for anyone who has information that leads detectives to find Alice.
Police have said that Zalkalns "potentially poses a risk to the public" and have asked anyone who sees him not to approach him and to dial 999.
Prime suspect Arnis Zalkalns (Metropolitan Police/PA)
