Taken: The Milly Dowler Story

This programme contains some scenes which some viewers may find

This is 13-year-old Amanda Dowler, Milly to her friends and family. In

March 2002, while on her way home from school, she vanished. I don't

know whether it was just sisterly instinct but I definitely knew that

I was never going to see her again. The mystery of what happened to

Milly that day dominated the Just so desperately worried, and

just want to have Milly back home with us so much. But six months

later, her remains were found over 20 miles away. She had been

This man, Levi Bellfield, was found He's a convicted serial killer,

believed to be responsible for He's domineering, overpowering,

controlling and possessive, topped off with massive violence. The man

Tonight, in a Crimewatch special, we speak exclusively to Gemma

Dowler about the agony of losing her sister. It's like you're in a

constant nightmare, just waking up, waiting to be woken up and saying,

And seeing her parents take the stand at the Old Bailey to defend

their family's reputation. I can actually say that the first two

days, when my mum and dad were questioned by the defence and

prosecution, was probably worse than the day she went missing.

we'll reveal how a chance call to detectives would provide the

crucial breakthrough on a case that shocked the nation. The senior

investigating officer at the time who took the call said that the

hairs on the back of his neck stood up as they were talking about the

person, and the team believed they Tell me about your sister, what was

she like? She was very friendly, very approachable. She always had a

twinkle in her eyes and she just was an infectious person that

Once you met her for the first time, you automatically wanted to be her

She was the best sister anyone could ever ask for, I'm lucky to

On the afternoon of 21st March 2002, 13-year-old Milly Dowler caught the

But minutes after leaving Walton- I'm going to ask you to go back to

2002, and that day for you. Well, it just starts like any other day,

does it? Yeah, it started like a normal day. At school we didn't

really see each other very much, cos we were in different years,

different lessons, we might have seen each other once or twice in

the playground. I got in at about I think it was, like, 5:00. Dad was

in the office, working, and I was like, "Where's Milly?" And then he

was like, "Oh, she was supposed to be home by now. I thought you would

have picked her up." And as soon as I heard Dad say, "She's not home,"

