April killer could prolong parents’ agony for years, warns psychologist

Mystery still surrounds the schoolgirl’s final moments, while the lack of a body has also cruelly denied her devastated family the chance to give her a funeral.

Since his arrest last October paedophile and former abattoir worker Mark Bridger, 47, has told police and the five-year-old’s family that he “accidentally” killed cerebral palsy sufferer April and could not remember what he did with her.

Under repeated questioning – both from detectives and prosecutor Elwen Evans – glaring contradictions began to emerge in Bridger’s version of events.

But Nottingham Trent University senior psychology lecturer Serena Simmons believes that unpicking the complex web of lies spun by the child killer will be far from easy for prison psychiatrists.

Her comments come as police pledged to resume the search for April’s remains if new information was disclosed by Bridger.

She said: “He [Bridger] clearly is deluded and has a distorted view of the world. He certainly displays this mentality of ‘If I keep stalling then eventually things will blow over’. But that is far from the case.

“The reason why killers often refuse to admit the extent of their crimes and their motivation can vary tremendously.

“But he definitely knows what he has done to April Jones and how she came to her death.

“If you question a person repeatedly, especially one who is trying to hide something, then the truth will usually emerge.

“The cracks in his story have already started to show during his trial. He will face more questions while in prison from his psychiatrist.

“Whether he chooses to engage with that process is a different matter, but I fear finding out the full extent of what he did could take a very long time.”

The effort to return April to her family, named Operation Tempest, lasted almost eight months and involved 17 police teams scouring miles of countryside.

What became the biggest search operation in British policing history led teams to comb winding rivers, mountainous valleys and deep mine shafts and caves.

Around 16,000 officer search days were dedicated to finding April, involving police from 47 UK forces as well as volunteers until it concluded last month.

Det Supt Andy John, senior investigating officer for Dyfed-Powys Police, said: “The vast majority of people could never begin to imagine what they [April’s parents] 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.”

He added: “He [Bridger] needs to tell Paul and Coral Jones, and the family of April what he has done with their daughter.”

Miss Simmons, whose research has seen her interview serial killers in the UK and United States, said one of the challenges health professionals encounter in dealing with violent offenders is their manipulative nature.

She said: “Often offenders like Bridger will display a high level of emotional intelligence (EI) – this is different from someone’s IQ and how intelligent they are.

“EI is about an individual’s ability to identify, assess, and control the emotions of oneself or others.”

Bridger cried on several occasions during the trial.

She added: “Violent offenders often have a very long back story that you need to unpick before you can try and get the truth.”

Bridger’s attempt to explain away a disturbing collection of child porn was cited as evidence of his questionable character.

He claimed some images were for research purposes, while he kept others as “proof” for a complaint he planned to make to the website’s owners.

Describing Bridger as a “fantasist”, Miss Simmons added: “Often paedophiles will try to justify their actions, or in his case be in complete denial about the reasons why he was accessing child pornography.”