Murdered Milly Dowler’s voicemail ‘hacked by NOTW’

A PRIVATE detective working for the News of the World is accused of hacking into Milly Dowler’s voicemail after she went missing and deleting messages, a lawyer for the murdered schoolgirl’s parents said yesterday.

Scotland Yard officers contacted Sally and Bob Dowler about the allegations in April, a month before Levi Bellfield went on trial for her murder, solicitor Mark Lewis said.

Private investigator Glenn Mulcaire is alleged to have illegally accessed Milly’s phone messages after she was abducted by Bellfield as she walked home from school in Walton-on-Thames, Surrey, in March 2002. Mulcaire also allegedly interfered with police inquiries into her disappearance by deleting messages from the voicemail account.

Lewis, from London-based Taylor Hampton Solicitors, said: “Sally and Bob Dowler have been through so much grief and trauma without further distressing revelations to them regarding the loss of their daughter.

“It is distress heaped upon tragedy to learn that the News of the World had no humanity at such a terrible time.

“The fact that they were prepared to act in such a heinous way that could have jeopardised the police investigation and give them false hope is despicable.”

The Dowlers are pursuing a claim for damages against the News of the World, Lewis said.

Scotland Yard and the News of the World’s publishers, News International, declined to comment on the allegations.

Mulcaire and former News of the World royal editor Clive Goodman were given jail terms in January 2007 after the Old Bailey heard they plotted to hack into royal aides’ telephone messages.

Bellfield, 43, was given a second whole life jail term last month for 13-year-old Milly’s murder.

But her parents said they felt as though they themselves were “put on trial” by his defence, which saw them face intrusive questioning.

News of the World journalists are accused of deleting some voicemail messages on Milly’s phone in the first days after she vanished, leading her relatives and friends to think she could still be alive, the Guardian reported.

Detectives are believed to have found evidence of the targeting of the Dowlers in a collection of 11,000 pages of notes kept by Mulcaire.