Detectives may appear on the BBC's Crimewatch programme tomorrow night to say thank you to the thousands of people who phoned to help with the Sarah Payne investigation.

Officers hunting the eight-year-old's killer are stepping back from national media appeals so they can sift through the evidence generated from more than 30,000 calls made since Sarah first disappeared from near her grandparents house in Kingston Gorse on July 1.

Officers are also continuing to look more closely at interviews and evidence taken from more than 2,000 drivers stopped during a road block organised by police at the weekend close to where Sarah's naked body was found in a field just off the A29 north off Pulborough.

There were Pulborough. There were no clear signs of violent injury to her body, leading experts to believe the youngster was either strangled or suffocated shortly after she was abducted.

Detectives are still hunting for Sarah's blue Fred Perry sports dress and one of the black velcro shoes she was wearing at the time of her disappearance.

Blue material found at Bramber Castle and part of a shoe discovered at West Chiltington over the weekend were yesterday ruled out of the inquiry.

Police spokesman Nick Sandford said although police were not launching national appeals for help, they still wanted to hear anyone who may have seen a white transit van in the area over the weekend Sarah disappeared.

He said: "At the moment we are working our way through all the evidence but we are definitely not scaling down the investigation in any way.

"It is more that the focus of the inquiry has changed. We are steering away from the national appeals and concentrating attention on the West Sussex area instead."