Milly Dowler: court hears how accused removed mattress from his flat

Prosecution says Levi Bellfield made early hours visit to flat near where Milly disappeared and later stripped the bedding A former nightclub bouncer accused of the kidnap and murder of schoolgirl Milly Dowler paid a visit in the middle of the night to his rented flat near where she was last seen, stripped the bedding and removed the mattress, a court heard. Just hours after the 13-year-old vanished, Levi Bellfield, 43, who was house-sitting with his girlfriend in west London, returned to their empty rented flat in Walton-on-Thames, Surrey, which overlooked the road where Milly was last seen alive, a jury was told. His girlfriend awoke between 3am and 4am to find him getting dressed, and he said he was going to the flat in Collingwood Place because he “wanted a lie-in”, said prosecutor Britain Altman QC. “So why return to Collingwood Place in the dead of night? To walk the dog? To lie in? “If the prosecution is right – that he abducted and killed Milly Dowler – then he had to dispose of her body and clean up,” Altman told the Old Bailey trial. Milly vanished shortly after 4pm on 21 March 2002, while walking home from Walton station. Her naked and badly decomposed body was found six months later in undergrowth in Yateley Heath Wood, Hampshire, 25 miles away. Phone records showed that during his late night visit Bellfield had switched off his mobile, the court heard. “His phone records show that his phone fell silent or was unreachable for almost nine-and-a-half hours between 23.02 that Thursday night and 08.26 on the Friday morning, ample time to make the journey from Walton to the deposition site in Yateley Heath Wood and to begin the clean-up,” said Altman. Bellfield, who was convicted in 2008 of the murders of two women and the attempted murder of a third, denies the kidnap and murder of Milly, whose real name was Amanda. He also denies the attempted abduction of Rachel Cowles, then 11, the previous day, on 20 March, 2002. The jury has heard that Bellfield, his girlfriend Emma Mills, and their two children, were renting the ground-floor flat in Collingwood Place, which had views of Station Avenue, where Milly was last seen, but at the time of her disappearance the couple were house-sitting for a friend, and the flat was empty. On the day Milly vanished, Mills had been unable to contact Bellfield because his phone was switched off and he returned to the house they were staying in West Drayton, between 10.30pm and 11pm. She noticed he had changed his clothes, and thought he must have returned to the flat in Walton, where his clothes were kept, said Altman. She could tell he had been drinking, but he was not drunk, and she was suspicious he had been with another woman, the jury heard. At about 3am-4am, Mills awoke to find Bellfield getting dressed. “She asked him what he was doing. He answered ‘I’m going back to the flat , ’cause I’m going to have a lay-in’,” said Altman. He left, taking the couple’s staffordshire bull terrier with him. Altman said the jury might ask themselves “What it was that was so important that in the middle of the night he decided to get up and drive over to Walton” – a distance of 13.7 miles, taking around 27 minutes. “You can be sure that it was no lie-in.” Milly’s uncle, Brian Gilbertson, was out in the early hours and was searching for his niece in the area of the Collingwood Place flats when saw a man with a dog not on a lead. He described the man as “thick set, stocky build”, white, aged between 30 and 40, who “walked with an air of confidence”. The jury could conclude that was Bellfield, said Altman. The next day Malcolm Ward, who knew Bellfield, agreed to help him move a king-size mattress from the flat, for which he was paid £15. “According to Ward, that day Bellfield was not his usual self and was quieter than normal,” the jury heard. When Mills returned to the flat after Milly’s disappearance, she found the bed stripped, with “no duvet cover, sheet or pillowcases”, with Bellfield claiming their pet staffordshire bull terrier had had an “accident” and he had “chucked it all”, said Altman. The court heard CCTV images showed no trace of Milly walking down Station Avenue, although a fellow pupil had seen her shortly after 4pm. The fact she was not on CCTV meant that she vanished within a very short time, and just yards from Collingwood Place. “If that evidence is accurate and reliable, then it means that Milly had to have been taken from that part of Station Avenue, right outside Collingwood Place, and right on the defendant’s doorstep,” said Brian Altman, QC, prosecuting. Milly, a pupil at Heathside School, Weybridge, where her mother, Sally, taught maths, had boarded her train at Weybridge, but got off at Walton to buy chips at a cafe with friends, instead of continuing on to Hersham station, her usual route, the jury was told. The jury has been told that within two years of Milly’s murder, Bellfield murdered Marsha McDonnell, 19, and Amelie Delagrange, 22, by striking them over the head with a blunt instrument, and attempted to murder Kate Sheedy, then 18, by deliberately running her over in a car. The trial continues. Milly Dowler Crime Caroline Davies guardian.co.uk

Posted by on May 11, 2011. Filed under News, Politics, World News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.