Who holds the Ben Needham file? As of May, the answer is Greece. South Yorkshire Police told his mother, Kerry, that its major crimes unit would no longer handle the case, giving insufficient time and resources as the reason, the Mirror reported.
She got the news on a video call with her family liaison officer. Her reaction was immediate. “I feel abandoned,” she said. “I will never get to know anything if the Greek police are in charge of it, because they won’t do anything. They won’t organise DNA tests, they’ll just put it in a file and move on.”
The force says it has not walked away. It keeps a family liaison officer and a detective as a single point of contact, and calls its role a conduit between the UK, Greece and other agencies. Its position is that Greek authorities hold “full primacy” because Ben vanished on Kos.
What was dropped
Ben was 21 months old when he disappeared from a farmhouse his grandparents were renovating. His mother was on shift at a nearby hotel. The plans that fell away with the decision were specific: re-interviewing witnesses whose statements did not line up, and a visit to Kos with the senior investigating officer to meet the Greek public prosecutor and push for a joint team. New information will now go to Interpol and Greek officials.
The digs
The Home Office gave the force £700,000 in 2012 to reopen the case after the family said the first inquiries were not enough. A three-week search on Kos in 2016, led by Detective Superintendent Matt Fenwick, followed a claim that Ben had died in an accident involving an excavator. Officers found no DNA and no remains. A yellow toy car turned up with decomposed blood on it, but it did not match Ben’s DNA, which police had from a Guthrie test done on him as a newborn.
The former senior investigating officer stood by his professional belief that an accident had happened and the body had been moved before the search. Kerry does not accept that and fears abduction.
Other leads collapsed too. The family has been through incorrect DNA matches and reports of a child’s body in Germany that were later disproven.
The Greek side
Her distrust of Greek police goes back to 1991. She says they failed to secure Kos, and ferries kept running without round-the-clock checks. British police later found a witness who said officers had pressured him to sign a false statement about her. A Mirror investigation in 2016 quoted a former officer who spoke of a cover-up and said he feared for himself. “If the child left Kos, all the police officers sitting on chairs would have a problem,” he said.
Kerry is asking the public to contact South Yorkshire Police and officials including Keir Starmer. The force has written to her setting out its position and offered a meeting.
Sources
- South Yorkshire Police end Ben Needham probe as mum Kerry left 'devastated'
- South Yorkshire Police Ends Active Investigation Into 1991 Disappearance of Ben Needham
