13 years on, her older sister Hazel Jones, now 31, has spoken for the first time about the tragedy that tore her family apart.

Hazel was 18 and heavily pregnant at the time, and says the trauma has shaped her life – and cast a shadow over her own children’s future.

She said: “My daughter has just turned 13, she’ll be going into year eight this year, and she wants to go and do stuff with her friends.

“I don’t know how I’m meant to let her grow up. Because I am quite scared of who is even around, who can you actually trust?

“After April I’m petrified to let my kids go out and grow up and start having their own lives.”

April was taken on the evening of October 1, 2012, as she played on her pink bicycle with friends at the Bryn-y-Gog housing estate near her home.

Local man Mark Bridger was later convicted of her abduction and murder, and sentenced to life in prison.

Despite an enormous search effort, April’s body was never found. Only fragments of her remains were found in Bridger’s cottage.

Hazel, who shares a father with April, remembers the exact moment she was told her half-sister was missing.

“I was at my own home in Aberaeron with my mother, and my mum came up to me and says April’s missing. And I was just like what?

“And she says it again, ‘Hazel, April’s missing’. And it just took a couple of seconds that felt like bloody minutes to actually process what the hell she was saying.”

Hazel raced to be with her dad, Paul, and the rest of the family, but the reality sank in the next day.

She said: “The next day came and then I think it fully sunk in that oh my god she’s actually really missing, isn’t she?

“She’s not just gone for a little wander, she’s actually really missing.

Hazel and April Jones. Five-year-old April Jones vanished while playing on her bike just yards from her home in Machynlleth. (Image: Hazel Jones / SWNS)

“It was so overwhelming, the actual thought of it.

“I just thought this doesn’t happen around here, and it wouldn’t happen to us of all people.”

When Hazel found out the news of what happened to April, she was “petrified”.

“I was so scared because I was carrying my daughter at the time and I was so scared to bring her into this world knowing that there was people like that on our doorstep,” she added.

“It really puts it into perspective that you can’t trust anyone. I just couldn’t get over how this could have happened.”

A few weeks later, Hazel gave birth to her daughter, Amelia.

“It was surreal because when dad and Coral came to see her in the hospital when she was first born, they were just shocked because she looked like April,” Hazel said.

“It was so difficult because I had just lost my sister and just given birth. I was trying to mourn my sister but also love my new daughter.”

Now a mother of three – with Amelia, 13, Ethan, 10, and Hefin, six – Hazel says the anxiety has never fully gone away.

Hazel Louise Jones with her daughter Ameila-Louise Roxanne Davies and son Ethan-Daniel Richard Davies at April’s grave in Machynlleth cemetery. seen – thousands of volunteers, sniffer dogs, helicopters and a nation holding its breath. (Image: William Lailey / SWNS)

Hazel added that April had a striking resemblance to her daughter at that age – something that made the grief even harder to bear.

“She had only been on this earth for five years, and I remember looking at her, thinking you have not even experienced life yet, and that was taken away from April,” she said.

“I do want my daughter to see the world and have everything that April couldn’t.”

But she’s honest with her children about April – and has a box of memories and newspaper clippings they can look at when they’re ready.

She said: “I have never hid it away from my kids, and I won’t hide it away.

“At the end of the day, it’s real life, it has happened, and I want them to be wary of their own selves.”

Last year, the family suffered another loss as Paul died on May 14, after being diagnosed with a brain disease in 2018.

“Once April went, a part of him went completely, and he never came back from that,” Hazel added.

“All I think is that he is now back with April and back to a peaceful life. Him passing was just like a part of me went too. I fought for him for so long”

Last summer, April’s killer was attacked in prison for a second time. Hazel said: “He deserves everything he’s getting. He literally deserves it all.”

The mother-of-three believes more should be done to protect children from child predators – and says she fully supports proposals to chemically castrate sex offenders.

“I read a lot of the comments on news articles about sex offenders, and people are saying it should be the death penalty,” she said. “But I don’t think so.

“They should be made to suffer. The death penalty is an easy way out. He didn’t give April an easy way out, did he?”

Even now, more than a decade later, she says what happened to her sister still doesn’t feel real.

“It’s been 13 years now, and it’s still not actually sunk in.

“I still don’t believe it. I don’t know whether I don’t want to believe it, but I just don’t believe it happened to us.

“I’m still waiting to wake up from this nightmare.”