Double killer Levi Bellfield guilty of murdering schoolgirl Milly Dowler

An Old Bailey jury found Bellfield guilty of abducting and murdering the 13-year-old after she walked past the killer’s home.

Bellfield was also accused of attempting to abduct 11-year-old Rachel Cowles the day before.

No verdict has been reached on that charge.

It took Milly’s parents Bob and Sally nine years to get justice, even though her killer had been living 50 yards from where she was last seen in Station Avenue, Walton-on-Thames, Surrey.

Police knocked on the door of Bellfield’s flat in Collingwood Place, off Station Avenue, 11 times, but did not try to contact the letting agent to trace him.

Diana Cowles rang police when a man in a red car offered her daughter a lift but it was three years until officers interviewed her.

Bellfield went on to kill again twice before he was arrested by London police two years later.

He moved his family out of Collingwood Place the day after killing Milly and dumping her body 25 miles away in Yateley Heath wood, Hampshire.

Milly’s bones were found six months later by mushroom pickers. She may have been strangled or suffocated, but it was impossible to say.

Bellfield, a former wheelclamper and bouncer, went on to kill Marsha McDonnell, 19, and Amelie Delagrange, 22, and to attempt to murder Kate Sheedy, 18, in 2004.

All the attacks took place near bus stops on the borders of London and Surrey. There was no apparent motive except a hatred of women.

Bellfield, 43, was jailed for life for those crimes in February 2008 and was told he would never be released.

He is now due to receive another life term to run alongside the existing jail sentence in Wakefield prison, where he spends most of the day locked in his cell.

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