The Disappearance Of April Jones | Preview (Channel 4)

On 1 October 2012, the picturesque Welsh market town of Machynlleth made international headlines when five-year-old April Jones went missing from outside her home.

A decade on, this is the extraordinary story of the hunt for the missing child, the investigation into a local suspect and the challenges faced by the police in trying to convict him.

This three-part series is made with exclusive cooperation from April Jones's family, Dyfed-Powys Police, and the community of Machynlleth. The hunt for April Jones became the largest police search in British history, creating huge challenges for the police, the lawyers and the forensic scientists assigned to the case.

Told through the eyes of those who knew April best, the investigators who worked on the case, specialist volunteers who searched the remote terrain surrounding the town, journalists who arrived in huge numbers to face a sometimes uneasy local response, and lawyers who mounted a challenging murder prosecution.

This episode tells the story of the day when April went missing; when people from all over the UK descended on Machynlleth to help search as police discovered that she may have been abducted, not by a stranger but by someone she knew.

With a manhunt launched to track down local resident Mark Bridger, the community was in disbelief that one of their own could have been responsible for April's disappearance.

The full series will be available to stream or download for free on All 4 following the transmission of this episode on Monday 12th December.