The mother of a British toddler who vanished without a trace on a Greek holiday island 35 years ago has revealed what she thinks happened to her missing son.
Ben Needham vanished from the island of Kos at just 21-months-old on July 24, 1991, after he was last seen playing outside his grandparents’ run down farmhouse.
In 2012, a theory emerged putting forward the idea he had been killed when a digger accidentally crushed him in an olive grove behind the farmhouse.
Three years later, an anonymous tip came in from a man who said digger driver Konstantinos ‘Dino’ Barkas had told him on his death bed he had been responsible and buried Ben’s body.
However, his mother Kerry Needham, 53, does not believe this theory and finds it frustrating so many people do.
Ms Needham has now revealed she believes her son could have been the victim of a gypsy trafficking gang who sold him for illegal adoption – with a man who thinks he could be Ben set to take a DNA test.
Speaking from her home in Antalya, Turkey, where she relocated around two years ago, she said a woman who is convinced her boyfriend is Ben emailed her last week to say there are ‘a lot of coincidences’ and ‘a lot of things don’t add up from his past’.
But the mother, who has never given up hope her son is still alive, said she did not ‘jump for joy’ when she received the message because she has not yet seen a picture of the man and has ‘very little information’.
Ben Needham vanished from the island of Kos at just 21-months-old on July 24, 1991, after he was last seen playing outside his grandparent’s run down farmhouse
Ben’s mother Kerry Needham, 53, believes her son may have been abducted by a gypsy trafficking ring and sold on for illegal adoption
South Yorkshire Police officers investigate an olive grove near the scene where Ben went missing in Kos, Greece, in September 2016 after a theory suggested he may have been accidentally crushed and killed by a digger
She has forwarded the information she does have on to South Yorkshire Police, who has led the investigation on the British side along with Greek authorities, and they are going to conduct a DNA test.
Ms Needham told the Sun that people began coming forward with information when the case gained wide-spread publicity.
She said a Greek man contacted Ben’s grandfather Eddie telling him he needs to start looking into gypsies ‘because there’s a gang, a line, he didn’t call it trafficking, he said sold for illegal adoption’.
Chillingly, the stranger added that Ben’s blonde hair and blue eyes means he would ‘fetch more money’.
Ben’s mother said it ‘sounded impossible’ at first but the tip-off sent her looking into the idea.
She praised South Yorkshire Police for always being open-minded about possible theories of trafficking, but added she does not feel Greek authorities ever considered it seriously.
But some years later, two former Kos police officers allegedly told journalists they had information that Ben had been ‘taken off the island’ via a port soon after he vanished – however, Ms Needham said this was never investigated.
Over the years, the mother threw herself into researching human trafficking and its links to the island of Kos.
She never found any proof other children had been taken from Kos, but child trafficking was ‘absolutely rife throughout the whole of Greece’ between the 1950s and 1990s.
An age progression facial depiction of what Ben Needham may look like as an adult. He would now be 36
Kerry Needham, mother of missing Ben Needham, holding up a newspaper showing a photo of her missing son in 1991
‘By the mid 1990s, things were getting more difficult,’ she said.
Ms Needham tracked down an elderly man who claims he was trafficked as a baby from Greece to New York.
She said the US city appears to be the ‘massive epicentre’ of illegal adoption, adding this is how ‘children disappear without a trace’ because the gangs are so ‘well-organised’.
In the summer of 1991, Ms Needham, who was just 19 at the time, moved herself and Ben from Sheffield, South Yorkshire, to the village of Iraklis, near Kos town, to begin a new life with her parents who were already living there.
On July 24 the same year, she left 21-month-old Ben with his grandparents, Eddie and Christine, at their farmhouse which was undergoing renovations while she went to complete her shift at the hotel she was working in.
Little Ben had been coming in and out of the home, but at 2.30pm they realised he had gone missing.
After searching for him for two hours, the family assumed Ben was with his teenage uncle, Stephen, who had been helping his father with the renovation works before driving home on his moped.
But panic fully set in when Stephen was found alone at the family’s apartment and Ben was nowhere to be found.
Greek police were called and later that night, at around 10pm, Christine went to the hotel to tell her daughter her son was missing.
Initially, the pace of investigation was slow, with Ms Needham later explaining how the family were convinced Ben would turn up.
She said they ‘never thought for one minute’ he had been abducted or an accident had occurred, adding: ‘We thought someone must have found him, he must have got further down that lane than my mum thought he could have done in that time.
‘We thought someone’s found him, taken him in, got him a drink, don’t forget it’s 90 degrees.
‘All these logical things – maybe they’ll hand him into a police station afterwards or at the hospital, maybe he was dehydrated.’
