The Evening Argus today offered a £10,000 reward for the capture of Sarah Payne's killer.

The Argus has also printed 2,000 new posters appealing for information.

As the hunt continued today, Argus Editor Simon Bradshaw said: "This sickening crime has touched everyone in Britain and our hearts go out to Sarah's family.

"The Argus is urging anyone with any scrap of information, no matter how insignificant they feel it might be, to contact Sussex Police immediately. We cannot rest until Sarah's killer is behind bars."

Detective Superintendent Alan Ladley, heading the murder inquiry, thanked the Argus. He said: "We welcome this offer and any support that helps bring the person, or persons, responsible to justice."

Mr Ladley put it bluntly: "We are dealing with a very sick person, with absolutely no morals."

Meanwhile, tests on Sarah's body were continuing today. It is understood the post-mortem carried out on Tuesday evening proved inconclusive as to the cause of death.

There were no outward signs of violence, which suggests Sarah may have been strangled or suffocated. It was still not clear last night whether she had been sexually assaulted.

Police believe they are dealing with a predator who waited for his prey to stray from safety. There are no firm sightings of suspects near to where Sarah was abducted on the evening of July 1, close to her grandparents' home near East Preston, Littlehampton. The killer, possibly with an accomplice, may have been cruising and, to Sarah's misfortune, "struck lucky" as the eight-year-old walked alone.

Two local men were arrested soon after Sarah's kidnapping, but later released.

Registered child sex offenders in Sussex and throughout the rest of the country are being checked.

A spokesman for the Forensic Science Service laboratories in Lambeth, south London, said a team of scientists was giving top priority to the work from Operation Maple - the codename for the Sarah Payne investigation - and it was leapfrogging other profiling work.

A wide variety of materials has been sent to the lab, but the spokesman refused to comment on what they comprised.

He said the resulting DNA profiles took a minimum of two days to prepare and could then be used to link suspects to the scene or the body, or to eliminate them from the inquiry.

The profiles can be taken from microscopic quantities of samples, using a process which isolates the human material, copies it and then amplifies it many times to make it large enough for profiling.

The profile is then run to the National DNA Database, which contains more than 700,000 profiles, and can be compared with other samples from the Sarah Payne inquiry.

The spokesman said the service, an independent agency of the Home Office, could call in specialists within different DNA fields if needed. He said: "Everything we do is tempered by the difficulties of getting the profiles, but if anybody can do it, we can."

Police are still examining a white van, believed to have been originally registered to a Croydon resident and sold a week before Sarah's murder.

Doors were subsequently removed and police are anxious to trace anyone with information about people modifying or renovating a white van.

If a van was used in the murder, then the killer may have switched doors and cleaned the interior to get rid of evidence.

It could also explain why Sarah's clothes have not been found so far.

Anybody with information that could help catch the killer should call Sussex Police on 0845 6070999.