KERRY Needham has never given up hope that her missing son Ben is still alive and one day he’ll come home.
The British toddler almost 35 years ago on the Greek island of Kos, and now his brave mum has revealed how an email out of the blue could shed fresh light on the case – and why she believes of gypsy trafficking gangs who illegally sold him for adoption.
Ben Needham was 14 months old when he disappeared in Kos in 1991Credit: PA:Press Association
Ben’s mum Kerry Needham is convinced her son is still aliveCredit: Peter Byrne
Kerry with her parents Eddie and Christine soon after he disappearedCredit: Rex Features
Kerry, 53, speaking this week from her home in Antalya, , where she relocated around two years ago, said hours earlier she’d had a new tip-off.
A woman had emailed her convinced her boyfriend could well be Ben, who would would’ve turned 36 in October last year.
“I keep a very very open mind,” , originally from , told The Sun.
“When I got that email last night, I didn’t jump for joy and think this could be him, because I’ve got no photograph, I’ve got very little information.
“The woman just said there are a lot of coincidences, a lot of things don’t add up from his past.”
Kerry has forwarded her correspondence to , who have been on the British side since Ben went missing on July 24 1991.
“It’s a case of getting more information out of that person without being too cold but without being too involved either,” Kerry said of the similar tip-offs over the years.
In summer 1991, she had relocated with Ben to the Greek island to start a new life with her parents, who were already settled there, when the tragedy happened.
21-month-old Ben had been left with his grandparents, Eddie and Christine, at a farmhouse they were renovating while Kerry, 19 at the time, went to work at a hotel.
The tot had been coming in and out of the house, but at 2.30pm it was found he’d vanished, seemingly without a trace.
Initially, after a two-hour search, the family assumed Ben had gone off with his teenage uncle Stephen, who had been helping his dad with work at the property before heading home on his moped.
But this was not the case, and on later finding Stephen alone at the family’s apartment, panic suddenly set in. Where was Ben?
The police were informed, and later that night, around 10pm, Christine went to tell Kerry at the hotel.
was slow, and Kerry has explained how the family were convinced Ben would somehow just turn up.
She said: “We never thought for one minute an accident had happened or someone had abducted him…
“We thought someone must have found him, he must have got further down that lane than my mum thought he could have done in that time.
“We thought someone’s found him, taken him in, got him a drink, don’t forget it’s 90 degrees.
“All these logical things – maybe they’ll hand him into a police station afterwards or at the hospital, maybe he was dehydrated.”
South Yorkshire Police excavate a site in Kos in September 2016Credit: PA
Ben was playing outside a farmhouse being renovated by his grandparents when he disappearedCredit: SWNS:South West News Service
Kerry says there are still so many unanswered questions regarding the caseCredit: PA:Press Association
Referring to the idea , Kerry went on to say: “I don’t know when it dawned on us because… we’re not stupid but abductions and kidnappings, they happen in films.
“We were thinking why would anyone want to abduct Ben? We didn’t have any money for a ransom, which is what we thought a kidnapping was.
“We knew nothing about child trafficking and back then, so it just didn’t enter our heads.
“When there was no sign of him, no one had handed him into the police or the hospital, that’s when we thought somebody must have taken him then – but why?”
She said people began coming forward as the case got more publicity, including a Greek man who contacted Ben’s grandfather Eddie.
“He told my dad you need to be looking at gypsies because there’s a gang, a line, he didn’t call it trafficking, he said sold for illegal adoption,” explained Kerry.
She added that the stranger said Ben being blonde-haired and blue-eyed would mean he’d “fetch more money”.
“It sounded impossible, but that’s when we started looking down those lines,” she said.
Kerry said while South Yorkshire Police were largely always open-minded, she does not believe the Greek forces ever properly considered the trafficking angle.
However, years later two ex Kos police officers would allegedly claim to journalists that they did have information that Ben had been “taken off the island” via a port soon after he disappeared, though this was not investigated, Kerry said.
Timeline of the Ben Needham missing person case
Here we take a look at the search for missing Ben:
- July 24 1991: Ben Needham vanishes while playing near the grounds of a farmhouse in the Iraklis region of Kos, which his family are renovating. His mother, Kerry Needham, and grandparents raise the alarm with local police and conduct a full search of the area.
- July 26 1991: Eyewitness reports claim a boy matching Ben’s description was found at the local airport on the day he disappeared. That boy has never been traced.
- September 1991: The Needham family return to England but vow to continue the search.
- June 2003: issue an image of what Ben might look like at age 12-14 years old.
