The neighbour of Tia Sharp's grandmother has been jailed for five months after being found guilty of wasting police time during their search for the murdered schoolgirl.

Paul Meehan lived next door to the 12-year-old's grandmother Christine Bicknell, in The Lindens, New Addington, and told police he saw the schoolgirl leave the house at lunchtime on August 3 last year.

But in fact her killer Stuart Hazell had already murdered her and hidden her body in the loft.

The misinformation hindered the police investigation into Tia's disappearance, including the speed with which detectives re-interviewed Hazell.

Following a trial at Croydon Magistrates' Court, District Judge Karen Hammond this afternoon found Mr Meehan guilty of wasting police time and jailed him for five months.

Prosecutors said he had lied about seeing Tia so he could be a part of a major police investigation.

During the trial Meehan had accepted it was impossible he had seen Tia, but in his defence said he must have confabulated - or unknowingly created - the memory of Tia leaving the address.

A statement from Tia's grandmother read out in court after the guilty verdict said Meehan's false claim had added to the delays to discover Tia's body, which was badly decomposed when finally discovered more than a week after she was killed.

 

She said: "I do believe that without his false statement my granddaughter would have been able to be found earlier and we would have been able to say goodbye properly and to give her one final kiss.

"He has denied myself, her mum, uncle and step dad the right to see her for one final time."

Silly lie

Sentencing him, District Judge Karen Hammond, said: "The consequences of your falsehoods led police down blind alleys.

"There is no suggestion you were in league with Stuart Hazell and there is no suggestion from me, Paul Meehan, that you were involvement led to the delay of finding Tia's body. But I accept the family believe that and will probably continue to do so.

"You compounded the false hope that all but Stuart Hazell had that Tia may be found and returned home safely.

"It may have been a silly lie but it is hard to imagine a more serious example of wasting police time.

"I have no doubt that this case is so serious that only a custodial sentence is justified."

She added: "I conclude I am sure Paul Meehan lied about believing he had seen Tia, lied about telling the house to house officers he had seen her, lied about the reasons why he did not tell them, lied about why he did not tell DC Seeley initially and lied about whether he thought he had told the house to house officers he had seen her.

"I am sure he told those lies deliverately to conceal the truth as obvious to him as to everyone - that he had not seen Tia at all on that fateful Friday."

Judge Hammond said: "Whilst it is possible that he was confabulating in the sense that it is always a possibility in any case of unreliability, I am sure I may exclude the possibility of confabulation in the circumstances of this case because the weight of the cited evidence of unreliability, which refutes that possibility on these facts, is sufficiently strong to make me sure I can refute it.

"The number and nature of these lines, in my view points away from genuine confabulation."

The court heard police deemed Meehan's sighting "significant" as it backed up Hazell's claim Tia left the house to go shopping in Croydon.

Last week prosecutor Jocelyn Ledward said Mr Meehan had not been "in league" with Hazell but was perhaps trying to "enhance his (Meehan's) importance within the investigation."

Summing up she said: "He (Meehan) would not be the first or the last person to derive some satisfaction from playing the role of the last person to see the victim of a homicide crime alive.

"If one looks at the tone of the email and the text message to his wife as matters developed and he became an important witness in the investigation, there is perhaps something there of some subconscious enjoyment of the process of becoming an important witness in the investigation.

"The way Mr Meehan expresses himself in these emails and the text message there is a hint of being puffed up at being the focus because of the position he put himself in."

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