"We are assuming that it is her at this time," assistant police chief Peter Reichard told a news conference late on Sunday, giving no further details because detectives were treating it as an ongoing homicide case.
"It's pretty extensive damage," said Taylor, who confirmed that detectives were treating the burglary and ransacking as a suspected hate crime.
Hertfordshire police chief constable Frank Whiteley said detectives are treating the incident as an accident.
In a national operation being run by the Metropolitan police, detectives are treating the claims of a man who has lied repeatedly in the past, and is thought to be one of Britain's most prolific serial sexual killers, with some caution.
She is still missing but detectives are treating her disappearance as murder.
During the Sherlock Holmes moment in which he deciphers what actually happened in the kidnapping, the detective is treating himself to an alfresco picnic in the mountains, chewing "a sharp sheep's cheese, chunks of crusty wholewheat bread baked in a wood-fired oven".
The detectives, who were treated for minor injuries, will be placed on modified duty pending the outcome of an investigation, the police said.
A more recent indignity came just after Christmas, when, he told police detectives, he was treated rudely and roughly after being caught shoplifting at a deli in Queens.
Detectives investigating the case said they were treating the children's deaths as suspicious, but were not looking for anyone else.
And because there was no note or timing mechanism on the simulator, Detective Sgt. Harold Van Winkle said, the police were treating it as "somebody's military souvenir that accidentally got into a bag of canned goods" that had been donated to the food pantry at St . Peters Episcopal Churchhere.