I was just like, "Oh, God." I knew as soon as... I don't know whether

it was just sisterly instinct, but I definitely knew that I was never

going to see her again. Did you express that to your mum and dad,

did you say to them that's what...? Yeah, Mum and Dad felt exactly the

same way. Did they? Yeah. I think it was 7:00 we called the police,

and I was just like, "That's it." I That call would spark one of

Britain's biggest-ever murder inquiries, involving over 100

Maria, what do you remember of 21st Well, that day I was actually

working at Guilford police station, because in those days the major

crime team was split into three different sections. We were aware

that they had a missing girl over at the Staines branch of the major

crime team, we knew that she was 13 years old, and the circumstances in

which she'd gone missing. And in those early hours, how concerned

were you? Milly wasn't the sort of girl who presented as a runaway,

somebody that would have gone missing. She came from a happy

family, a family that seemed to love to have fun, that raised the

alarm very quickly that she'd gone missing. So there was nothing to

indicate that Milly had chosen to leave home and not tell anyone

about it. So we knew very, very quickly, on the 21st we knew that

we were dealing with something Milly Dowler was born on 25th June,

1988 in Walton-on-Thames in Surrey. She lived with her parents, Bob and

Sally, and older sister Gemma, and So, you were sisters obviously, but

it sort of sounds like you were really good friends, proper

friends? Yeah, we were. Before she went missing, we were actually

sharing the same room, even though we had two rooms, because we just

got really, really close. We slept in the same room so we could stay

up late and gossip and probably have midnight feasts or sweets that

But yeah, I would consider her as Sweet, kind, generous. If you were

down, you've always got that friend that you know you can call or meet

up with them. She would just brighten up your days completely,

She was beautiful, I don't think anyone can deny that, a fantastic

musician, a real people person, she would always feel She seemed to

light a room up when she walked into it, just with her silliness

And tell me what home life was like. It was really, really nice. Our

family is one of those families that is so laid back that if anyone

came round, they'd just come to the house and feel so relaxed, and it

was just My mum and dad were the nicest people you could ever meet,

basically, and I'm so lucky that I have them as parents. I wouldn't

have got through any of this On Thursday 21st March 2002, Milly

left Heathside School in Weybridge as normal, at 3:05pm. She then

walked to the train station with her friend Danielle. CCTV shows the

schoolgirls entering the station and on the platform. This is the

last time Milly is seen on camera. We had spoken about the fact we

hadn't had a catch-up in a little while, and that it was well overdue,

so we decided that we'd walk to the train station together. She was in

a really good, playful mood, the two of us were bouncing off each

other as usual. We got off at Walton, that's not normally the

stop that she'd get off at, I said to her, would she like to come off

and get some chips from the cafe? And after a bit of banter between

the two of us, she agreed that So we went into the cafe, there

were a couple of other boys there from our school, but the two of us

sat together and again discussed more about boys and various other

She never had credit, we borrowed one of the boys' that was in the

Hey, Dad, it's Milly. She made a phone call to her dad to tell him

she'd be home late, it's something that we would always do, so that

they didn't worry. Are you ready? Come on. My sister arrived and

didn't want to wait around in the cafe, so she ushered us out quite

quickly. I'll see you tomorrow. said to her, will you be all right

walking home? We all looked after each other, but we live in a nice

area, it was broad daylight, she was walking along a main road.

Obviously I double checked with her, and the question itself seemed

silly. She laughed and just said, "Don't be ridiculous, I'll be

absolutely fine." There was no And that was the last time I saw

Milly left the station just after 4pm, setting off alone down Station

At eight minutes past, a friend of Gemma's, waiting at a bus stop,

I was just waiting for my bus and I saw Milly walking on the other side

of the road, and it must have been within 30 seconds, maybe up to a

minute, that my bus came round to I jumped on the bus and looked out

for her and I didn't see her. I thought that was quite strange. At

the time, obviously didn't think too much about it, thought it was a

bit strange, thought that I would have seen her walking if her

intention was to go home, but at that time you don't really think

too much into it. So that's what happened, and I just carried on and

That was the last time anyone had After 4:08pm, she vanished into

thin air. At that time, there isn't that many people walking down the

road. Also, it'd been a few minutes since the train arrived, so the

rush had already gone. So it wasn't busy, but there were always cars

driving by, so you would have thought that something might have

been heard or seen. But as it turns As it stood, at 4:08pm on that day,

the trail runs cold. Absolutely. That's all the definite information

you had. Yes, yes. What do you do with that situation at that point?

It was that afternoon that the appeal started to go out for Milly,

and, "Have you seen her?" We know the benefits of attracting media

attention very, very quickly because we need people's memories

on that day, because as you go through life, the next day soon

merges into the day before, so we need people to think very, very

quickly about whether they'd seen her. Police in Surrey say they are

growing increasingly concerned about the safety of a 13-year-old

girl who hasn't been seen since Thursday afternoon. Over the next

days and weeks, news of Milly's disappearance was rarely off our

screens and newspapers. Seeing it happen here, in your own area, it's

very close to reality, it's very scary. Within the last hour, the

parents of the missing 13-year-old schoolgirl Amanda Dowler have made

a public appeal for help in finding her. Unbelievable. We're devastated,

we're just so desperately worried and just want to have Milly back

For days on end, it was on the front page of every newspaper. Was

that something you could take in, this was the person...? No. It was

surreal, it really, really was. It was just like our private life was

no longer private, the family life that we had was just completely

turned upside-down. I can remember seeing one of the papers and we

were on the front page, a family photo of us, and I was just like,

"This is so serious now." It's like you're in a constant nightmare,

just waiting to be woken up and saying, "Don't worry, it was just a

Why do you think it was that Milly Dowler going missing so captured

the attention of the nation? Well, she was a lovely, happy teenage

girl just on, you know, the start of her life. I mean, she is a

beautiful little girl, and her face sort of captured the hearts of many

Just seven days after she'd disappeared, Milly's last known

movements were reconstructed on Crimewatch, and her parents made

another heartbreaking appeal for information about their lost

I'd say if someone has taken Milly and is holding her, then please,

please give her back to us. You can't believe the enormous grief

it's caused the family and her friends and everybody that knows

her. It's just been absolutely awful, we're absolutely devastated.

It was just a matter of days later that the reconstruction was run on

Crimewatch. What impact do you think that had on the case and the

investigation? It's something we always do because we always want to

keep Milly live in the memories and thoughts of the general public. So

we have to keep pumping that message out, that anything, however

small, please tell us. In the first two weeks of the investigation,

police received over 4,000 calls from the public. We had at least 73

areas of the UK where she was sighted on more than one occasion.

