Murder police quiz taxi drivers

Kevin Palmer was working in Spain but returned to Britain on holiday

Police hunting the killer of a man who vanished more than four years ago are to interview hundreds of taxi drivers in Hampshire.

Detectives will question more than 500 drivers who they believe could hold clues to the murder of 37-year-old Kevin Palmer.

Mr Palmer, who is originally from the North East, was last seen alive in the Hoe Road area of Bishops Waltham on 12 March 1999.

Police are keen to trace a taxi driver who picked him up with two other men and a woman on the night he disappeared.

Drug smuggling

They have evidence that Mr Palmer's body was taken to a house in Hoe Road, the former home of John Howett, who was jailed last year for drug smuggling.

Officers recently spent 11 days searching the house and digging up the garden, but no body was found.

A 51-year-old man from Bishops Waltham was arrested last Tuesday on suspicion of murder and was later released on bail to return for further questioning.

Mr Palmer, known as John Bon Jovi to his friends, was selling timeshare apartments in Spain when he came back to Britain for a holiday.

Police failed to find Mr Palmer's body in an 11-day dig at the house

On the night he went missing he visited a pub and a country club in Abshot, leaving in a taxi at 0100 BST with two other men and a woman.

The taxi stopped on the Botley Road and three men got out but only two got back in after a row.

It was the last time Mr Palmer was seen alive.

Detective Sergeant Jim Park said: "We urge anyone who was driving a taxi in this area in March 1999 to have a really good think - did you have to stop to let a group of men out of your car because a fight broke out in the back?

"It would have been very memorable."