POLICE hunting the offender who mutilated Chester man Stephen Prudhoe have now formally requested the services of a criminal psychologist.

A specialist will come up with the profile of the kind of sick individual who would want to cut off Mr Prudhoe's genitals and remove them from the crime scene at his home address in Blacon Point Road.

The investigation team has made a request for expert help from the National Crime Faculty. However, Detective Inspector Simon Price said this technique may be of limited use if the offender is suffering from mental illness and not behaving in a predictable way.

Mr Prudhoe had his genitals hacked off after he died of a heart attack. His body was discovered by a neighbour at his Blacon home, on Wednesday March 10.

Police are keen to stress their inquiry is continuing at full pace despite the arrest of a man who is helping them with their inquiries.

DI Price said: 'I am concerned that people see a man has been arrested and then make assumptions that that's it, the police have solved it. It doesn't work like that. People are arrested during the course of major inquiries like this and sometimes quite properly eliminated.'

He said the name of the 21-year-old local man, who had been arrested and bailed, arose during the investigation. DI Price, who was among 150 people who attended the victim's funeral at Blacon Crematorium last Friday, added: 'The person did know him (the victim). He certainly knew who he was.

'Whoever has done this, if they didn't know him at all, I would be surprised.'

The results of complex forensic tests are still awaited and may shed light on whether the arrested man had been in Mr Prudhoe's house.

Meanwhile, DI Price and his 25-strong team are continuing to build up a profile of the victim, his life-style and habits to see whether anything in his background can shed light on what took place. So far nothing unusual has come up in Mr Prudhoe's past that could indicate a link with last month's events. No identical crimes have pin-pointed elsewhere.

DI Price revealed that a someone claiming to be a spiritual medium had come forward with information.

'We have had contact from a someone claiming to be a medium. I would not wish to be sceptical. Anybody's help is appreciated. The only way we can check information out is if we are in possession of it. I would never rubbish or laugh at anything anybody said.

'If someone had said something like this was going to happen in Blacon you would never have believed them so you have to keep an open mind.'

Anyone who can help with the inquiry is asked to call the incident room on 01244 613087 or the confidential Crimestoppers hotline on 0800 555 111.