- 2004: An anonymous businessman offers a reward of £500,000 for information leading to Ben’s safe return.
- October 2010: Another public appeal is made by Ben’s mother in the run-up to what would be his 21st birthday.
- May 2011: The airs a programme called Missing 2011, which includes a piece on Ben’s story and the campaign to find him.
- September 2011: Greek police on Kos officially re-open the case and grant the family a face-to-face meeting with the island’s prosecutor.
- October 2012: South Yorkshire Police in Kos begin digging up mounds around the property where Ben went missing to look for his remains.
- December 2013: Ben’s mother accuses then-Prime Minister of not giving her case the same backing as he gave the parents of . It comes as a dossier is produced containing reports from eight witnesses, none of who know each other, who all saw a boy possibly matching Ben’s description with the same Greek family.
- December 2014: Lawyers representing Ben’s family say they may take legal action to try to force the Government to make a decision about funding a new police investigation.
- January 2015: The Home Office agrees to fund a team of British detectives to help search for the toddler.
- March/April 2015: Three generations of Ben Needham’s family travel to Greece to follow up a “strong” lead that a man living there believes he may be the missing Brit due to having no photographs of himself under the age of two and no knowledge of where he was born. The man is later ruled out.
- May 2015: Ben’s family make a fresh appeal on Greek television for information regarding the disappearance.
- May 2016: The Sun reveals how members of the police operation went on an eight-hour booze-up in Kos during the latest stage of the investigation.
- September 2016: Ben’s family are told to “prepare for the worst” by detectives leading the investigation, amid the belief the 21-month-old was – the driver of which died in 2015. It comes as in the belief the boy’s remains may be buried near the farmhouse.
- October 15, 2016: On the penultimate day of a three week search at two locations – Site 1, near the farmhouse, and Site 2, a landfill site – an item which is .
- October 16, 2016: After digging up more than 800 tonnes of soil, the excavation work comes to an end with any items of interest sent back to the UK for forensic analysis.
- October 17, 2016: South Yorkshire Police DI Jon Cousins announces the discovery of an item that backs up their theory Ben died following an accident near the farmhouse on the day he disappeared.
- July 24, 2017: It emerges blood was found on a sandal and toy car belonging to Ben. The sandal was found in 2012 at the site where Konstantinos “Dino” Barkas was operating a digger, . No further information emerged. Ben’s mum makes another heartbreaking appeal for information.
- November 28, 2018: Forensic experts say the toy car found in the Kos dig does not belong to Ben.
- July 25, 2019: , saying it was “never too late to do the right thing”.
- July 2021: that a blonde boy found on a beach wearing a white t-shirt, “crying desperately” and speaking English 587 miles away in Corfu could’ve been the youngster.
The mum has, over the years, extensively researched human trafficking and its links to the Greek islands.
“We never found any proof that any other child had been taken from Kos,” she said.
“But child trafficking was absolutely rife throughout the whole of from the 1950s to the 1990s. By the mid 1990s things were getting more difficult.”
She said she even tracked down an elderly man who claimed to have been trafficked as a baby from Greece to .
Kerry explained: “New York seems to be the massive epicentre of illegal adoptions. This is how children disappear without a trace. They’re so well-organised. They’re just gone within seconds. No one does see anything.
“Someone could have been watching my mum and Ben for weeks. These things are planned, they get out of the country as quickly as possible and they’re gone without a trace.”
In 2012, , which suggested Ben had been killed when a digger accidentally crushed him in an olive grove behind the farmhouse.
Digger driver Konstantinos ‘Dino’ Barkas was working nearby and an anonymous tipster claimed in 2015 he then told him on his death bed he had been responsible and had buried Ben’s remains.
However, multiple excavations, including at all sites he was permitted to dump rubble and waste on the island, have failed to find any trace of the toddler.
An age progression facial depiction of Ben as an adultCredit: Daily Mirror
Police demolish part of the old farmhouse that had been added after Ben disappearedCredit: Doug Seeburg – The Sun
A pair of sandals resembling the pair Ben was wearing when he disappearedCredit: EPA
Kerry said: “If there had been an accident, there would have been something… They dug so deep in that area that they found an ancient burial ground.
“So I’m sure they can find one fragment of a child or a drop of blood, anything. They found nothing.”
Dino had worked with Eddie before and even came up to the farmhouse to chat to both Ben’s grandparents around 5.30pm about work he was doing on the project – what would have been a couple of hours after he’d killed Ben.
