Police are today questioning a man arrested on suspicion of murdering a Teesside prostitute.

Detectives investigating the disappearance of 19-year-old Rachel Wilson swooped on an address in Sunderland in the early hours of Thursday morning.

A 57-year-old man was arrested and driven to a police station in Cleveland where he was being quizzed last night. A Cleveland police spokesman said no charges had yet been brought and it was expected the man would continue to be questioned later tomorrow.

Rachel, who lived in Grove Hill, Middlesbrough, vanished almost a year ago after last being seen on May 30 in the Southfield Road area of the town.

Efforts by police to trace her, including the questioning of known kerb crawlers and hundreds of missing posters being put up in town, have so far come to nothing.

A public appeal by her mother Tina and granddad David Hardy also failed to elicit a crucial breakthrough, while a number of sightings, some from as far away as Leeds, have been ruled out.

Following Rachel's disappearance police released CCTV footage of her in the Woodlands Road/Southfield Road area of Middlesbrough at about 3.30am on May 31.

Police said they were hoping she may have been seen by members of the public using a busy taxi firm nearby or returning home from the town centre after a night out.

Rachel, who turned to prostitution to feed a crack cocaine and heroin habit, regularly phoned her family daily to reassure them that she was safe.

Her family said last year that they had not given hope of her returning home alive and well.

The teenager was the third prostitute in four years to go missing from Teesside's streets.

Donna Keogh, 17, vanished five years ago and has never been found, while prostitute Vicky Glass, 21, was found dead on moorland in North Yorkshire in 2000 after her disappearance from Middlesbrough.

Police have said that they are still continuing to keep an open mind over whether a serial killer could be responsible for the girls' disappearances.