We had a sighting of her in Fiji. We had a sighting of her on the

Isle of Wight ferry. We had numerous sightings of somebody they

thought looked like Milly. So from all that information, we have to

sift through, and it takes an enormous amount of staff resources

One of the first things detectives did was to look at CCTV of Milly's

route home to see if they could find any trace of her, after she

was seen on Station Avenue. What due find? The CCTV on Station

Avenue was owned by Birds Eye. On either side of the corners of the

front of that building are two revolving cameras. Now they go the

full way round. At times they're at the back of the building. They

swing round and capture virtually the whole of Station Avenue. What

due see? She was never picked up. When you look at CCTV and it points

onto a road where we knew that Milly had been, you don't expect

not to see her, which was one of the first problems that presented

itself to us. And on that day, it was very sunny and it had been

raining, so there's water on the lens and at points in the

revolutions of the cameras, the view is obliterated bit sunlight.

You have to do further work to look through that sunlight to make sure

she wasn't captured. Detectives began researching what could be

done to improve the footage. The answer was found over 3,000 miles

away. We went to anybody we could think of who had worked with CCTV.

We didn't limit ourselves to the experts in our country. We wanted

to make sure that we could answer our question - where was Milly? Why

didn't she appear on the CCTV? That's why we farmed it out to the

FBI. After working on the footage for

six long months, the experts at the FBI spotted something. It was a

sports car that was on Station Avenue, that was driving towards

the railway station. You could see a figure standing next to the

passenger window. They appear to be talking to the people that were

satin side the car. We actually thought at that point this could

have been Milly. This blury image was sent to vehicle specialists who

were able to determine the exact make and model. It was a rare Mazda

MX-6 sports car. Only around 5,000 of them had been sold in the UK. At

that moment, for you and the rest of the team, did it feel lick a

breakthrough? Absolutely, yeah, it did. We obviously put the appeal

out in the media for that person to come forward. They actually phoned

up that day and identified themselves. It actually turned out

to be a mum and son innocently in Station Avenue. They were going to

an agents about a property. Very quickly it wasn't Milly and it

wasn't what we were looking for. Then in September, Milly's family

received the news that they had been dreading. Police,

investigating the disappearance of Amanda Dowler have visited woodland

in Hampshire where human remains were found on Wednesday. Two people

walking find the remains of a body. How do you hear about that? They

were a couple that would go mushroom picking. They'd gone in

there because it was a perfect area for the growing of rare mushrooms.

They would collect them and sell them. They'd gone into Walton

police station to report that they'd found what they believed to

be Milly Dowler. Did you go to the site? Yes, I did. Yeah, that night.

When you walked to the site, did you have a feeling? Yes, I D I

thought that it was Milly. 24 hours later, police confirmed that the

remains were those of the missing schoolgirl. She compared the

remains found in Yateley Heath Wood yesterday with the dental records

of Amanda Dowler. We can now confirm the results of the

examination was almost certainly those of the missing Amanda. I was

in the house and my mum was in the garden. And then my mum just

collapsed. I was just like, oh, my goodness, that was the worst

feeling because there's absolutely nothing that you can do. I can't

console her. My dad couldn't console her. All she wanted was

Milly back. We couldn't do anything to help that. Well, we all did.

investigation was now a murder inquiry. Did the postmortem tell

you anything about how Milly had died? It didn't tell us how she

died. But we knew that she didn't have any of her clothing and that

she had been lain on top of the ground. She hadn't been buried. We

knew it wasn't a natural death. the area that you found the body in,

what could you learn from that? soon as we found Milly we got

certain experts in to look at the wooded area she had been found in.

We used pollen experts and also experts that would be able to tell

us about the foliage that had grown around Milly. They were able to

tell us that Milly had been left there in the actual week that she'd

gone missing. So we were able to track back to the week of the 21st.

Exactly a year after she had first disappeared, Milly's family could

finally lay her to rest. Just unbelievable. Just

unbelievable amount of sadness, but a sense of relief that no-one could

hurt her any more. She was safe and we could say goodbye properly. Now

she's safe with the angels and they're looking after her and I

know that she will be watching down on us and that gives me strength,

when I'm having a really bad day. But for Surrey Police, the

investigation was far from over. Inevitably of course, in the way

the media works, it stops being front-page news. It would be easy

for people to get the impression that what happens then is that the

investigation is winding down. How was it from the inside? We never

stopped. There was always a core team working on the investigation.

