Forensics team will close in on Jane's killer

Detectives hunting the killer of the teacher Jane Longhurst were yesterday preparing a fresh appeal for witnesses, as they continued to examine the home of a man arrested in connection with her murder and later released.

Sussex police said they planned to use the first weekend after the discovery of her body at a West Sussex beauty spot to jog memories and trace potential witnesses.

Police believe that Ms Longhurst was strangled five weeks ago and her body was then kept in a "cold place" before being dumped and set on fire on Wiggonholt Common, near Pulborough, West Sussex, which is within a few miles of where Sarah Payne was found murdered in 2000.

A police spokesman said yesterday: "Because the body was found on fire, there is actually quite a tight timescale when we think Jane was left there, and that gives us a specific focus.

"We went down there at 8.35pm last Saturday so it's the hour running up to that we are concentrating on.

"In other cases where bodies have been found in woodland, they have been there quite a time, and that's what makes this quite unusual.

"Somebody may have seen somebody carrying something heavy. It's often only with hindsight that people realise what they have seen was significant.

"We are committed to solving this for Jane's family. There's still lots of work to be done, a lot of forensic work, a lot of inquiry work."

Yesterday police were guarding the home of the 35-year-old man they arrested on Thursday evening and released on police bail without charge 22 hours later.

Forensic experts have been searching his flat in Hove, two miles from Ms Longhurst's home in Brighton, since Thursday.

Ms Longhurst, 31, who taught at a school for children with learning difficulties in Brighton, vanished from her home, which she shared with her partner Malcolm Sentance, 34, on 14 March. Detectives believe her murderer may have suddenly panicked and dumped her body in an area of countryside that was clearly visible from footpaths and a road.

Shortly before police announced that the suspect, who has not been named, had been freed, a man was seen leaving the custody suite of a police station in Brighton, holding an umbrella up to his face and accompanied by a plain-clothes police officer and another man. He was driven away in an unmarked car, and was not seen at his home yesterday.

The man, whom police had spoken to at least once before, had been held in the same building where Ms Longhurst's sister and mother paid emotional tributes and renewed their appeals for information on Friday.

In a prepared statement, Ms Longhurst's sister, Sue Barnett, 39, from Reading, Berkshire, said: "If you have a loved one who you suspect might have done this, we understand how hard it must be to pick up the phone to the police – but a young woman has lost her life in the most horrific way, and we have lost someone who was very loved and so special."

Ms Longhurst's mother Liz said: "As Jane's family, we are living this nightmare. The only thing we can ask for now is for Jane's killer to be found."

Mr Sentance, an education welfare officer, said in a statement read by Mrs Longhurst: "Jane will always be a very special friend to me. She was loving, warm, beautiful, a fantastic musician and teacher, a great laugh, my best mate, and I would have happily spent the rest of my life with her."