Sarah Payne was an eight-year-old girl who disappeared on July 1, 2000, while playing hide and seek with her siblings in a cornfield near her grandfathers home in Kingston Gorse, West Sussex, England. Her older brother, Lee, told the police that he had seen a white van speed off as he got to the edge of the field to follow Sarah. He said the unkempt man behind the wheel waved at him, but the boy had no idea that his little sister was in the back of the vehicle. After 16 days of searching, the police found Sarahs naked body partially buried at a roadside near Pulborough, 18 miles from where she was kidnapped. She had been strangled and suffocated, and most of her hair had been pulled out in the process. The post-mortem showed that Sarah had suffered a violent death. Roy Whiting was convicted of her murder in 2001 and sentenced to life imprisonment. Sarahs father, Michael, suffered from depression following the disappearance of his daughter. He separated from his wife of 18 years in August 2003, and subsequently became an alcoholic, leading to a 16-month jail term for attacking his brother with a glass in December 2011, while intoxicated. On 30 October 2014, he was found dead at his home in Maidstone, Kent. Police reported there were no suspicious circumstances.