I don't think we ever had less than 50 officers at any one time working

through those years. We never gave up hope, never. And their faith was

finally rewarded, when 20 months later, the team received a chance

phone call. The information provided would radically change the

direction of the investigation and provide the crucial breakthrough

they had been so desperate for. The information actually came from

the Metropolitan Police and it was an officer that used to work with

Surrey Police and he'd transferred to the Metropolitan Police. Now DCI

Sutton was investigating a string of offences within the London area

of murders of young girls and when he was looking through the profile

of the person they were looking out for their jobs, Colin Sutton

noticed that one of this man's previous addresses was 24

Collingwood Place. This is the entrance to that address. It's less

than 100 yards away from where Milly was last seen. The senior

investigating officer at the time, who took the call, said that the

hairs on the back of his neck stood up, as they were talking about the

person where this person had lived, how close he'd been to the last

sighting of Milly and the team believed that they had their first

real breakthrough. That person was Levi Bellfield.

Bellfield was born on the 17th May, 1968, in Isleworth south-west

London. He lived with his parents and was the youngest of four. When

he was just ten years old his father died from a heart attack.

Just three years later, he committed his first offences -

burglary and theft. It's not something that starts off as a

determination to go out and kill. It starts off with learning that

some sort of feeling of achievement or self-worth or power is generated

by physical aggression. The roots of that are bound to be quite

involved and complicated. They must have their basis in part in the

family, inevitably, it always comes back to his relationship with his

parents. Bellfield left school at the age of 16 and followed in his

father's footsteps by training as a mechanic. He later moved into the

security industry, working as a doorman and setting up his own car

clamping business, often operating illegally. What you have is an

individual in a state where they will draw on violence to achieve

certain objectives in their life, possibly to begin with, this is in

almost semi-legitimate situations, like in Bellfield's case where he

was a bouncer and involved in clamping cars and so on, where he

needed his physical presence to actually get away with what he was

doing. Bit time he reached his 30s, Bellfield had added drugs offences,

possession of weapons, violent assaults and making threats to kill

to his convictions. His previous partners knew only too well of his

violent temper. One minute charming and sweet, like someone had flicked

a switch, he would go psychotic on you. He'd punch you, bite you, kick

you, burn you with cigarettes. He would push you down the stairs.

sees women as objects that need to be controlled and he is willing to

use extreme violence in order to get them to behave the way he wants.

You couldn't leave him. He wouldn't allow you to leave him. He ruled my

life. You weren't allowed to answer a phone, the door, open your post

or anything without him there. years after Milly was taken, the

investigation at last h, a potential suspect. But a crucial

opportunity was missed. The area of Collingwood Place and particularly

the door marked number 24, had that come up in your investigations?

it would have been involved in the house-to-house that we conducted at

the beginning of the investigation. The door would have been knocked

on? Yes, that door was knocked on 11 times by our officers, but the

door was never answered. The officers didn't follow up with the

letting agency as to who was living in the flat at that time. When you

look back on that now, what do you think? Hindsight's a wonderful

thing and things could have been very, very different if we actually

spoke to him, but also he could have lied to us and covered his

tracks. So our position may have been no different than we are in

today. By the time Bellfield came onto Surrey Police's radar, he was

already the prime suspect for two murders in south-west London and a

possible further 30 assaults on women in the area. The Metropolitan

Police investigation into the attacks was called Operation

Yeaddiss. It started as the investigation into the murder of

Amelie Delagrange on 19th August, 2004 in Twickenham. 22-year-old

French student Amelie Delagrange had moved to the UK in 2002. She

lived in a bedsit close to Twickenham green and worked at a

cafe in Richmond. She had been out with friends that night in

Twickenham. She'd got the bus home, a short distance to Twickenham

Green. In actual fact she missed her stop and didn't get off the bus

until it reached Fulwell. So she walked back down the road, the same

road the bus had come along and will have taken the short cut

across Twickenham green. Of course, she only reached halfway before she

was murdered. She was hit around the back of the

head with a blunt weapon, possibly a hammer. She was found unconscious

and later died in hospital. A temporary police station was set up

on Twickenham Green to appeal to the public for help. We received a

lot of information about males with a penchant for domestic violence.

We were passed over 100 names from members of the public and one of

those was Levi Bellfield. When you first meet him, you're immediate

impression would be that he's a jovial, wants to be your friend,

but that belies the fact that he is an extremely violent individual,

particularly towards women. He's domineering, overpowering,

controlling and possessive, topped off with massive violence.

