Police have for the first time conceded they “fear the worst” in the search for nurse’s assistant Kerran Baker, 25, missing since 30 July.

Acknowledging that little evidence had emerged in the three-week search, Chief Superintendent John Jones nevertheless said the passage of time was working against investigators.

“We have a good idea who had BBM contact with her and we are still awaiting forensic tests of her car, apartment and other materials. The prime object is to find out what happened to Kerran Baker’,” he said.

Police for the first time conceded they were treating the search for missing 25-year-old Kerran Baker as a murder investigation, saying too much time had elapsed to expect much else.

“This is day 20 of the disappearance of Kerran Baker,” said Chief Superintendent John Jones (pictured right). “The investigation is still very much alive, but by virtue of three weeks, we fear the worst, that something criminal has happened to her.”

Concerns have been mounting for more than two weeks about the fate of Ms Baker, who vanished on 30 July, leaving few traces apart from groceries and a handbag in her Bodden Town home, and her Honda Civic car keys and unspecified “materials” — said to be a set of documents – in the vicinity of Pedro Castle.

“We have nothing concrete to say what happened, that someone has done this or someone has done that to her,” Mr Jones said. “We are applying the disciplines to this investigation as to a murder investigation.

“We were concerned about this from the get-go,” he said, explaining that “not a weekend goes by where we don’t hear of a missing person, and nine times out of 10, there is a happy ending. Someone has had a night out, stayed with someone and not told anyone else about it, but with the circumstances of this, we were immediately concerned.”

Mr Jones said police would continue to pursue both forensic analyses and Ms Baker’s BBM contacts just prior to her Saturday-evening disappearance. Investigators had identified “not less than 10, but not as many as dozens” of people who had contact with her.

He declined to elaborate on the details of the electronic sleuthing, but said Canadian Blackberry-service provider Research in Motion had “been very helpful’, despite certain “technical limitations”.

While renewing police pleas for public cooperation, Mr Jones politely dismissed repeated claims that Ms Baker had appeared
in dreams.

“With the best will in the world, and trying to be helpful, people have contacted us to say they had a dream or a vision. But we operate on facts and these are not facts,” he said.

“There are very few cases where this kind of inquiry has been brought to a happy conclusion with this kind of thing,” Mr Jones said.