On March 21, 2002, 13-year-old Amanda Jane Dowler (known to friends and family as “Milly”) didn’t come home as promised. Her alarmed parents reported her missing to the police at 7:00 p.m. Over the next days, hundreds of police officers with helicopter support combed the area. She couldn’t be found.
Milly’s disappearance dominated the news. Who would get the scoop?
Journalists from the now-defunct News of the World tabloid newspaper had an idea. An awful idea.
They decided to hire investigators to phone hack Milly’s voicemail. The hack succeeded, but they discovered nothing (and potentially hindered the investigation by accidentally triggering automatic deletion of the messages after 72 hours).
They told police what they discovered and considered it just another day at the job. It was… at least for nine more years.
Milly was not the first victim, nor was she the last, but the discovery (more than nine years after her death) that her phone was hacked became the straw that finally broke the back of the News of the World.
Over the years, there were thousands of victims: the royal family, politicians, celebrities, sports stars and even the police. But it was the violation of innocent Milly’s privacy that sent the News of the World to its grave (ten years ago in July).
Postscript:
Months went by with no sign of Milly. Despite a £ 100,000 reward offer from The Sun tabloid, she remained missing. In June 2002, police told her parents she was probably dead.
Finally, on September 18, 2002, a couple walking through the woods discovered her corpse.
Serial killer Levi Bellfield, already serving a life sentence for two murders, was ultimately convicted of kidnapping, and killing Milly.