Bellfield confessed to one of his partners that he hated women and

that he had been going out at night looking for them. At the back of my

old house, there used to be an alleyway that ran alongside the

train tracks. Once you got into the alley you couldn't get out until

you got to the other end. He told me he used to go down there and

wait for people, like try and get a girl on their own. There was

obviously people coming off trains, there would be too many people and

he wouldn't be able to get one on his own. It used to infuriate him.

As part of the investigation into Amelie Delagrange's murder,

detectives looked at other unsolved attacks in the area, to see if any

had the same profile. On the 4th February, 2003, 19-year-old Marsha

McDonnell was killed on her way home in Hampton, south-west London.

Like Amelie Delagrange she received a fatal blow to the back of her

head, inflicted with a hammer-like weapon. That wasn't the only

connection between the attacks. There were clear similarities

between the attacks on Amelie Delagrange and Marsha McDonnell.

They're of a similar description. They were late at night. They were

both alone. They'd both got off of a bus. The fact that they both

received such severe injuries to the head. You have to say, well, it

could be the work of one man. Another attack just a few miles

away in Isleworth, seemed to demonstrate the extreme violence

this man was capable of. It was my last day of school. We had a big

celebration during the day, with a party afterwards. At the end of the

night me and a couple of friends left the pub. I got on one bus and

they got on a different bus going the other direction. At the stop I

got off, I was the only person to I started to walk home on the same

side of the road as the bus. As I continued to walk down the road, I

saw a vehicle parked up on the other side of the road. The first

thing that brought my attention to it was the car engine running, but

I couldn't see any lights on, which I thought was a little bit strange.

I don't know, I just got a very bad feeling from it, so I crossed the

road and the car kind of flashed its lights and turned its engine on.

I do remember feeling the impact and feeling completely winded when

it first hit me. I don't even know if I made a sound. It then sort of

reversed straight back over the same area, and so it was completely

over my body. I just felt completely crushed, like I was in a

vice, except it was the car and the Amazingly, Kate made a full

recovery, and was able to describe, in some detail, the vehicle which

It was a white people carrier with blacked-out windows, and the

passenger-side wing mirror was We found that the CCTV that was

available showed a white people We also see from the CCTV after

Kate's attack that the white people The CCTV footage was sent to

imagery experts, who were able to identify the vehicles as a Toyota

Previa. Bellfield owned this at the time of Kate's attack. It matched

her description even down to the And when detectives viewed CCTV of

Amelie and Marsha's journeys home, In both cases, vehicles could be

And those vehicles could be linked By 2005, the Metropolitan Police

had compelling evidence against Bellfield and the way he operated.

But detectives in Surrey were only just beginning to build their case.

On 6th July, he was interviewed for He's physically quite a large

individual, but he was quietly spoken, he was polite. By and large,

you know, he would refer to me as Sir. I think it's very important

not to be intimidated in any way, but yes, always in your mind you

know you're interviewing a very Part of our strategy is to ask the

question that everyone wants to ask We gave him many opportunities to

stand up and say, "Look, I'm an innocent man, I'm not responsible

I think if he was a truly innocent man, he would have probably been

able to give us some explanation for where he was and what he was

doing that particular day, but he never took that opportunity. At the

conclusive interview when we put everything we had to him, it was

extremely compelling to watch Levi I can remember quite clearly at one

stage during that interview he He then took off his sweater, and

while he was sitting quite squarely on the seat he had initially, and

as Sarah continued asking the questions, he started to sort of

rock back in the chair to the point where he was actually leaning on

the wall behind him, so he actually His behaviour indicated to me that

he was exceptionally uncomfortable When I came out of that interview,

I was convinced as I could be that he was the right man and he was

Unfortunately, back in 2005, we weren't in the position to charge

him. But I knew the inquiry wouldn't stop just because we'd

interviewed him. It wasn't the end of the inquiry, it wasn't the last

roll of the dice, and we knew that we would keep plugging away, and

that's what we did. With Bellfield refusing to talk, detectives began

questioning the people that knew him best. A key witness was Emma

Mills, Bellfield's long-term girlfriend in 2002. He'd been

living in her flat at the time of Milly's abduction. Emma Mills, tell

me she was what able to tell you. She was obviously able to confirm

that they had been living at 24 Collingwood Place, but at the time

Milly went missing, she, the children and Levi were actually

house-sitting away from Collingwood Place, so she was able to tell us

that the apartment was empty over those few days. She was able to

tell us that on the Thursday that Milly went missing, she didn't know

where Levi Belfield was, and in her mind that was unusual. She believed

that for that day he'd disappeared. Those were exact words. It wasn't

until later that night that Bellfield finally showed up.

