Police face inquiry over failure to stop Facebook killer

North Yorkshire Police roadside cameras picked up Peter Chapman's car twice on October 26 last year while he was wanted in relation to allegations of theft, arson and failing to report a change of address.

When Chapman was eventually arrested by Cleveland Police later that day, he led officers to a field near Sedgefield, County Durham, where he had dumped the body of 17-year-old Ashleigh Hall.

Chapman, 33, had lured Ashleigh to her death the night before.

He had befriended her through a fake Facebook profile carrying a

picture of a handsome teenage boy.

The Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) is to investigate North Yorkshire Police along with Cleveland Police and Durham Police, whose systems also spotted Chapman's car.

It is the second IPCC inquiry in two days to be launched in North Yorkshire.

The watchdog announced on Thursday that Chief Constable Grahame Maxwell and his deputy Adam Briggs were under investigation for allegedly

helping relatives who wanted jobs as police officers.

Details of Chapman's car, a blue Ford Mondeo, were circulated on the Police National Computer on October 23, two days before Ashleigh was last seen alive.

Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) data shows that, before Chapman was stopped, the Mondeo was spotted 12 times in the Cleveland force area between October 23 and 26, twice in Durham on October 25 and twice in North Yorkshire on October 26.

IPCC Commissioner Nicholas Long, who has already begun a separate inquiry into how Merseyside Police monitored Chapman, described Miss Hall's murder as a "terrible tragedy".

He said the murder investigation had identified "a number of issues" that warranted further examination and added that the inquiry into ANPR intelligence could "impact on forces around the country".

The three forces, who referred the case to the IPCC themselves, issued a joint statement which said their cameras flagged up 311,000 vehicles as being of "potential interest" every month.