Murder of Milly Dowler

At 3:07 p.m. on 21 March 2002, Milly Dowler left Heathside School in Weybridge, Surrey, and walked to Weybridge railway station with a friend. The girls disembarked at Walton-on-Thames railway station, one stop before Dowler's usual stop of Hersham, and went to eat at the station café.[5] After Dowler telephoned her father at 3:47 p.m. to say she would be home in half an hour, the girls left the café at 4:05 p.m., with Dowler walking home alone.[5] She was last seen three minutes later[5] walking along Station Avenue, by a friend of her sister, who was waiting at a bus stop.[6]

A closed-circuit television camera located further along the road showed no images of Dowler.[6] A red Daewoo Nexia, which belonged to Levi Bellfield's girlfriend Emma Mills, was photographed driving past by the same camera at 4:32 p.m.[5] In an April 2009 interview, Bellfield said that he was driving the car.[7]

When Dowler failed to return home, she was reported missing to the police at 7:00 p.m.[8] A nationwide search for her followed, with 100 police officers and helicopters searching fields,[9] streets and rivers around Hersham. Detectives who had investigated the abduction of Sarah Payne were called in to help.[10] Police and the Dowler family made many appeals for information, including a reconstruction on the BBC's Crimewatch UK.[11] A plea was also made by Pop Idol winner Will Young, whose concert Dowler had attended shortly before her disappearance.[10]

The Crimewatch UK appeal included a direct appeal to Dowler in the hope that she had run away from home of her own accord. Her mother expressed hope that her daughter had run away, but said that she could not think of a reason why she would want to do so.[12] The Independent reported in 2011 that Dowler had, some time previously, written a mock leaving-home letter and notes showing she had been unhappy.[13]

A week after Dowler's disappearance, the police stated that she was probably not taken by force. They reasoned that while she was unlikely to have gone off with someone she did not know of her own free will, no-one had come forward who had witnessed a struggle despite a number of apparent sightings of her prior to her disappearance.[14]

On 23 April 2002, the discovery of a body in the River Thames prompted media speculation that the remains might be those of Dowler, but the body was identified the following day as that of 73-year-old Maisie Thomas, who went missing in March 2001 and whose death was not believed to be suspicious.[15] In June 2002, despite further searches, the offer of a £100,000 reward by national tabloid newspaper The Sun[16] and her parents continuing to send text messages to her mobile telephone in hope of a reply,[17] Dowler remained missing. That month, police told her parents that she was probably dead.[18]

On 18 September 2002, naked human remains were discovered by mushroom pickers in Yateley Heath Woods near Yateley, Hampshire.[4] They were later confirmed through dental records as Dowler's.[6][19] Due to the severity of the decomposition, the cause of death could not be ascertained. No items of Dowler's clothing or possessions—the purse, rucksack or mobile phone—she had with her at the time of her disappearance have ever been recovered.[1][20][21] The discovery of the body led the police to reclassify the case as a homicide investigation. Undertaken by Surrey Police, the investigation was code-named Operation Ruby.[22]

On 22 November 2002, police set up a road block near the spot where the body was found. Some 6,000 motorists in the area were questioned, but no leads were discovered.[23] Initially the Surrey Police had considered Dowler's father a suspect, as police have often found that family members are implicated in such cases. They later apologised for the missed opportunities their attention to this track may have caused.[13][24] On 23 March 2003, DNA of an unidentified male was discovered on an item of Dowler's clothing in her bedroom, suggesting that her killer may have met her before. This link was ruled out within three months, at the same time that a DNA link to a church robbery in Sunderland was also ruled out.[25]

Paul Hughes was convicted of making death threats and was jailed for five years after sending letters to Dowler's sister threatening to kill her and claiming to have killed Dowler. Hughes sent the letters while imprisoned for indecently assaulting a 12-year-old girl; the prison service apologised for not screening mail effectively.[26] Lianne Newman, of Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire, repeatedly phoned Dowler's parents, school and the police, pretending to be Dowler. Newman was jailed in April 2003 for five months after pleading guilty to five counts of making phone calls to cause annoyance, inconvenience or needless anxiety.[27] Gary Farr, of Retford, Nottinghamshire, repeatedly e-mailed Dowler's parents, friends and police officers working on the case, claiming that she had been smuggled out of the country to work as a prostitute and stripper at nightclubs in Poland, and that her alleged death had been a cover-up. Farr was sectioned indefinitely under the Mental Health Act on 19 October 2006 for being a serious psychological danger to the public after admitting a charge of harassment.[28]