said he came home at about 10, 11:00, and she believed that he'd

changed his clothes from the clothes he'd gone out in earlier

that day. Now, they went to bed and she said that he got up between 3

and 4:00 that morning and said that he wanted to go back to Collingwood

Place for a lie-in, so he then got up out of their bed and got dressed,

took their little dog and, according to him, was going back to

The following day, Bellfield moved the family out of Collingwood Place,

despite there still being two months left on the tenancy

The actual home that he wanted Emma to go back to, she describes as a

squat. It didn't have any kitchen cupboards. It didn't have any

kitchen floors. It was a mess. You would not take young children back

to live in a place like that. But he was determined. I mean, it was

so bad, there was nothing there for Emma or the children, and she had

to sleep on sofa cushions. During the move, Emma noticed some items

were missing. She'd asked Bellfield, "What had you done with our

sheets?," and he said, "Well, the dog messed on the bed." Now, Emma

knew her dog. She knew that dog. And she knew that dog didn't mess

on the bed. So again, she was questioning what he had been doing,

and she wasn't happy or she didn't believe what he was saying. But she

was asking again, "What were you doing on the 21st?" And Bellfield's

response to her was, "What, do you think I've done Milly?" And Emma

Mills describes her reaction to that as complete and utter disgust.

Why would you joke about something like that? And I don't think even

at that point when she was asking him she was expecting him to come

back with that response. She thought he'd had another woman in

the flat. Not that he'd killed Milly Dowler. They could now link

Bellfield to where Milly was last seen and, through Emma, knew he was

acting strangely around the time of her abduction. Speaking to another

ex-partner gave them their next clue. I've been involved with

horses all my life, and as a child my dad used to take us to shows.

When I got older, I started doing show jumping. One of the events

Johanna would regularly compete in was the Yately Horse Show in

Hampshire. Levi knew about the woods from coming to Yately Show

with me and my horses. He came probably five or six times with me,

and then we'd walk our dogs probably about the same amount of

times, five or six times, around Detectives asked Johanna to show

Without realising, she led them to the area where Milly's remains had

You can't understand his mentality, because his pleasure is other

people's pain. That is how he works. But why would you do that sort of

The evidence against Bellfield was mounting up. But they still needed

to prove that he'd been on Station Avenue at the time of Milly's

abduction. Again, Emma Mills was able to help. We obviously spoke to

Emma Mills at great length, and we basically started to unpick their

lives. We wanted to know everything about them. And from our

conversations with Emma, she told us that at that time they had a red

Daewoo Nexia which Levi had possession of on 21st March 2002.

What did you do next? We went back to the Birdseye CCTV and we looked

to see if we could see that vehicle in Station Avenue at the time when

Milly went missing. And they found this. It's a red Daewoo Nexia

turning off the street leading to The time is 4:33pm, just 25 minutes

You must have felt almost like you'd won the lottery? Yeah, as we

saw that we knew that we were starting to build the case and we

still needed answers, and we desperately wanted to get that

vehicle. But Bellfield had reported the car stolen just eight days

after Milly's abduction. How did you feel when you found out that

Bellfield had reported that that car was missing, possibly stolen?

We were absolutely gutted that we couldn't get that car and have a

look at it, because forensically, for us that could give us some

evidence that could link Bellfield to Milly Dowler. Did you believe

it? No. No, we didn't believe it Despite exhaustive searches, the

But appeals for information about its whereabouts uncovered a

On 20th March 2002, the day before Milly vanished, 11-year-old Rachel

Cowles was walking home after school in Upper Halliford, just

three miles away from Walton-on- I'd finished school about 3:15pm.

