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He was just 21 months old when he vanished – and in the UK his face is as familiar as that of William Tyrell in Australia.
And this week another chapter closed in the case of missing boy Ben Needham.
Ben was a blonde, blue-eyed cherubic toddler when he went missing from Greece on July 24, 1991. His British-born mother, Kerry, had left him with her mother while she went to work. At about 2.30 in the afternoon, Ben’s grandparents realised he was missing.
In the quarter of a century that has since passed, there have been hundreds of ‘sightings’ of Ben and countless theories as to his fate. Some believed he had been kidnapped; others murdered or trafficked.
There have been endless police campaigns and appeals for information about Ben, who would now be 26 – and in the UK, his face has become as famous as that other missing British toddler, Madeleine McCann.
Last month there was a potential breakthrough, with claims that a local builder, Konstantinos Barkas, may have accidentally killed Ben while clearing land with an excavator. According to the BBC, Mr Barkas died of cancer last year. His widow and son have strongly denied the claims.
Police have spent the past few weeks searching the area in which Ben went missing, and have dug up up 800 tonnes of soil.
However, Detective Inspector John Cousins, who is leading the investigation, yesterday announced that the dig had concluded. According to the BBC, he said: “I’ve got the confidence that we have done exactly what we can, given the plans we had before we came out here so that I can give an answer, whatever that might be, to Ben’s family.”
Yesterday the British media was awash with images of Ben’s mother, Kerry, in tears and doubled over at the site of the search. “I’d tear up the whole island to find him. I can’t say goodbye until I know where he is,” she told The Mirror.
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