Greece BEN NEEDHAM: Missing from Kos, Greece - 24 July 1991 - Age 21 months

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Toddler, Ben Needham, went missing on the Greek island of Kos. His mother Kerry, from Sheffield, has always maintained he was abducted.


Media - http://crimewatchers.net/index.php?...s-greece-since-24-july-1991-age-21-months.91/
 
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Bottom of the road

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Top of the road

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And looking up the road from the farmhouse (which is on the right)

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You will see from the relatively recent photos I posted that up the hill from the farmhouse leads to a hilly wilderness. Down the hill it is a 20 minute walk to the T junction with no side roads on the way. It would even be risky to try to escape down the hill with a car containing someone else' s kid - anything coming up the hill could block the exit route. And the road was just a track back in 1991. How would it be possible to carry out an abduction in all those circumstances?

Even Kerry says in her book that it seems impossible because it's a dead end.

In 2012 there was a theory that he may have wandered off and had an accident at the building site along the road (in the downhill direction from the farmhouse). We know from the book that Christine passed a construction site on her walk. It gets a mention. The site was dug up and nothing found. But if an accident had occurred there in 1991, the body may have been taken elsewhere. Now the police are back on Kos.


I don't know if this is the villa that was being constructed at the time but it's only just down the lane from the farmhouse

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It's at the top of this aerial view, the farmhouse is near the bottom, with the stone house over the road in the extreme bottom right of the photo

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http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/uk-wo ... os-1388524

BEN'S grandfather revealed the agony behind the toddler's disappearance as he returned to the spot where Ben was last seen.

20 Oct 2012


It emerged that former owner of the house, Needham family friend Michaelis Kypreos, died just three days ago. Police said he’d had a bad heart for years.

Kypreos moved to Australia to live with his son after Ben vanished. British police did not take a statement from him.
 
Xanthippe (Sissy) Agrelli was used by the police as a translator for the Needhams. She owned a shop in the village where the Needhams saw her on a daily basis. She always had ice cream for Ben. A few hours before Ben disappeared, Kerry's brother went to Sissy's shop to purchase food for lunch. He told Sissy the entire family was up at the farmhouse. Her car was spotted parked in the lane with two male occupants and the Needhams later found her reporting conflicting information. There are concerns that Sissy may be connected to Ben's disappearance.


www.mirror.co.uk

Shopkeeper and friend to the Needhams Xanthippi Agrelli



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Michaelis Kypreos was the man who owned the farmhouse and hired the Needhams to do the reconstruction work. The farmhouse had belonged to his wife's family and it had fallen into bad condition over a period of many years. The rundown farmhouse was up in the hills in a village called Iraklis. It was their dream to renovate the property to its pre-war glory. This was the location where Ben disappeared.

Michaelis Kypreos died in mid October of 2012. Police said he’d had a bad heart for years. Kypreos moved to Australia to live with his son after Ben vanished. British police had never been able to take a statement from him.

www.thesun.co.uk

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Across from where the lane joined the driveway stood the strange-looking villa. It wasn’t just high, it seemed to have been built back to front. You had to go round the rear to enter – as the police discovered when they decided to pay a call. An old lady Dad had seen once or twice answered. She confirmed that she had been in all day and had, crucially, seen Stephen leave on his motorbike. ‘Was the baby with him?’ ‘No, the baby was playing. Over there.’ She pointed to the back of the farmhouse. To exactly where Ben was last heard.

Needham, Kerry. Ben (Kindle Locations 1301-1305). Ebury Publishing. Kindle Edition.


www.dailymail.co.uk

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An English-speaking officer told us Barkas had reported seeing a white car parked along the lane on the day Ben had disappeared. He couldn’t identify the passengers but he could tell there were two men in the front and a woman in the back. Dino had not been able to confirm whether there had been hire car signs on the number plate or bodywork but it had looked like a Suzuki, a popular model with the rental companies.

Needham, Kerry. Ben (Kindle Locations 1923-1924). Ebury Publishing. Kindle Edition.


www.dailymail.co.uk
Digger driver Konstantinos (Dino) Barkas was working near the farmhouse.

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On 24 July 1990 – exactly a year before Ben was taken – a young Finnish holidaymaker called Virpi Maria Hunnele was raped and killed on that same Iraklis hillside, according to Carole, no more than 400 yards from the farmhouse. The girl’s family went through hell trying to discover what had happened to their seventeen-year-old daughter. They smashed their heads against the same brick wall I’d found myself up against: the Kos police. The same Kos police who hadn’t thought to mention this case to us. As the Sunday Times article suggested, could it really be a coincidence that two youngsters disappeared from virtually the same spot in exactly the same year? Could two seemingly random crimes occur in the middle of nowhere like that?

Needham, Kerry. Ben (Kindle Locations 2466-2469). Ebury Publishing. Kindle Edition.
 
The Needhams had no money to finance their search for Ben. They often resorted to passing a donation bucket at sporting events.


What were we back in 1991? Working-class people living in a caravan and a rented apartment in a foreign country, trying to make an honest living. We didn’t have money and we didn’t have connections. We stood shaking buckets at pop fans outside Wembley Stadium;

Needham, Kerry. Ben (Kindle Locations 3734-3736). Ebury Publishing. Kindle Edition.

Wembley Stadium

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