Mark Bridger told by police: Spare April Jones’s parents anguish and reveal location of body

Police have urged Mark Bridger to tell the parents of April Jones what he has done with their daughter’s body.

The five-year-old’s abduction sparked the largest search operation in British policing history but her body has not been discovered.

Bridger is said to have confessed to a Catholic priest while in Manchester’s Strangeways prison that he dismembered April’s body and scattered it into the fast flowing River Dovey.

The priest later told police about the admission, which was not made in a confessional, but the prosecution chose not to use it as part of their case against Bridger.

Detective Superintendent Andy John, the senior investigating officer, said: ‘My message to Mark Bridger is quite clear, he needs to tell Paul and Coral Jones, and the family of April what he has done with their daughter.’

Describing the reaction of April’s parents he added: ‘The vast majority of people could never begin to imagine what they have had to go through and continue to go through because, as we all know, they still haven’t had their daughter or their daughter’s remains returned to them.’

The effort to return April to her family, codenamed Operation Tempest, lasted almost eight months and involved 17 police teams scouring 32sq km of countryside.

The search began on the night of October 1 last year with a handful of concerned neighbours on the Bryn-y-Gog estate.

Soon they were joined by hundreds of members of the public who came from far and wide as word spread on news and social media.

The terrain of winding rivers, mountainous valleys and deep mine shafts and caves, made it a ‘unique challenge’, said Inspector Gareth Thomas , the officer who led it.

Around 16,000 officer search days were dedicated to finding April, involving police from 47 forces across the UK, and volunteers from around the world.

He said it was the largest deployment of UK officers since the Lockerbie disaster.

Inspector Thomas said it was with ‘immense disappointment’ that the search was concluded last month.

‘The driving force for us has always been to find April and reunite her with her family,’ he said.

‘That was the priority right from the start and that’s what was motivating all those officers who came to help from all over the country and further afield.

‘As soon as we have any more intelligence or information we will recommence the search.’

He said due to the fact that Bridger painted himself as an ‘Andy McNab or Bear Grylls wannabe’ that meant he could have had intimate knowledge of area, making every cave, stream, mineshaft, ditch and quarry a search area.

‘During the course of the search I honestly believed that we would find April. It’s an immense disappointment that we have been unable to return April to her family,’ he added.