The Met has confirmed that Milly Dowler’s phone was hacked – but says the cause of deleted voicemails cannot be determined.
A five-month investigation into the murdered schoolgirl’s phone records ran into a dead end due to an incomplete set of call data. Therefore, it is unknown whether the messages were erased manually or by default.
The report is significant since Scotland Yard suggested in December that the Guardian might have been wrong to say – factually – that NoW was responsible for the deleting the messages. However, the report means that this version of events cannot be ruled out.
Police believe two messages were missing, but said that without full technical call data “reaching a definitive conclusion is not, and may never be, possible”.
It said that the discovery of deleted messages, which gave the Dowler family “false hope”, occurred on 24 March 2002, three days after Milly’s disappearance.
However, the Met says that, based on evidence presently available, hacking by NoW only happened subsequent to 26 March.
The Guardian “welcomed” the Met’s modification and expressed “regret” for reporting that part of its story – that NoW was responsible for deleting the messages – as fact.
However the Met and Surrey Police are disputing a sequence of events published on a timeline by the Guardian, designed to outline which how its information determined its conclusions.
In a statement, lawyers acting on behalf of the Dowler family thanked the paper’s Nick Davies, saying the scandal had only come to light thanks to the “relentless efforts of one journalist”. They thanked the police for their efforts but attacked Surrey Police for their “neglect and deference”.
(Sources: MediaGuardian, Press Gazette)
