Dowlers 'suing paper over hacking' - Belfast Telegraph

Tuesday, 5 July 2011

The parents of murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler are suing the News of the World over claims a private investigator working for the newspaper hacked into her phone after she went missing.

Bob and Sally Dowler said they had been given "false hope" their daughter could still be alive after voicemail messages on the phone were deleted in the days after she vanished.

Solicitor Mark Lewis said the "heinous" and "despicable" actions could have jeopardised the police investigation.

Scotland Yard officers contacted Mr and Mrs Dowler about the hacking allegations in April, a month before Levi Bellfield went on trial for her murder.

News International, the publisher of the newspaper, said the allegations were of "great concern" and said it would be conducting its own inquiry.

Private investigator Glenn Mulcaire is alleged to have illegally accessed Milly's phone messages after she was abducted by Bellfield as she walked home from school in Walton-on-Thames, Surrey, in March 2002. The voicemail messages were allegedly deleted to make room for more after Milly's inbox became full.

Mr Lewis, from London-based Taylor Hampton Solicitors, said: "It is distress heaped upon tragedy to learn that the News of the World had no humanity at such a terrible time. The fact that they were prepared to act in such a heinous way that could have jeopardised the police investigation and give them false hope is despicable."

He added that Mr and Mrs Dowler were pursuing a claim for damages against the News of the World and that the Dowlers had been told their own phones had been targeted, as well as that of their daughter.

Mulcaire and former News of the World royal editor Clive Goodman were given jail terms in January 2007 after the Old Bailey heard they plotted to hack into royal aides' telephone messages. At the time of Milly's disappearance Andy Coulson, who resigned in January as Prime Minister David Cameron's media adviser, was the News of the World's deputy editor while Rebekah Brooks, now Rupert Murdoch's chief executive in the UK, was the editor.