Ms Needham said she doesn’t know when the idea Ben could have been kidnapped ‘dawned’ on them.
‘We’re not stupid but abductions and kidnappings, they happen in films,’ she said.
Police at the scene in Kos, Greece, as officers from South Yorkshire police began excavations in relation to the missing toddler Ben Needham in September 2016
In the summer of 1991, Ms Needham (pictured), who was just 19 at the time, moved herself and Ben from Sheffield, South Yorkshire, to the village of Iraklis, near Kos town, to begin a new life with her parents who were already living there
The idea he could have been taken ‘didn’t enter’ their heads because they didn’t know anything about human trafficking at the time.
‘We were thinking why would anyone want to abduct Ben? We didn’t have any money for a ransom, which is what we thought a kidnapping was,’ she said.
It was only when there was no sign of her son and nobody had handed him into the police or hospital the family properly considered the possibility of an abduction – but even then, they still wondered what the motive would be.
The digger theory that emerged in 2012 was extensively probed, with multiple deep excavations taking place at all the sites digger driver Konstantinos ‘Dino’ Barkas was allowed to dump rubble and waste on the island of Kos.
Despite digging so deep into the ground that they unearthed an ancient burial ground, they found nothing in relation to Ben.
‘So I’m sure they can find one fragment of a child or a drop of blood, anything. They found nothing,’ Ms Needham said.
Dino had worked with her father Eddie before and even visited him and his wife at the farmhouse at around 5.30pm on the day Ben went missing to talk to them about the work he had been doing on the project.
Ms Needham said the fact Dino visited her parents that day a few hours after allegedly accidentally killing her son leads her to further believe the digger theory cannot be true.
She added if the digger driver had run Ben over by mistake, there would be no need to cover it up as the family would have been blamed for not watching him more carefully.
The mother said if she thought for one minute her child had died, she would stop searching and putting herself through all the ‘stress, trauma and heartbreak’ if he wasn’t alive anymore.
Despite the ‘massive toll’ it has on her mental health, she said ‘something is pushing’ her to keep looking for her son – a ‘mother’s instinct’ – that makes her believe there ‘must be something else’ she hasn’t yet come across.
A couple of years ago, Ms Needham moved to Antalya and says her ‘simple life’ with the partner she met there helps her ‘remain focussed’.
She has since set up a website for her campaign to find her son which details the events since his disappearance and is trying to raise funds to increase the £7,500 reward for information.
The latest incident in which a woman came forward to say boyfriend is convinced he is Ben is not the first time someone has contacted her believing they are the missing child.
Last year, she opened up about being harassed for two years by a man who was ‘absolutely adamant’ he was Ben.
The man made Facebook posts asking the family to meet him, but she refused and a DNA test by South Yorkshire Police came up negative.
Ms Needham also voiced frustrations over the stark difference in public funding and attention Ben’s case got compared to the extensive support given to the McCann’s since their three-year-old daughter Madeleine went missing from Praia da Luz in Portugal in 2007.
‘I’m not being offhand with the McCanns, they deserve the help as much as I do, it just seems help wasn’t readily available for me in the beginning or throughout,’ she said.
Comparing the authority’s efforts in both cases, she said a lot of mistakes were made by the British Embassy in Athens and the British Government after Ben went missing, whereas the McCanns received ‘all the help and resources’.
‘What I find very insulting was I was never given the same amount,’ she said.
Now, Ms Needham’s main concern is being able to access the full case files on Ben’s disappearance from Kos police which would allow her to pursue any strands of enquiry that may have been forgotten or dropped.
Ms Needham also voiced frustrations over the stark difference in public funding and attention Ben’s case got compared to the extensive support given to the McCann’s since their three-year-old daughter Madeleine (pictured) went missing from Praia da Luz in Portugal in 2007
Comparing the authority’s efforts in both cases, she said a lot of mistakes were made by the British Embassy in Athens and the British Government after Ben went missing, whereas the McCanns (pictured) received ‘all the help and resources’
Unfortunately, statute of limitations in Greece mean some witnesses cannot be interrogated because too much time has passed.
Ms Needham is also aware of new witnesses that have been passed on to police but said she has heard nothing on them.
There are ‘a lot of unanswered’ questions about the investigation into her son’s case that need answering and she hopes someone will eventually let her look at the files.
She wants pressure to be put on the Greek police to do something, but said they are ‘only bothered when you’re actually on the island’.
A South Yorkshire Police spokesperson said: ‘We recently received a report of a woman who believes her partner to be missing person Ben Needham.
‘Enquiries are ongoing into the report. Ben’s family are aware of this report, and we will continue to keep them up to date with our enquiries.
‘We will continue to support them in their endeavour to discover the truth of what happened on 24 July 1991.’
