A thin blue line of police officers formed a human cordon as convicted killer Levi Bellfield was taken to the site where he is alleged to have abducted schoolgirl Milly Dowler.
Bellfield, handcuffed to a prison officer, was only yards away from the Old Bailey judge and jury trying him for Milly's murder.
He arrived in Walton-on-Thames, Surrey, in a prison van while the jurors and lawyers travelled by coach.
They spent more than an hour retracing Milly's final footsteps after the 13-year-old emerged from the station to make her 15-minute walk home.
But she vanished "in the blink of an eye" as she walked along Station Avenue on March 21, 2002.
Levi Bellfield, 43, visited the rented flat in Walton-on-Thames, which looked out on to the road where Milly was last seen, in the "dead of night" just hours after she went missing. Though he and his girlfriend were house-sitting in west London, he returned to their flat in Collingwood Place between "3-4am" telling her he wanted a lie-in, the Old Bailey jury was told.
"So, why return to Collingwood Place in the dead of night? To walk the dog? To lie in? If the prosecution is right that he abducted and killed Milly Dowler, then he had to dispose of her body and clean up," said Brian Altman, QC, prosecuting.
Bellfield, formerly of West Drayton, west London, denies the kidnap and murder of Milly on 21 March 2002, and the attempted abduction of Rachel Cowles, then 11, the previous day.
The 11-year-old thinks he drove past her and then turned around before pulling into a lay-by behind her and offering her a lift home, which she refused.
The alleged incident took place on the busy A244, a third of a mile of which had to be closed yesterday during the site tour.
The jury led the way, followed by Bellfield – who denies murder, kidnap and attempted kidnap - and his entourage a few feet behind.
After 10 minutes spent inspecting the lay-by, they moved on to Walton-on-Thames, where Milly’s last movements were tracked.
A gaggle of taxi drivers, commuters and youths gathered to watch as Surrey police cleared a space and stopped traffic for the mobile court to assemble.
For more than an hour, they looked at the spot where Milly disappeared, just a few metres from the station and the gaps in the laurel hedge leading to Bellfield’s home.
As they were escorted, Bellfield trooped behind them, chatting with guards and police.
Shortly before 2pm, the jury piled back into their bus and Bellfield stepped into his van and the town fell quiet again.
