Alice Gross: Arnis Zalkalns dead but case not yet closed

last updated 6 July 2015

The family of Alice Gross, the schoolgirl who was murdered in west London last August, has asked a coroner to investigate why police didn't know about her suspected killer's past.

Prior to his arrival in the UK, Latvian Arnis Zalkalns, the chief suspect in the case, was jailed in his home country for murdering his wife. In 2009, after he moved to the UK, he was also arrested on suspicion of sexually assaulting a teenage girl in London.

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CCTV suggests that Zalkans would have overtaken Alice as she was walking on the tow path on 28 August. The footage suggests that he must have stopped for at least 80 minutes, and when he reappeared on camera his appearance indicated that he may have been in the water.
Zalkans returned to the tow path that evening, the following morning and again the following evening.
DNA found on a "well-preserved" cigarette butt found metres from Alice's body has been matched to Zalkalns.
DNA evidence also "strongly" suggests that Zalkalns was in contact with Alice's body.
One of the bags used to conceal Alice's body matched a roll of bags seized from Zalkalns' workplace. Both the roll and the bag in the river were spattered with paint.
Alice's sister is confident that an iPhone cover hidden in Zalkalns' garden belonged to Alice.

The body found in woodland area in west London on Saturday is that of Arnis Zalkalns, the Latvian builder suspected of murdering teenager Alice Gross, police have confirmed. His corpse was found in Boston Manor Park, a 20-minute walk from where the body of 14-year-old Alice was discovered last week. Following a post-mortem examination, Scotland Yard said his death was "consistent with hanging" and that there was "no evidence of any third-party involvement". Alice – described by her parents as a "sweet and beautiful" daughter – was last seen alive on 28 August walking along the Grand Union Canal towpath towards her home in Hanwell, west London. Her disappearance prompted one of the most complex Metropolitan Police search operations undertaken in recent times. But while the bodies of Alice and prime suspect Zalkalns have been found, the case is not yet closed.

The body was "badly decomposed" by the time police found it, suggesting it had been there for a number of weeks, says the Daily Mirror. Zalkalns went missing six days after Alice disappeared. After 3 September, he was not seen again by his partner and young child, and he did not access his bank account nor use his mobile phone. Police suspected he might have returned to his home country, although his passport was left at his house in Ealing. Friends and family told police he was behaving normally in the days before and after Alice went missing but that his disappearance was completely out of character.

Zalkalns is believed to have come to the UK in 2007 after he spent seven years in prison in Latvia for murdering his wife Rudite. BBC correspondent Damien McGuinness, who has seen the court documents about the 1998 murder case, says Zalkalns was assessed as mentally stable and had known what he was doing when he murdered his wife and buried her in a shallow grave. During his confession, he told police that his wife claimed she was a lesbian and started going out without him. When she did not return home one night, Zalkalns – an experienced welder – made a metal pole and an eight-inch knife, which he later used to bludgeon and stab her to death. He was also arrested but not charged in 2009 on suspicion of drugging and molesting a 14-year-old girl. The investigation has found no evidence to suggest that Alice and Zalkalns knew each other.

Prime Minister David Cameron has pledged to examine how Zalkalns was allowed to live in Britain without security services being made aware of his criminal past. Under EU freedom of movement rules it is the UK's responsibility to work out which immigrants might pose a threat, but the case has triggered calls for the EU to keep a database of criminal convictions so offenders can be easily identified at borders, says The Sunday Times.

Alice's body was found 33 days after she went missing and was discovered close to where her rucksack was found on 2 September. Scotland Yard said "significant efforts" had been made to hide the body on the river bed. The search for Alice involved the largest deployment of Scotland Yard resources since the 7/7 bombings, with 600 officers, as well as police dogs and divers, searching 10 square miles of open land and 3.5 miles of canals and rivers. Additional staff were drawn in to deal with more than 630 calls from the public, and hundreds of hours of CCTV was seized and viewed. Detectives will need to establish when the body was placed in the river and whether it was placed in the area where it was found or if it had moved with the current.

Zalkalns was found a month after he was reported missing by his partner in a park that had already been searched during the extensive hunt for Alice. Police admitted that the "densely overgrown" spot where Zalkalns was found had not been searched by police previously, but had been identified as an inaccessible area for a further specialist search. "The recovery required a substantial removal of forestry to enable access for forensic teams," the Metropolitan Police said. One resident who had lived in the area for 23 years told The Independent: "There will be people who have lived here as long as me who don't even know that area exists."

The answer is unknown at this stage. However, Professor David Wilson, a criminologist at Birmingham City University, told the Daily Telegraph that the way in which Alice's body had been hidden, reportedly in a plastic bag and under logs of wood away from CCTV cameras, suggested planning. "The police investigation will be looking at the possibility that this was a carefully orchestrated operation by someone who has scoped out the area, rather than a random, opportunistic act," he said.

Alice's post mortem examination was inconclusive, with further tests needed to establish her cause of death. While Zalkalns was identified as a suspect, Scotland Yard is yet to present proof that he murdered the 14-year-old. Police say they are still searching for evidence to establish the "full circumstances" surrounding the crime and have appealed to the public for more information. They are said to be searching for a teenage boy who might have spoken to Zalkalns before he died. A shopkeeper in Ealing claims he refused to serve cider to the teenage boy and afterwards a man who he believes was Zalkalns entered the shop and bought it for him.