In March 2008, a man was arrested over the 'disposal' of a car linked to the murder investigation but was released later that same day.[29] In October 2009, Bedfont Lakes Country Park in West London was searched by police in the hope of finding the red Daewoo Nexia, but they recovered neither the car nor anything else of interest to their inquiry. The car has yet to be found.[30]

On 25 February 2008, Surrey Police confirmed that Levi Bellfield was their prime suspect in the murder inquiry and that they were "very interested" in questioning him following his conviction of the murders of two young female students and the attempted murder of a third.[31] On 30 March 2010, Bellfield was charged with Dowler's abduction and murder.[32] As a result, the inquest into the death was adjourned.[33] On 6 October 2010, Bellfield appeared in court via video link, as he was already serving three life sentences for murder and attempted murder, and was formally charged in relation to the Dowler case.

Bellfield's trial began on 10 May 2011 at the Central Criminal Court before Mr Justice Wilkie[4] and concluded on 23 June 2011; the jury found him guilty.[34] He was sentenced to life imprisonment[35] the following day, and the trial judge recommended a whole life tariff in line with his previous murder convictions three years earlier.[36] The trial of Bellfield on another charge for the attempted abduction of Rachel Cowles, an 11-year-old girl known to have been offered a lift in the Walton area by a man in a red car on 20 March 2002, was abandoned due to newspapers publishing prejudicial material.[24] The judge ordered that the charge should remain on file.[37]

The Guardian reported on 4 July 2011 that Scotland Yard had discovered Dowler's voicemail had been accessed by journalists working for the News of the World and the newspaper's private investigator Glenn Mulcaire.[46] The Guardian also reported that, during the police investigation into that newspaper's phone hacking activities, detectives discovered that journalists had deleted some messages—potential evidence—in Dowler's voicemail box because it was full, in order to free up space for new messages, to which they could listen. The deletions after Dowler was missing led family and friends to think that she was still alive.[47] It was later reported that Dowler's phone automatically deleted messages 72 hours after they were listened to.[48]

Dowler's parents announced via their solicitor that they would pursue a claim for damages against the News of the World.[49] In September 2011, it was reported that the Dowler family had been offered £2m in personal damages.[50] In January 2012, it was reported that Surrey Police and other police forces knew soon after Dowler's death that News of the World staff had accessed her mobile phone messages, but did not take issue with this. Instead a senior Surrey officer invited newspaper staff to a meeting to discuss the case.[51]

Dowler's parents, Sally and Bob Dowler, launched a charity called Milly's Fund on the day of her memorial service in October 2002.[52] Its mission was "to promote public safety, and in particular the safety of the children and young people".[53] The charity provides risk assessment advice to teenagers, youth workers, and educators. Its work includes the "Teach UR Mum 2 TXT" campaign, which encourages children and parents to stay in contact via text messaging, including a glossary for parents of commonly-used SMS abbreviations.

The campaign was awarded "Best Use of Mobile for Accessibility" at the 2004 GSM Association Awards.[54] Milly's Fund commissioned a five-part soap opera titled Watch Over Me (2003), which encourages personal safety for teenagers,[55] to be distributed to every school in the UK.[55] In 2005, the family announced that the charity would be transferred to the Suzy Lamplugh Trust.[56] Milly's Fund was wound up that year.[57]

At the 2005 Hampton Court Palace Flower Show, a garden designed in memory of Dowler by Penny Smith won the Tudor Rose award, the show's highest honour.[58] Its design was supported by the Surrey Police and Milly's Fund.

A magenta sweet pea was named after Dowler and made publicly available by Matthewman's Sweetpeas.[59]

On 29 June 2017, Dowler's sister Gemma released a book dedicated to Dowler, titled My Sister Milly.[60]

The investigation that led to Bellfield's arrest was dramatised in the three-part 2019 television series Manhunt, with Martin Clunes playing Colin Sutton.[61]

• List of solved missing person cases
• Murder of Patsy Morris, unsolved 1980 murder of Bellfield's childhood girlfriend
• Murders of Eve Stratford and Lynne Weedon

• Wansell, Geoffrey (2011). The Bus Stop Killer: Milly Dowler, Her Murder and the Full Story of the Sadistic Serial Killer Levi Bellfield. London: Penguin. ISBN 9780241952818.

• Murder of Milly Dowler collected news and commentary at The Guardian