“It makes you really think does nobody care?” Kerry Needham told the Mail. She was talking about the police response to her son Ben, who vanished from the Greek island of Kos in July 1991.
Ben was 21 months old. He was last seen at a farmhouse near Iraklis, where his grandparents, Eddie and Christine Needham, were renovating the property. His mother was working at a nearby hotel. He would be 36 now.
Last month a family liaison officer told Ms Needham, 53, that South Yorkshire Police’s Major Crime Unit would no longer be responsible for the case after 14 years. Greek police, she was told, would be the ones pursuing lines of inquiry. She called it “devastating”. Now living in Turkey, she says she is left with little option but to carry on the search herself, and she plans to hire a private investigator in Greece.
The force disputes her account
South Yorkshire Police says it has not stepped back. A spokesperson said the force acts as a “conduit for information sharing” between UK authorities, Interpol and the Greek authorities, and that the investigation itself is led by the Greek side. “Our resource allocation has not changed,” the spokesperson said, adding that a designated family liaison officer and a detective inspector remain the contacts for the agencies and for Ben’s family. The force said it was “deeply sorry for any confusion this review may have caused”.
The force has led the British side since 2012, when the Home Office awarded it £700,000 to reopen the case after the family raised concerns that it had not been examined thoroughly enough. Officers dug up land around the farmhouse that year and found no trace of DNA. A second dig followed in 2016, after a witness alleged that a Kos digger driver, Konstantinos Barkas, had accidentally run Ben over and buried him under building waste. An item believed to have belonged to Ben was recovered. Investigators concluded the likeliest explanation was an accidental death, and the search ended in October 2016.
Ms Needham rejects that. “There is no physical or forensic evidence to prove that that happened,” she said.
Why a private investigator
She believes an independent investigator, if allowed to take the case files and review them from the start, would find “lots of mistakes made, and potential cover-ups”. She also points to inconsistencies in people’s original statements that could be put to them face to face.
Money is the obstacle. She has not named the Greek firm. The initial cost to take on the case and request the files would be €2,000, she said, and a full investigation could run to around €20,000. “I have explained to the private investigator that I don’t have those kinds of finances,” she said. She has set up a GoFundMe page, and the Mirror reported a target of £10,000.
Her appeal on the page points to new leads suggesting Ben may have been taken and illegally adopted in the early 1990s. Ms Needham has said she believes he may have been trafficked to the New York area, and has released an age progression image. “We’re looking for a man,” she said, and she wants people in America to study it. “There’s probably more of a chance of Ben being in America through child trafficking than being in Greece.”
She says she has never had financial backing from anyone. “Everything comes down to me to do now and I can’t do it alone anymore.”
Sources
- Ben Needham's mum launches fund to investigate missing Brit's disappearance
- Ben Needham's mum to hire detective to solve son's disappearance
