THE officer leading enquiries into the discovery of a body last week said it was a "needle in a haystack investigation".

Two horse riders discovered the body of a man in a field between Cow Drove, connecting the A303 to Chilmark, and an unnamed road from the A303 to Teffont at about 2pm on Thursday.

An immediate police investigation was launched.

Despite a Home Office pathologist carrying out a forensic post-mortem examination, police are no closer to establishing a cause of death.

They are treating it as an unexplained death, but DCI Jeremy Carter told the Journal he believed the man died close to the time his body was found.

DNA and fingerprint tests have not shed any light on the man's identity.

When asked about the investigation so far, DCI Carter said: "Obviously we contact every police force in the country, we review missing persons records and no-one has reported a person fitting that clothing description or his physical description to police across the country.

"For example, it could be someone from abroad, or something along those lines, where it may not come up on UK systems."

He told the Journal the key to identifying the man's body would be the motif of the t-shirt he was wearing, and a distinctive silver necklace. He said there was "nothing at all" so far to identify the man other than these items.

A source told the Journal the man had been found with no trousers on, but DCI Carter would not be drawn on this and reiterated: "He was certainly wearing the t-shirt and the necklace."

"We’re appealing to the public to help us to identify this person through these items. Equally we want to know the reason they were in that field.

"If someone does know something about that we want to prick people’s consciences to find out exactly what’s gone on here."

When asked if murder detectives were working on the case, DCI Carter said he was working with the major crime team, and said: "We just don't know if this is a murder or a natural death. It is being treated as unexplained because of the post mortem results, however you can't lose sight of either scenario, and that's why a considerable amount of resources are working within the Chilmark area to try and piece together what has gone on and identify possible witnesses."

DCI Carter said there was no evidence to determine if the man was local or not, and said police were keeping "a very open mind" over whether he died in the field or was moved there.

He said: "There are two theories: one, that someone has been killed unlawfully. Equally, this may be a natural cause death whereby, because of the circumstances, people felt they couldn’t use recognised channels into the authorities to alert them to it, for reasons we don’t yet know, and as a consequence then deposited him in the field."

DCI Carter added: "You're obviously very close to the A303 and, being a main arterial route, that's interesting in terms of the volume of traffic that goes down it."

But, equally, the site where the body was found is "slightly off the beaten track", he said, which "could indicate some local knowledge, but could just be a spontaneous turn off the A303 by one of the many people that go down it every day."

He said in the coming days the investigation would focus on "trying to get that breakthrough from the public" and police are hoping the man's clothing "might be the first thing that starts to unlock this case".

"Usually you will have things such as fingerprints, such as DNA, such as someone reporting a loved one missing or someone recognising the description, and people would be coming forward to the police, and that’s just not happened here," DCI Carter said.

Call 101 with any information.