THE two brothers of murdered schoolgirl Sarah Payne have described their guilt at not being able to save their sister on the day she vanished.

Speaking in public for the first time since the eight-year-old was abducted and murdered by paedophile Roy Whiting, Luke and Lee Payne said she ran ahead of them and sister Charlotte on July 1 2000.

In an interview for a Channel 5 documentary, they recalled how she dipped through a gap leading to a road on the edge of the field in Kingston Gorse, near Ferring, and was not seen alive again.

She was then snatched by Whiting, who is serving life imprisonment for her murder, who smiled and waved at Lee as he drove away before the siblings could raise the alarm that she was missing. Her body was later found near Pulborough.

Luke Payne, who was then 12 years old, said the thought that he could have saved her, but did not, “eats you up inside”.

He said he is haunted by what happened: “I don’t get a lot of sleep. I dread the night, because it’s just you and your thoughts.”

He told how his father, Michael, who is now dead, bought a sawn-off shotgun and talked to Lee and him about what he would do if Whiting was found not guilty

He added that when he sees Sarah’s friends now: “I always wonder where she would be, what she would be doing.”

Lee Payne, who was then 13 and the oldest of the four children, remembers seeing Whiting’s van drive past the field and thinks he did a U-turn to snatch Sarah and drive off.

He saw Whiting at the wheel and describes him as looking like “a real dodgy person” - who smiled and waved at him seconds after the abduction.

Lee said he was “literally 30 seconds, if that, behind her”, but when he could not see her he thought she was hiding because “she’d left in a huff”. He described the way Whiting smiled at him “was very uneasy - didn’t make me feel comfortable at all” and added that “when it comes to feeling guilt about the situation, I did for a few years beat myself up ... that if I ran faster ... I might have caught up with her. There’s never going to be a day when you’re going to turn round and be like, ‘I’m over that now’. Because that’s just going to happen.”

Sarah’s sister, Charlotte, who was five years old at the time, said she suffered anxiety attacks and feels guilt about what happened.

  • Sarah Payne: A Mother’s Story is on Channel 5 on Wednesday at 9pm.