Milly Dowler: truth about deletion of messages may never be known
Source: The Guardian
The full truth about the extent of hacking into Milly Dowler's phone may never be known, police have admitted. Their report to the Leveson inquiry followed an investigation lasting five months into the hacking of the murdered teenager's phone.
"It is not possible to state with any certainty whether Milly's voicemails were or were not deleted" says the report, which was written by Detective Chief Inspector John Macdonald from the Metropolitan police's Operation Weeting, which is investigating phone hacking.
He said two voicemail messages appeared to have been removed at the time, but because the full technical call data was missing, "reaching a definitive conclusion is not, and may never be possible".
The police announced last year that a Guardian report might have mistakenly blamed NoW private detective Glenn Mulcaire for deleting Milly's voicemails and giving her family "false hope" that she was still alive because new evidence had emerged about the dates of calls.
Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/may/09/milly-dowler-deletion-messages