Inquiry to look at police procedures in missing bodies case

A police chief last night ordered an inquiry after officers failed to find the bodies of a missing woman and her two children even though they were in a car parked half a mile from the family home. John Burrow, Chief Constable for Essex, said that an internal inquiry was being launched to see whether his force's search procedures were at fault.

Margaret Jarvis, a policeman's wife, and her sons Russell, seven, and Christopher, five, vanished from their home in Nounsley, near Chelmsford, Essex. Police alerted forces throughout the country and called on locals to check outbuildings. But the bodies lay in Mrs Jarvis's car in an garage two minutes' drive from her bungalow, where they were spotted by a property surveyor on Tuesday night.