The roads weren't that busy, school traffic. A car drove up to the side

and stopped me walking home, and the guy lent over and said to me,

"I've just moved in next door - would you like a lift home?" I know

all the neighbours quite well, so it meant I would have known if

someone had moved in or moved out, and something clicked in my head

that I shouldn't get in the car. The incident was reported to Surrey

Police that day. Rachel described the driver as 30 to 40 years old

with a round face, and was also able to give specific details of

the car. It was a red hatchback, and there were two child car seats

in the back. Emma Mills was able to confirm that in 2002 her Daewoo

Why had it not been picked up in the investigation before, given

that it happened just a day before the disappearance of Milly? Yeah,

even though it had been reported to Surrey Police as a whole the day it

had actually happened, it hadn't been filtered through to the

incident room on the 21st. significant part of this is that it

puts the car and the person who owned the car out driving through

local streets, looking to pick up a young girl. Yes, absolutely, but

the significance of the red car wasn't known until we'd spoken to

Emma Mills, it made the attempt to abduct Rachel the day before hugely

Meanwhile, detectives in London had gathered enough evidence for their

cases. And by May 2006, Levi Bellfield was charged with the

murders of Amelie Delagrange, Marsha McDonnell and the attempted

murder of Kate Sheedy. He denied any involvement. Too many

similarities, Levi - too many similarities for the question not

No comment. Because you can't say anything, can you? But the Crown

Prosecution Service asked that further work be carried out before

deciding if Bellfield could be charged with Milly's murder. This

case has always been a circumstantial case. We've never

had any direct forensic evidence to show that Bellfield killed Milly

Dowler, so we had to work very hard to prove that he was the only

person that could have killed her. So we had to rule out every other

possibility. It's painstaking work, and it is good, old-fashioned

detective work. I look at it as a jigsaw puzzle. And you never really

know at what point you put that final piece in until it slots into

place. At this point, how certain are you that Levi Belfield is the

man? I was probably 98% sure that we were looking at the person that

On the 25th February, 2008, Bellfield was found guilty of the

murders of Amelie Delagrange and Marsha McDonnell and the attempted

murder of Kate Sheedy. He was given three whole life terms, meaning he

will never be released. There was elation in the court upon his

conviction. We were obviously pleased with the sentence that he

was handed down, but I think you have to say there's the side of

Levi Bellfield that is clearly a coward. He could not, would not

leave the cells and come and receive his sentence. After nearly

five months of having to endure the cowardly charade of innocence put

forward by the defence, we at last, get to see Levi Bellfield for what

he truly is. He showed no remorse at all. He's never given any

explanation for what he did. In some ways there's a little bit of

closure there that's not there for families and victims. But it's just

a mark of the man. The man is a monster. Surrey Police were now

able to up the ant E.On their investigation and as with the

attacks in London, it would be the CCTV that would prove crucial.

were working with the CCTV for many, many years. That CCTV should have

caught Milly walking down Station Avenue on her route home. You have

to analyse it to explain why she's not on it and why she didn't pass

those cameras. Images were sent to Andy Laws a forensic imagery expert.

What did he tell you? That she hadn't managed to walk down Station

Avenue. I asked him to tell me how he could be so certain that she

didn't walk across the road and didn't walk across the other side.

When you look at the side where the cameras were, they would have

looked across the road. There were vehicles passing. There were trees.

Could they have obliterated the view of Milly as the CCTV camera

rotated. Andy explained it to me, that if that had managed to happen,

Milly would have had to have been imitating Road Runner. She would

have run from one tree to another, as a vehicle high sided past, she

would have had to duck behind it. She would have to know where the

cameras were on rotation to know when she had to hide and when she

had to run. Although somebody could say to you is it not possible, you

would say well anything's possible, but in this case, that most

definitely did not happen. Andy was also able to narrow down the exact

area that she was abducted from using the last sighting of her by

Katherine Laynes and where the camera should have picked her up on

its first rotation. He was able to narrow down for us that she was

abducted from Station Avenue. The only residential areas you have in

that area of Station Avenue are Collingwood Place. At last, they

could prove that Milly had been taken just yards from Bellfield's

flat. That was it. That was the final piece.

After years of investigation, detectives were now confident they

could show what happened to Milly after 4.08pm and prove that

We believe that she was seen by Katherine Laynes as she left the

railway station and something caused her to cross the road. We

don't know why Milly crossed the road. But Bellfield was waiting,

hidden in the hedges, between Station Avenue and Collingwood

Place and he saw Milly walking alone. The actual flat area is

surrounded by really high hedges and there's a little pathway, walk

through that leads to Station Avenue. I've stood there myself and

you are completely shrouded by the bush fencing. People can't actually

see you standing there. You get a perfect view of Walton Railway

Station and the people coming and I believe that Levi snatched Milly

from the pavement and took her into 24 Collingwood Place. There's only

one person that knows what happened in that flat, but I believe that

Milly was killed in that flat. 25 minutes later, at 4.33pm,

Bellfield leaved Walton-on-Thames in the Daewoo. Phone records show

that he headed in the direction of west Drayton, where Emma was

housesitting. But he didn't arrive there until 11pm, for the rest of

the day, he disappeared. He's never said where he was during those

missing hours. At around 5am, Bellfield returned to cooling wood

place. A witness out searching for Milly reported seeing a man with a

dog, matching Bellfield's description, outside the flats.

believe he went back to Collingwood Place, under the cover of darkness,

to take Milly's body from Collingwood Place. He had to take

Milly's body out of that flat that night, because Emma was due to go

home on Friday. He couldn't leave her there. So he had to do it.

