Sussex Police have been accused of systematic failure after an inquiry into a murder investigation that went wrong.

The report is one of the most damning ever issued by the Police Complaints Authority and shows a whole series of alarming mistakes by the force.

It was bad enough for Linda Henderson to have lost her husband when he was killed. It was worse still when she and her daughter were wrongly accused of murdering him.

Although the case was dropped before it ever came to trial, it has caused the two women enormous anguish and there has still not been an apology.

It appears as if the officers investigating the case developed tunnel vision, believing Mrs Henderson and her daughter responsible when there were many possible motives for other people to have committed the crime.

No wonder she feels the way things were handled was disgraceful, unprofessional and amateurish.

It also follows a series of other investigations into murders which have been unsolved including the high profile case last year of little Sarah Payne.

Sussex Police have a lot of explaining to do about this inquiry. The least they can do is issue a fulsome apology.

Lessons must be learned from the catastrophic failure of this investigation.