Police have found a discarded car key and dried blood on the rocky shoreline as part of a search of the Pedro Castle area for missing woman Kerran Natalee Baker.

Chief Superintendent John Jones, head of operations for the RCIPS, said yesterday that a Tuesday-evening search of the area had uncovered a car key “found just the other side of the hedge” where Ms Baker’s Honda Civic was found on Sunday.

“There have been reports of blood stains or smears found on a rock close to the shore” Mr Jones said. “We will examine it forensically.”

It comes as officers reveal they have stopped searching the area for the time being.

Ms Baker, 25, disappeared late Saturday. Friends reported her missing on Sunday, triggering a police investigation.

Mr Jones said yesterday, however,”we are still no further along in finding Kerry Ann. We have no further information in finding her whereabouts. We are no further today than yesterday.”

He declined to speculate on the results of the search, but said investigators were assuming the key belonged to the Civic.

“The car keys looked like Honda car keys,” he said. “We believe
they are.

“It is bizarre that the car would be locked up and the keys would be there,” he said of the distance to the hedge. “The blood smears will have to wait for confirmation.”

Searchers had found no sign of a struggle: “That is not apparent at all.”

Meanwhile, Ms Baker’s mother and father arrived in Cayman yesterday, Mr Jones said.  Police planned to ask about reports in the Jamaican press of restraining orders “against certain persons,” he said, but claimed local police had not heard of any orders.

“I’d be very surprised if there were orders and we didn’t know about them, but we will discuss it with her parents. There was no mention of such orders by her friends.”

He also minimised reports that Ms Baker had been in an altercation on Friday night in George Town’s Archie’s Bar with a woman named Latay, saying “we are not aware of a Friday night altercation with another woman, although we have reports of other altercations”. A subsequent conversation with an officer at a routine Grand Harbour roadblock had indicated nothing unusual.

Detective Inspector Marlon Bodden said police had identified the owner of a suitcase found in the boot of Ms Baker’s car. He declined to name the owner, but said the contents, mostly clothing, had belonged to the missing woman.

Yesterday, someone calling herself Ms Baker’s “smaller sister” said on Facebook the suitcase belonged to her mother.

“It’s been there [since] my mommy came up to Cayman couple months ago. A patient at the medical facility where she works brought some stuff for her and it wasn’t her style and some couldn’t fit, so she left the suitcase in the trunk and said she was going to give them away, but apparently she delayed,” the woman wrote on a public bulletin board.

Mr Jones said police had finished searching for now.

”We do not except other searches at the moment. The Pedro Castle area is finished. A lot of our focus now is on speaking with people that know her and had contact
with her,” he said.