SKIPPING and smiling, without a care in the world, this is the last, poignant picture of April Jones. Just over 90 minutes later, the five-year-old vanished.

The image was taken from CCTV footage at April's local leisure centre as she came out of the changing rooms from her regular Monday after-school swimming lesson at 5.29pm on October 1.



Yesterday it was shown to the nine women and three men on the jury at the murder trial of Mark Bridger.



An hour and a half after it was taken, April's friend allegedly saw her being driven away by Bridger from the Bryn-y-Gog estate in Machynlleth where she lived.



More CCTV footage was then screened in court. It showed Bridger’s Land Rover Discovery driving away from town. The time was 7.15pm.



By then, the prosecution said, April would have been in the passenger seat after Bridger abducted her from outside her home nearby.



Volunteers assembled at the leisure centre the next day to help in the desperate search for April.



The only trace of her to be found was at Bridger's home - her blood, along with fragments of a child's skull among the ashes of his fireplace, the court has heard.



As hundreds scoured the streets and countryside, Bridger calmly went out for a walk with his dog.



He was captured on film by a police helicopter above the cottage in which the Crown says April lay bleeding on the hearth before Bridger staged an ‘extensive’ clean-up to remove clues that could link him to her murder.



The video evidence was shown to jurors the day after their visit to Machynlleth.



This latest evidence comes after April's mother recalled the moment when she last saw her daughter.



She had just thrown a tantrum, as little girls do, after her mother and father told her she couldn’t go out to play. But April Jones cried and kept asking to be allowed outside - so eventually they gave in.



Less than 20 minutes later she was gone, driven into the darkness.



Yesterday her mother relived the heartbreaking moment she let her five-year-old daughter play on the street that evening and never saw her again.



Coral Jones said she and her husband Paul had both told April it was too late to go outside on her bike. ‘She kept on and on and had a little bit of a tantrum,’ Mrs Jones said.



‘We eventually gave in. I zipped up her coat and she went off to play outside with her friend. I told her I didn’t want her to be long. I think that was around 7pm. This was the last time I saw her.’



Mrs Jones said that at about 7.20pm it was getting dark and colder, and she wanted April to come back inside.



"I sent her brother out to get her in and within a very short time he came running home in an hysterical state. When I calmed him down he said April’s best friend said she had got into a car with a man and she had gone.



"I was frantically trying to find her. I searched around the estate everywhere I could think of. I even looked in bins."



By that time, however, April was already in the hands of her killer. The prosecution says Mark Bridger murdered her after driving her off in his Land Rover.



Yesterday the 47-year-old former slaughterhouse worker - who claims he accidentally ran April over and can’t remember what he did with her after bundling her into the passenger seat - wept and bowed his head in the dock as the girl’s final moments with her family emerged.



Mrs Jones, 43, sat with her 41-year-old husband in the public gallery of Mold Crown Court as their written accounts of what happened that evening were read to a jury. Each wore a pink ribbon in April’s memory and occasionally held hands. Their statements to police told how an ordinary day with their ‘happy-go-lucky little girl’ turned to tragedy.



"April had been complaining of an upset tummy that morning but she was fine,’ Mrs Jones said. ‘We had a cwtch in bed - that’s Welsh for a hug or a cuddle."



While Mr Jones made breakfast, she dressed her daughter, tied her blonde hair in a plait and sent her off to school with her father. After a day shopping, they picked her up from school.



"She was a bit grumpy because she was tired," Mrs Jones said. But she cheered up when they dropped her off for a swimming lesson at the local leisure centre near their home in Machynlleth, mid-Wales, while they attended her school parents’ evening. When they brought her home, April ate a whole plate of spaghetti on toast then watched her favourite film - the Disney animation Tangled. Mr Jones said she was pleading to be allowed out to play with her seven-year-old best friend but they told her it was too late.



"She had a little paddy and I suppose we just gave in," he said. The couple said April knew about ‘stranger danger’ and would never have got into a car with someone she didn’t know.



There were links between them and Bridger, the court heard - Mrs Jones used to play darts in his local pub - but they were never friends, she said. Mr Jones got to know him when they dated sisters. Bridger was then about 32, he said. The sister was 15.



"I can’t think of any reason why Mark Bridger would take April and hurt her,’ he said. "He’s a father too. I cannot understand why he would do this to me."



Bridger had previously tried to befriend April’s teenage half-sister on Facebook, the court heard. But the 15-year-old, who cannot be named for legal reasons, spoke to her mother, who told her not to accept his request. The court has previously been told how Bridger collected photographs of the girl from the internet. They were saved on his computer along with those of April, her other half-sisters and murder victims including Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman.



Bridger denies abduction, murder and perverting the course of justice.



The trial continues.

