Body search detective's update on '˜painstaking' garden dig

Police are expected to be at the house for several days

‘Nothing significant’ has so far been found by officers digging up a Thornton back garden.

Officers are investigating reports a body may be buried in the garden, behind an empty house in Knowsley Crescent.

They are expected to continue digging for several days as the ‘pain-staking’ search continues.

By this afternoon, only a layer of top soil had been removed – with no evidence of any crime being discovered.

Detective Inspector Paddy O’Neill, from the Force Major Investigation Team, said in a statement: “Enquiries of this type are painstaking and we may well be at the address for some further time.

“At this stage nothing significant has been discovered.

“I would like to thank the neighbours for their co-operation and support.”

Police have spent the past 48 hours inside the garden, clearing overgrown grass and vegetation, filling large rubble bags with cuttings, and erecting tents in the front and back garden.

Officers wearing blue uniforms were seen working at the house, while a sniffer dog was taken in for a short time on Monday afternoon.

Several neighbours said people have been going in and out the boarded-up house – which has been empty for several months since the last family moved out – for weeks.

By police yesterday said their investigation was launched last Wednesday, with activity at the home getting underway yesterday.

The probe is not linked to missing schoolgirls Paige Chivers or Charlene Downes, whose bodies have not been found despite being presumed dead, the force stressed.

One neighbour said the drama began to unfold at 9.30am yesterday.

“We just saw a blue van and CSI (crime scene investigators) pull up,” he said.

“At first, we thought it was something to do with drugs. It’s normally quiet around here.”

Local councillor Jim Lawrenson said Knowsley Crescent ‘went downhill’ 30 years ago but has become a nice place to live in recent years.

But in November 2013, youths renamed the road ‘Criminal Crescent’ when they spraypainted its road sign on a graffiti spree.