The cold case detectives determined to crack the Sarah Benford murder case

It's perhaps a cruel coincidence that Detective Sergeant Julie Gallagher remembers Sarah Benford from her time as a beat bobby.

When DS Gallagher was a young officer working in Kettering, Sarah was a regular runaway and a shoplifter in the town so most local police officers came across her regularly.

Two decades on, DS Gallagher is leading the cold case team that is 'absolutely determined' to bring Sarah home to her family.

And she says that, far from being filed away in a dusty basement among other unsolvable cases, the murder of Sarah Benford has been consistently worked on by the dedicated team of officers searching for that key piece of evidence.

"Sarah's case is quite unique because it is a child murder and we actively do receive lots of intelligence on a regular basis in relation to it," she says.

"It's a live case for us and it hasn't been put away.

"We've had a team working on it for the last seven years. So on a day to day basis it's continually worked on.

"We're fortunate that Northamptonshire Police do have a dedicated cold case team and I've been on there since the start.

"It's consistent members of staff which aids the investigation because, firstly, it's a really large scale investigation and secondly, [it's important for] building that relationship with the family.

"Thirdly, it's being aware of the people in the enquiry and maintaining those relationships for when we need to speak to them again.

"We are in a very fortunate position that we can continue working on this investigation and we're not being diverted to anything else."

Police are still going over old statements, revisiting old evidence and speaking to those involved in the original enquiry in the hope of unlocking the mystery that sparked the county's biggest ever missing person's investigation.

"Several of us have previously worked on the major incident team on live murders," says DS Gallagher.

"This is what I call old fashioned detective work.

"We can't rely on somebody sending in body-worn camera or dashcam footage. We've got to rely on being able to talk to people and really look at every single piece of material and think with a detective mind

"We need to be able to speak to members of the community because it's definitely people in Kettering that hold the secret to where Sarah went."

"She last seen in Kettering town centre on April 6, people in Kettering saw her that day until somebody ended her life and 20 years on. If they weren't involved in her murder it's time now to say where she was and who she was with."

DS Gallagher says during the course of the investigation she has got to know many of the people living in the underbelly of Kettering that Sarah Benford had been mixing in. She had become involved in drugs and was being sexually exploited before she died.

"I'm regularly seen around these areas of Kettering and people know me as the person who's investigating Sarah's disappearance so I do hope that they will start building some trust up and pass information on," she says.

"If people weren't involved in her murder but just have information then they're not going to be in trouble but it must be something that's really weighing on their mind and it's time that we got Sarah returned to her family."

For many years, Sarah's family did not have a good relationship with the police. The final sighting of Sarah was at a house Hampden Crescent. She phoned her mum Vicki from there high on drugs. Vicki called the police and begged officers to go and collect her daughter. Officers refused and Sarah was never seen again. A missing person's investigation became a murder investigation three years later.

At first, officers assumed Sarah had run away like she had so many times before and she would eventually turn up. But she didn't, and the Benfords believed that there were missed opportunities to find out what happened to her daughter.

DS Gallagher agrees that the initial reaction to her disappearance was too slow and that it has hampered the investigation for the past twenty years.

"I don't think any person in Northamptonshire Police would deny that," she says.

"We certainly have a lot more understanding of people when they go missing, victims of child sexual exploitation and children in care homes now.

"And yes, hindsight's a wonderful thing. We could have gathered some more information had people taken it more seriously at the time but despite that we will do our very best to find Sarah.

"I'm not going anywhere and I'm determined to try and find her."

Officers now have a greatly improved relationship with Sarah's family.

DS Gallagher says: "We are working with family to make sure they're kept up to date with the investigation.

"Now, I would like think I have a really good relationship with the family and I'm hoping that I can bring them some good news."

She admits that, post the highly-publicised Rochdale and Rotherham child grooming cases, detectives look at these cases in with different eyes than their colleagues might have two decades ago.

"We understand children have complex lifestyles but Sarah ultimately was a child. She was in a care home, she was unhappy and she wanted to come back to Kettering because she loved Kettering, that's what she knew and that's why I think there's people in Kettering that definitely know what her last movements were."

The team has been back and spoken again to some of those initially arrested but there have been no further arrests since that time.

"It's about trying to go back and refocus their minds onto that time.

"Loyalties change. We've been revisiting people in Kettering for the past seven years and asking what people remember of Sarah, trying to trace associations."

Despite the passage of time dulling people's memories, DS Gallagher says she still thinks detectives can solve this case.

"I'm really, really hopeful," she says.

"I only takes that one bit of intelligence that has some fact that's going to give us a lead.

"If this was a case where it was really quiet and had been for years then we wouldn't have a lot of hope, but this is not one of those cases.

"I think people in the community do want to help us.

"So I'm hopeful that if we just keep speaking to people eventually somebody will just give us that one piece information that will lead to us finding where she is.

"Me and my team are dedicated to doing everything we can to making sure we find Sarah now and bringing her home to her family.

"Lots is going on in the world but I'd like to appeal to people not to forget Sarah. It's been 20 years now, times have changed, you might not still have the same loyalties.

"It's time now, if they saw her in those last few days - tell the police. Phone me, I'll speak to them personally and they can tell me what they know."

If you have any information that could help detectives bring Sarah home to her family, phone 101 and ask to speak to DS Julie Gallagher.