NOTW employee ‘did not’ delete Dowler messages

A PRIVATE investigator working for Rupert Murdoch’s News of the World tabloid did not delete voicemails from the phone of a missing girl, a police lawyer said last night — casting new light on the critical event that sparked Britain’s phone-hacking scandal.

The claim that the tabloid not only listened to but interfered with messages left for 13-year-old Milly Dowler in 2002 horrified many Britons, triggering a storm this summer about media malpractice that shook Murdoch’s global media empire and rattled Britain’s police, media and government.

The scandal exploded after the Guardian newspaper reported in July that the News of the World had eavesdropped on the girl’s voicemails after she disappeared and may have hampered the police search for her by deleting messages.