Disappearance of Ben Needham
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The disappearance of Ben Needham occurred on 24 July 1991 when the twenty-one-month-old boy went missing on the Greek island of Kos. Ben Needham (born on 29 October 1989 in Sheffield, United Kingdom) is the son of Kerry Needham (born 1971) and her boyfriend Simon. Ben has a strawberry type birthmark in the nape of his neck.
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[edit] Disappearance
Ben Needham had been holidaying with his parents on Kos (to where his maternal grandparents had emigrated) in the village of Iraklise when he went missing on 24 July 1991. His mother Kerry Needham also planned to permanently move to Kos with Ben to be near her parents Eddie and Christine Needham and brothers Stephen and Danny, then aged seventeen and eleven respectively.
On the day of his disappearance, Ben had been left in the care of his grandparents while his mother went to work at a local hotel. The child had been playing near the doorway of the family's farmhouse as the adults were having lunch and his grandmother had only taken her eyes off him for a few minutes when it was discovered he was gone, sometime around half past two in the afternoon.
The family first searched the area for Ben, assuming he had wandered off or their teenage son Stephen had taken him out on his moped but, when there was no trace found of the little boy, the police were notified. However, the police extensively questioned the Needhams, holding them as prime suspects, and delayed in informing airports and docks of Ben's disappearance and widening their search for the child. A shop assistant had seen Ben on the evening of his disappearance with an older boy but this lead was not followed up until it was too late to trace the boys.
It is the belief of the Needham family that Ben was kidnapped with the intention of either being sold for adoption or taken by child traffickers. However, there is no evidence to support this theory and some observers consider an accident to be a legitimate alternative scenario.[1][2]
[edit] False hopes
There have been over three hundred sightings of boys matching Ben's description reported, both on the Greek mainland and on Greek islands, most called in shortly after his disappearance during the period of 1991 to 1992. And there were also number of instances where it looked as if the mystery had been solved. In late 1995, private investigator Stratos Bakirtzis found a blond boy, aged around six years old, to be living with a Gypsy family in a camp located in Salonika, Greece. The child claimed he had been given to the Gypsies after being abandoned by his biological parents and his adoptive mother claimed to have bought the boy from another Gypsy. But there was no evidence found to suggest this was Ben.[3]
In 1998, British holidaymaker John Cookson saw a blond boy of about ten playing on a beach in Rhodes. Cookson said that the child was known as 'the blond one' by his friends and was the only fair-haired child in the mix of dark-haired Greek children. Suspicious, he took photographs of the children and pretended to tousle the boy's head to acquire a hair sample for DNA analysis.[4] However, DNA testing proved the boy was not Ben, and the Greek boy's family also provided infant photographs and a birth certificate to prove he was their child.
[edit] Recent events
In 2003, shortly before the twelfth anniversary of Ben's abduction, South Yorkshire police launched a fresh bid for information in locating Ben and the Metropolitan Police Facial Imaging Team used age progression techniques to alter a toddler photograph of Ben to how it would look when he was thirteen years old.[5] With Ben now in his late teens, the case remains open.
Kerry Needham moved back to Britain in September 1991, unable to settle in the island that saw her losing her baby son. She briefly reunited with Ben's father Simon and they had a second child Leighanna (b. 1994). In 2003, she hired Welsh investigator Ian Crosby to help with the case and he made a visit to Kos with Ben's uncle Danny. Crosby is also involved in investigating a photograph, sent to him by a holidaymaker who visited Turkey in 1999, which depicts a number of Turkish village children, including a blond boy who resembles the age-progession photo of what Ben might look like aged thirteen. Despite having spent £20,000 flying over the world chasing leads in her son's disappearance, Kerry is certain that she will one day be reunited with Ben.
[edit] References
- ^ "A racket in Portugal: the spread of the urban myth". The Times (16 May 2007). Retrieved on 2007-05-16.
- ^ "This limbo that lasts a lifetime". The Guardian (30 September 2007). Retrieved on 2007-10-02.
- ^ "'Ben' found with gypsies". The Independent (14 December 1995). Retrieved on 1995-12-14.
- ^ "Hair clue for lost boy's family". The BBC (12 November 1998). Retrieved on 1995-11-12.
- ^ "Is this the face of Ben Needham, aged 13?". The Daily Mail (13 June 2003). Retrieved on 2003-06-13.
