London Evening Standard/London
There is no evidence that murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler’s voicemail messages were deleted by the News of the World and the truth may never be known, the Leveson inquiry heard yesterday.Evidence revealed that while two messages went missing from the schoolgirl’s phone, they may have been erased automatically.A Met police investigation ordered by Lord Justice Leveson concluded that “it’s not possible to state with any certainty whether Milly’s voicemails were or were not deleted”.Presenting the Met’s findings, the force’s barrister, Neil Garnham QC concluded: “Reaching a definitive conclusion is not and may never be possible.” The finding goes to the heart of the reason the inquiry was set up by David Cameron last July, after public revulsion at reports that Milly was also the victim of phone hacking at the now defunct Sunday tabloid.Bob and Sally Dowler, in a statement read to the court by their barrister David Sherborne, thanked the police for the investigation but said there remained “a number of unanswered questions”.They added: “If Surrey police had prosecuted this (hacking) activity in 2002, the position would have been very different and countless others would have avoided having to have private messages hacked into by the News of the World.”When Sally Dowler appeared before the inquiry last December, she spoke of calling her missing daughter’s mobile repeatedly and being elated when at one stage she heard her personal greeting rather than an automated message.She believed that Milly was still alive and had been accessing and deleting messages, allowing her own recorded greeting to be played.However, this turned out to be a “false hope” after reports emerged in the Guardian, suggesting that people working for the News of the World had deleted Milly’s voicemail to free up space in her inbox to allow new messages to be left — and listened to.Yesterday, Garnham revealed the findings of a Met inquiry ordered by Lord Justice Leveson that spent weeks analysing phone records and data held by Surrey police, which conducted the murder investigation after Milly went missing from Walton-on-Thames train station. He said the Met “are now able to say with some confidence” that Sally Dowler’s “false hope” call had been made on March 24, 2002.However, problems were caused by Milly’s voicemail messages “dropping off” her Mercury One2One phone after 72 hours, and by the company switching Milly and other users on to a new message “platform”.It appeared that another message had been “saved”, and there was the possibility that some of Milly’s messages might have been intercepted. But he said the lack of full phone data and the passage of time meant the full truth would never be known.Lord Justice Leveson said the lack of clarity about over Milly’s messages would not affect the overall scope of his inquiry into press standards, which is expected to conclude in July.He said: “I think it’s right to make it clear that the precise detail of the extent to which there was such interference is probably not going to inform my overall view as to the custom, culture and activities of the press.”
New Brooks ‘message’ claims put PM in a spotDavid Cameron’s links with Rebekah Brooks were under fresh scrutiny yesterday after it was claimed that he sent a text message telling her to “keep her head up” days before she quit as News International boss. The prime minister told Brooks she would get through her difficulties over the hacking scandal, according to a biography of Cameron. The book Cameron: Practically A Conservative by Francis Elliott and James Hanning, also claims the contact between Cameron and Brooks, who are neighbours in Oxfordshire, came to an abrupt end as the furore escalated. The authors say: “The wider public might have liked to know... of the text message that Charlie Brooks (her husband) told friends Cameron sent to Brooks at the beginning of the week in which she resigned, telling her to keep her head up and she’d get through her difficulties.”