Police have discounted claims by Sion Jenkins that he has identified a possible new suspect for the murder of his teenage foster daughter, eleven years after her killing at the Hastings family home.

Sussex Police insisted there were “no new viable lines of inquiry”, despite the former teacher’s claims – coinciding with his recently published book, The Murder of Billie-Jo – that he believes he may have come face to face with her murderer.

A Sussex Police spokesman said: “We have identified, to our satisfaction, all of those people who attended Lower Park Road, Hastings, immediately following the murder of Billie-Jo Jenkins.

“As far as we are concerned, no individual is unaccounted for.”

He added: “In the absence of significant, new and compelling evidence, there are therefore no new viable lines of inquiry for us to progress at this time.”

Billie-Jo, 13, was found in a pool of blood with head injuries inflicted by a metal tent peg on the patio of the family’s large Victorian home in Lower Park Road on February 15, 1997.

Jenkins, at the time headteacher-designate at all-boys William Parker School in the town, has maintained his innocence and insisted Billie-Jo must have been killed by an intruder while he visited a DIY store.

In 1998, he was convicted at Lewes Crown Court of murdering her and jailed for life but had a retrial in 2005 after successfully appealing.

However, the jury failed to agree a verdict and a second retrial ended the same way in 2006, allowing him to walk free.

Jenkins, 50, who now lives with his second wife, claims he spoke to a dark-haired man he believed to be a plain-clothes police officer in his hallway in the confused hour after Billie-Jo was found bludgeoned to death.

He believes this may have been her killer.

Sussex Police’s comments came as Jenkins launched a compensation claim for up to £500,000 for the six years he spent in prison before being acquitted of his foster daughter’s murder.