Whiting was charged with the murder of Sarah Payne. Trial On 6 February 2001 Whiting appeared at Lewes Crown Court charged with abduction and murder. Whiting pleaded not guilty to both charges and was remanded in custody while still serving his sentence for the motoring offences, but the new charges against him prevented his release from prison during the summer of that year. Whiting's trial began on 14 November 2001, at Lewes Crown Court. The jury heard from several witnesses. The key witnesses included Sarah Payne's oldest brother who had seen a 'scruffy-looking man with yellowish teeth' driving through Kingston Gorse on the evening that Sarah Payne went missing. Lee Payne did not pick out Whiting, however, when he was selected for an identity parade. One of Payne's shoes was found by a member of the public in a country lane and forensic tests had found fibres from Whiting's van on the shoe. This was the only item of Payne's clothing to be recovered. A strand of blonde hair on a T-shirt was found in Whiting's van. A DNA test established there was a one-in-a-billion chance of it belonging to anyone other than Payne. The jury also heard the testimony of two motorists who recalled a white van being parked at the roadside and pulling off a track on the evening of 1 July 2000, near the site where Payne's body was later found. On 12 December 2001, after a four-week trial before Mr Justice Curtis and a jury, Whiting was convicted of the abduction and murder of Payne and he was sentenced to life imprisonment. The trial judge said it was a rare case in which a life sentence should mean life. After Whiting was convicted, his previous convictions were revealed, which had been withheld from the jury and media. Police feared that any knowledge of his previous conviction could jeopardize the trial. In the event of being convicted, Whiting could argue that he had been tried on the evidence of an earlier crime, paving the way for an appeal and possible freedom. The fact that Whiting had now been exposed as a repeat offender sparked renewed calls for the government to allow controlled public access to the sex offender's register, although on the day after Whiting's conviction, the Home Office commented that such a system would be "unworkable," running the risk of driving paedophiles "underground", making it more