The Met commissioner has defended his officers this week after facing questions over why it took several weeks to find both Alice and Zalkalns, amid fears that crucial evidence may have been lost.

Sir Hogan-Howe said police were reviewing whether the search for the 14-year-old from Hanwell could have been conducted more 'efficiently and effectively'.

Alice Gross
Alice Gross

He also defended the hunt for prime murder suspect Arnis Zalkalns, who was found hanged in Boston Manor Park at the weekend in an area police had previously searched.

He said the 41-year-old Latvian labourer's body, which was formally identified on Tuesday, was in an 'enclosed area' which was 'really difficult to get into'.

Alice Gross police search the River Brent
Alice Gross police search the River Brent

But speaking in an interview with BBC London, Sir Hogan-Howe said officers had conducted their enquiries as though they were searching for 'their own child'. 

He said: "Every one of us would have hoped that we'd found this poor girl within hours, ideally before she was murdered but that wasn't the case. And every day that goes past, an investigation gets harder. I know the officers in that case having met them on the ground, one, couldn't have worked any harder.

"They felt a passion that they wanted to find that child like it was their own child. Nobody wants to walk away not having found her.

"We wanted to find the person we had as a suspect, we worked incredibly hard, and we had searched a park where he eventually was found.

Arnis Zalkalns, Alice Gross and a CCTV footage of Zalkalns on the canal

"But the area where he was found was marked out for further searching because it was really difficult to get into. This was not the case of somebody hanging in the tree to be seen from 100m away. This was an enclosed area. But of course we all want reassurance that we did it as well as we could, we did it efficiently and effectively, and we're in the process of reviewing that.

"And at the end of it we'll be in a better position to know whether we could have done differently".

An inquest into Alice's death has been scheduled to open and adjourn at the West London Coroner’s Court on Friday.

A post-mortem examination on her body, which was found buried in an underwater grave in the River Brent just a few minutes walk from where she was last seen, has so far failed to establish how she died.