Phone message gave mother false hope of Milly’s survival

She rang her mobile phone repeatedly in the weeks after she vanished in Walton-on-Thames in Surrey in March 2002.

The inquiry heard private detective Glen Mulcaire working for the News of the World deleted some of her voicemails to allow more to be recorded – although last night he claimed that it was not him.

Sally Dowler said: “At first we were able to leave messages, and then her voicemail became full and then you rang and then you just got the recorded ‘you are unable to leave messages at the moment’.”

She continued calling and felt elation when she finally got through to Milly’s message.

“It clicked through onto her voicemail, so I heard her voice and it was just like, ‘she’s picked up her voicemail, she’s alive’,” she said.

Mrs Dowler described the moment, just before the trial of a man accused of Milly’s murder, when police told her daughter’s phone had been hacked. She said: “As soon as I was told it was about phone hacking, literally I didn’t sleep for about three nights because you replay everything in your mind and just think, ‘oh, that makes sense now, that makes sense’.”

She said the police and family needed help from the media in the hunt for Milly.

She added: “So the press were in a position to be able to help us, and they did get the message out that she was missing, and lots of information came into the police headquarters.

“But on the other hand, (there is) the persistent being asked questions and being doorstepped and everything else that’s associated with it – all the letters that you get requesting books, films, interviews.”