Bellfield then drove the 24 miles to Yateley Heath Wood in Hampshire.

It was an area he knew well and felt safe in. It was where he

Over the next week, he covered his tracks, destroying any evidence

that could African sickically link him to Milly.

Forensically link him to Milly. The evidence was again sent to the

Crown Prosecution Service and on the 31st of March last year, they

announced their decision. After careful review of all the evidence

in this case, I have now reached the decision that there is

sufficient evidence and that it is in the public interest to charge

Levi Bellfield. How did you and your team feel when the Crown

Prosecution Service came back and said yes, we believe that you have

enough of a case to charge Levi Bellfield? Well, I didn't actually

know it was their decision until I heard the words come out of Nigel

Pilkington's mouth, that day, we were standing at the CPS in front

of the TV cameras. Tell me about that moment then, what did you

think? I was just so nervous. I don't know if you've ever had it,

I'm sure you have, where you can feel and hear your heart in your

throat. I just never thought I'd hear those words, after all those

Eight weeks ago, the trial began at Old Bailey. Bellfield refused to

take the stand. Instead turning attention towards Milly's parents.

The last thing they expected was to feel that they were on trial.

first two days, when my mum and dad were questioned, by the defence and

the prosecution, was probably worse than the day that she went missing.

It was that extreme. It really was. It was so hard, because we weren't

allowed to be together and I wanted to support my dad and my mum and I

couldn't because we were all witnesses. You just can't explain

how horrific it is in that courtroom until you are actually in

there. It's so stressful. How are your mum and dad now? My mum and

dad are really, really strong people, so they've struggled,

especially my dad. The hardest thing is I can't make it better and

I can't help them. I know they feel exactly the same way about me.

During the trial, Bellfield tried to deflect blame by suggesting that

Milly had been an unhappy teenager who had run away from home. How

difficult has that been during the court case? To hear somebody

described, at times, and you say, I don't even recognise that person

they're talking about? Screamly, extremely difficult. That was --

extremely, extremely difficult. That was one of the hardest things.

They did just drag her name through the mud, but because I know what

our family is like and what her friends were like, no-one believed

it. No-one did. And everyone thought exactly the same thing,

like, she was a teenager. Teenagers write stupid things. I'm sure there

would have been letters like that from me when they searched the

house as well. But they didn't bring those up. And I knew Milly.

She loved everyone. She wanted to be liked. No-one wants to be

disliked and she was so happy. She was just such a lovely person. I

feel like my heart's been torn out. Especially over the trial, I feel

like it's just been trampled on. I just have to keep remembering that

the Milly that I know wasn't how everyone has portrayed her in the

media. She was the best sister anyone

could ever ask for. Last week, Bellfield was found

guilty of abducting and murdering Milly. The verdict was unanimous.

However, the jury was discharged without decide figure he had also

attempted to kidnap Rachel Cowles. The trial has been truly horrifying

ordeal for my family. We've had to relive all the emotions and

thoughts of nine years ago, when Milly first went missing and was

then found murdered. During our questioning, my wife and I both

felt as if we were on trial. We've had to lose our right to privacy

and sit through day after Harrowing day of of the trial in order to get

a man convicted of this brutal murder. For a mother to bury her

child in any circumstances is truly agonising, but to bury your child

when you know she died in such an appallingly awful way, is sairbl. A

day does not pass when we do not think of her and the life that she

might have led. What has it meant to you to see Levi Bellfield

convicted of this crime? Justice. I knew that he would never come out

of prison, but I have always believed that he killed Milly

Dowler. And I wanted everybody else to know that's what that man had

done. There's not a day that goes by

where I don't miss her. I don't want to let what this man has done

to Milly ruin my life and my mum and dad's, so he's not going to do

that. We're going to carry on. Our whole family unit has really,

really suffered, definitely, but we have to piece back our lives,

otherwise she would be upset. She would want us to carry on. It's