Alice Gross inquest: Convicted Latvian killer 'walked into Britain unchecked'

Murdered: The body of schoolgirl Alice Gross was found concealed in the Grand Union canal
John Dunne @jhdunne28 June 2016
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A convicted killer from Latvia who is believed to have gone on to murder schoolgirl Alice Gross walked into Britain unchecked, an inquest heard today.

Police did not even ask Latvian authorities if Arnis Zalkalns had a criminal record when he was arrested in 2009 for an alleged sexual assault.

Zalkalns entered Britain in 2007, the hearing at the Royal Courts of Justice heard.

He then allegedly killed Alice, aged 14, and dumped her body in the river Brent in west London, weighing her body down with bricks and logs in 2014. Her body was discovered on September 30.

Zalkalns was found hanged in a park on October 4 and police said the 41-year-old would have been charged with Alice’s murder had he been alive.

A huge police search operation was mounted in an effort to trace her

Speaking of the police’s failure to carry out a criminal records check when Zalkalns was arrested in 2009, Detective Sergeant Mike Fortieth said it was not “mandatory” and that no automatic check would have been made on him coming across the UK border.

He told the inquest: “The ability to check foreign national convictions was not widely known at this time.

“We now have a policy and from this year it is in place.”

The officer, an expert on police checks on foreign nationals with convictions, said the Association of Criminal Records Office (ACRO) was the gateway to making requests to overseas countries for records.

However, the inquest heard that even when Zalkalns was identified as a suspect in Alice’s murder an ACRO check came up negative on his record from Latvia.

Arnis Zalkans was found hanged a week after the schoolgirl's body was found

Coroner Fiona Wilcox asked the officer: “On 16 sep 2014 the check was negative?

He answered: “Yes”.

The officer said the conviction had been removed by the Latvian authorities because it was “spent”.

However, he said further inquiries with Interpol had picked up the conviction.

He said that from February this year checks on foreign nationals were automatically checked electronically if they were arrested and booked in at a police station and that the checks were more rigorous from the outset.

Zalkalns was convicted of killing his wife in Latvia and burying her.

The inquest heard that 100 overseas criminal record checks were made every month by police in London 2009. By 2014 that had surged to 2,000, DS Fortieth said.

ACRO had five staff in 2009 and now has over 100, the inquest was told.

Alice died from compression asphyxia. Zalkalns hung himself in Boston Manor Park following the crime. Her mother Rosalind Hodgkiss previously told the inquest said: “Alice was a lively, popular, compassionate girl.

“We remain shocked a foreign national with a conviction was not monitored or even known about.

“It destroys our faith in the authorities’ ability to protect its citizens... I want answers so this can’t happen to another family.”

The inquest continues.

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