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 vanished without a trace 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 he was a victim 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, Turkey, 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,” mum-of-two Kerry, originally from Sheffield, 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 South Yorkshire Police, who have been leading the investigation 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.
The initial investigation 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 Ben was kidnapped, 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 human trafficking 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.
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 Greece 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 New York.
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, the digger theory emerged, 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 had accidentally run over Ben, 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 Turkey. “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 DNA 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 Madeleine McCann case – the toddler having gone missing in Portugal 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.”