“He’s just killed the man and woman’s grandchild, squashed his body to pieces, dug him up, dumped him somewhere, come back and then speaks to my dad as if nothing’s happened. I’m sorry I don’t buy it,” said Kerry.
She added that if Dino , there wouldn’t have been any need to cover it up, as the child’s family would have been blamed for not keeping an eye on him.
She added: “The only way I can explain this, if I thought for one minute Ben had died I would give up searching, I would give up putting myself through all this stress, all this trauma, all this heartache if he wasn’t alive anymore.
“I don’t mean any divine intervention or anything, it’s like something is pushing me to keep going. But it’s really really hard work.
“It has a massive toll on my mental health, on my physical health. Sometimes I don’t sleep, I don’t eat, I have awful anxiety sometimes… I wouldn’t put myself through that for nothing, would I?
“That’s how I weigh it up. There must be something else because I wouldn’t keep putting myself through all this for nothing. It is a gut instinct, a mother’s instinct.”
Kerry moved to Antalya a couple of years ago and says it’s helped her to remain focused.
She said: “I live a simple life, I’ve got a partner here. I’m doing basically what I would be doing in the UK, being a housewife and doing whatever I’m doing with Ben’s campaign and following up information.
DI Jon Cousins of South Yorkshire Police in Kos during an excavationCredit: Doug Seeburg – The Sun
Cops have never found any evidence that Ben diedCredit: Doug Seeburg – The Sun
The digger belonging to Dino Barkas, which some believe accidentally killed BenCredit: Doug Seeburg – The Sun
“The same but a very warm and beautiful country.
“I’ve got a good network of support around me,” she said of her move to . “If I’m having a bad day I can take myself off down the beach, sit on the beach and listen to the sea, it’s a calming effect. I don’t seem to be as stressed.”
Most recently, Kerry’s been working on a website which lays out the background about Ben’s case.
Kerry said most frustrating, and the reason she set up the website, was because she’s found many people seem to believe Ben’s case was resolved.
Following the last excavation in 2016, then Detective Inspector for South Yorkshire Police, John Cousins, stated he believed the tot had died in an accident.
“I think people took that as gospel,” said Kerry. “It is a theory and it’s based on the balance of probabilities. South Yorkshire Police still say Ben could walk through the door any day.
“John came to that conclusion because he had nowhere else to go, but we’re still getting leads, we’re still constantly getting information from people.”
However, such leads are not always a positive experience, with Kerry having opened up last year about being harassed by a man for two years who was convinced he was her son.
“He was absolutely adamant he was Ben,” she said. “He’d had a test from South Yorkshire Police and it was negative.
“He harassed us for two years, making Facebook posts requesting to meet him. I refused to meet the guy, I don’t need to meet him. He isn’t Ben. You’re forever battling with these people.”
Kerry with her mother Christine on Kos in December 2012Credit: Lee Thompson – The Sun
Kerry currently lives in Turkey, but remains in touch with South Yorkshire PoliceCredit: Lee Thompson – The Sun
Madeleine McCann disappeared in Praia da Luz, Portugal on May 3, 2007Credit: AFP
She also told us about her frustrations over the lack of public funding compared to the case – the toddler having gone missing in in 2007 – with Kerry’s website attempting to raise funds to increase a £7,500 reward for information.
“I’m not being offhand with the McCanns, they deserve the help as much as I do, it just seems help wasn’t readily available for me in the beginning or throughout,” she said.
“A lot of mistakes were made in the beginning when Ben disappeared, there was a lack of help from the British Embassy in Athens and the British Government.
“After Madeleine disappeared, all the help and resources were put into her case, and what I find very insulting was I was never given the same amount.”
Looking forward, Kerry said she’s most interested in being able to see access to the full case files from the Kos police, including to dig through any potential forgotten strands of enquiry.
However, due to the statute of limitations in Greece, certain witnesses can’t be interrogated due to the amount of time that’s passed.
She also understands new witnesses have been passed to police but she’s “heard nothing”.
“Pressure needs to be put on the Greek police to do something… they’re only bothered when you’re actually on the island,” she said.
“There’s a lot of unanswered questions about the investigation that I need answering. Hopefully someday somebody will let me look at these case files.”
A South Yorkshire Police spokesperson told The Sun: “We recently received a report of a woman who believes her partner to be missing person Ben Needham.
“Enquiries are ongoing into the report. Ben’s family are aware of this report, and we will continue to keep them up to date with our enquiries.
“We will continue to support them in their endeavour to discover the truth of what happened on 24 July 1991.”
Eze Chidiebere Paul
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