It's a massive conspiracy to depress the shit out of people who watch breakfast news while they are tired and emotionally vulnerable. Every day, the residents of a small scottish town act out the stages of grief for for rows and rows of camera crews, feeding the camera'd crows with strips of flesh and dignity. I think they're slowly coming towards the acceptance phase right now, but there's been a hell of a lot of denial to get to this point.
IMO (and this is probably illegal) they should have let the guy go from custody and followed him. Because if he does have the little girl in some kind of hole, she's never going to be found as long as he's inside, obviously.