Police divers are pulling debris from a lake near Heathrow Airport today, looking for a car believed to have been used to dispose of the body of murdered Walton teenager Milly Dowler.
A spokesman for Surrey Police confirmed members of their underwater search team carried out the operation with the Metropolitan Police at Bedfont Lakes in west London, as part of an ongoing investigation into a red Daewoo Nexia linked to the schoolgirl’s disappearance.
Milly, 13, vanished while walking home from school on March 21, 2002, and her skeletal remains were found six months later by mushroom pickers in Yateley Heath, Hampshire.
Former wheel clamper Levi Bellfield, currently behind bars for the murders of 19-year-old Marsha McDonnell and 22-year-old Amelie Delagrange, became the prime suspect in the investigation after CCTV footage, taken moments after Milly went missing, showed a red Daewoo matching the one Bellfield’s girlfriend owned at the time, driving past the spot where the teenager was last seen.
The suburban street in Walton where the schoolgirl was last spotted was just 70 yards from 41-year-old Bellfield’s home, but he has always denied any involvement in the murder.
But earlier this year, Bellfield, who has been told he will probably die in jail, admitted to a national newspaper he had been driving the car in the CCTV footage, but maintained his innocence.
The search at Bedfont Lakes follows fresh information given to the police, who have never been able to trace the car, despite searching other lakes, as well as scrapyards and scrubland.
In August, a man voluntarily attended a police station and was questioned by police about the potential disposal of a car.
He was released without charge but, later that month, Surrey Police handed a dossier of new evidence to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS).
Although the contents of the dossier cannot be disclosed for legal reasons, it is believed the new evidence came to light in December last year.
A spokesman for the CPS said at the time: “We will now consider the evidence from the police. We will decide whether there's sufficient evidence for a realistic prospect of conviction against Levi Bellfield and if it is in the public interest to prosecute.”
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