Detectives who unearthed the bodies of Sian O’Callaghan and Becky Godden-Edwards are tracing the owners of 40 cars that belonged to murder suspect Chris Halliwell.
The vehicles that were previously driven by the taxi driver have been identified through a government database and are wanted for forensic testing.
A police source said the large amount of cars that had to be traced and then searched was ‘alarming’.
Charged: Chris Halliwell has been charged with the murder of Sian O'Callaghan
Police urgently want to track down a Lexus and a brown Vauxhall Cavalier, thought to have been owned by Halliwell at the time Miss Godden-Edwards disappeared. Officers hope they could still hold crucial DNA evidence relating to the two murders.
Owners who have bought the vehicles and registered them with the DVLA have not yet been contacted by the police.
The in-depth background checks are the most thorough a police force has carried out since the investigations into serial killers Fred West and Peter Tobin.
It comes as officers dug up 47-year-old Halliwell’s front garden and a property six doors down where he used to live in Swindon last week.
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He has been charged with the murder of Miss O’Callaghan and has been questioned over the death of Miss Godden-Edwards.
Wiltshire Police are examining the cases of at least four other missing people who have disappeared in the area.
The officer in charge of the investigation said a possible link between the killings and the disappearance of Melanie Hall 15 years ago is ‘top of our list’.
The graduate was last seen leaving a nightclub in Bath in 1996. Her remains were found beside a motorway in 2009.
Miss O’Callaghan, a 22-year-old personal assistant, disappeared on March 19 after leaving a nightclub in Swindon. Her body was found beside a road near Uffington, Oxfordshire.
Days later the remains of prostitute Miss Godden-Edwards, who would have been 29 this week and may have been killed as long ago as 2003, were found in a shallow grave in a field in Eastleach, Gloucestershire.
Halliwell took police to both sites following his arrest by officers investigating the disappearance of Miss O’Callaghan.
Since providing this information, however, he is believed to have become much less forthcoming.
Detective Superintendent Steve Fulcher said of the unsolved case of Miss Hall: ‘She is definitely top of our list and a top priority for us.’
The other cases being looked at include those of prostitute Sally Ann John, 24, from Swindon, who went missing in 1995, and Sandra Brewin, 21, who disappeared from her parents’ home in the town in 1994.
Vietnamese immigrant Thi Hai Nguyen, 20, is also unaccounted for since she vanished from her temporary home in 2005.
A police source confirmed teams are going through missing person reports and the DNA database and plan to question Halliwell again, with the aim of ‘piecing his life back together’.
Wiltshire Police are also using the UK’s leading criminal psychologist, Dr Adrian West, who is building an ‘offender profile’ for the investigation having previously worked on the murder of Jill Dando and last year’s Cumbria shootings.
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