A detective has asked a murderer to tell him where his missing victim is.

Ben Lacomba was found guilty of murdering mum-of-five Sarah Wellgreen from New Ash Green after a four-week trial at Woolwich Crown Court.

The man who headed up the investigation was detective chief inspector Ivan Beasley, who has now asked the one man who knows where Sarah's body is to tell him.

He said: "Firstly, my role, my absolute objective is to get justice for Sarah and we have achieved that.

"Lacomba has been found guilty. He is responsible for Sarah's murder and concealing Sarah's body and that is what we aim to achieve.

"But we still haven't found Sarah and that is a massive gap in this investigation not only for my team who really feel it but even more so for Sarah's family and friends.

"There are children out there who have lost their mother and don't know where she is. There are other family members who have lost their daughter, their sister, wider friends who have lost Sarah and they want to know where she is.

"There's only one person who can tell us. He's decided not to and if there's one thing I can ask him now it's do it for your children. Tell us where their mum is. Let us find Sarah."

The case has been described as rare by the detective as there was no body for pathologists to determine a cause of death.

He said: "In a traditional investigation we would have a victim and the body. A pathologist would be able to examine the body and be able to say that that person is dead and how they've died. We didn't have that in this case and that was a huge challenge.

"It's very rare but what we had to show was from the circumstances of Sarah's life, how she was in herself, what she left behind - which was important - the plans she made for the future and the fact that since that time, over a year later, we've found no physical, financial, digital footprint of Sarah being anywhere so we were able to show the jury that with all that information and evidence they can be sure that Sarah is no longer alive.

"We also didn't have any witnesses to what happened. We can't be 100% sure where that murder took place, although we believe it was the home address, but we don't know where or how so there's lots and lots of unknowns we've had to work with.

"I started to become suspicious of the accounts Lacomba was giving which didn't add up to what other people were saying. And his behaviour... I appreciate people act in different ways but it was a concern to me.

"Then you add in the fact he disposed of his mobile phone and that's a key piece of behaviour that was very strange for someone who says he's done nothing wrong, has nothing to hide and knows nothing of what happened. And it's at that point on October 16 I declared him a suspect and he was arrested."

The Crown Prosecution Service said it was unusual for them to authorise a murder charge without a body being found.

Claire Prodger said: "There was simply no coherent or plausible basis to suggest that anyone other than Ben Lacomba could have been responsible for her death.

"He removed her body from their address that night and then disposed of it. To do so would have required specific local knowledge and, crucially, knowledge of how to avoid detection by the neighbour’s CCTV cameras.

"There was only one person who knew how to get in and out of their home undetected and that was Lacomba himself.

"Our thoughts are with Sarah's family at this difficult time."

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