Nine years ago on March 21 2002 Amanda (Milly) Dowler went missing as she made her way home from school. Having given up a lift from her mother and sister, Milly took a train with her friends and spent some time with them eating chips at the cafe in Walton Railway Station.
At four in the afternoon Milly left, her friend Katherine Haynes being the last person to see her as she disappeared around some advertising hoarding disappearing in what was described as "the blink of an eye".
Milly's body was found less than six months later by mushroom pickers in Yateley Heath Forest near Fleet, Hampshire. Her cause of death could not be determined because of the exposure to her remains.
The case of her killer, Levi Bellfield has been well covered here on
Digital Journal and after he was convicted last month the Dowler family should have been able to slip into the shadows to mourn and grieve in private.
Today the
Guardian investigator Nick Davies
revealed that there is reason to believe that an investigator called Glenn Mulcaire, working for the
News of the World, hacked into the phone of Milly Dowler while she was listed as missing.
It's alleged that Mulcaire listened to Milly's voicemails, from her worried parents and friends, and then, when the inbox was full he deleted messages to allow room for more. This act interfered with police investigations and gave the Dowler family false hope that Milly was still alive and deleting her voice mails herself. Investigations now show that Milly was indeed dead when Mulcaire was alleged to be deleting her voice mails.
Now investigations commence into the
News of the World's involvement and that of Rebekah Brooks who was the editor of the paper at the time and who is now News International's chief executive in the UK.
