Amid the Calee Anthony murder, and the release of mother Casey Anthony, the almost-miracle story seems lost forever to the American public.
There can’t be a much worse nightmare than a child suddenly gone missing. This English schoolgirl was 13 years old. Milly Dowler disappeared in 2002. She had used her cell phone to call her folks to let them know she had stopped on her way home with friends at a little cafe and that she was walking home.
She never showed up.
The family held out hope, even when hope seemed pointless. Police began to focus less on finding the girl and more on finding a body and a killer. But, as weeks became months, the family held on, searching. They called Milly’s cell phone until the voice mailbox reached capacity and no more messages could be left. And still, they kept trying.
It was a time of horrifying torment. Threatening letters to the mother were traced back to a convicted child molester. Calls came to the family from a young female voice claiming to be Milly. A woman was caught and jailed for the malicious impersonation.
Journalism. such as it was, added to the misery. One tabloid in particular, Rupert Murdoch’s The News of the World, seemed to have an inside track, publishing details the police were trying to hold back. It was not responsible journalism. Their sources were a mystery. Where were they getting their information? The paper had a history of following police officials and hacking celebrity telephones. Apparently they had developed sources in Scotland Yard itself, an astonishing accomplishment. Perhaps there may have been some comfort in the possibility that Milly, if alive, might notice the publicity and call home.
A body was found. Tabloids proclaimed it to be Milly, but it was later identified to be a missing 73 year old woman who had died naturally outdoors.
We can only imagine how, in time, hope must have become reduced to a sad routine, a mechanical going through the motions of hope when hope had become no more than a shadow. One of those motions was the continuing attempt to leave messages on a lost cell phone no longer able to accept any messages.
But suddenly, hope came alive. Cell phone messages were unexpectedly being accepted. The voice mailbox was no longer filled to capacity. Messages were being listened to and deleted from Milly’s voice mailbox. She had to be alive. Police were notified and began devoting resources. After all those weeks and months of dismay and grief, a miracle was on the horizon.
Then came the crushing news. Another body was found. Workers picking mushrooms stumbled across the remains. Dental records were used to identify the remains. Milly was dead. The killer was identified years later, arrested, and convicted just days ago.
And this week, two final sad mysteries were solved.
Milly’s cell phone had been hacked back in 2002, the messages listened to by the Rupert Murdoch tabloid, The News of the World. That is how investigative information had found its way into the press. They listened to tearful calls from anxious family members.
And that’s not all.
An employee of the paper, instructed to get more information, began deleting messages to empty Milly’s voice mailbox, making room for more frantic messages from the newly hopeful family. The tabloid then began gleaning more information from the new messages, picking out bits and pieces between the tearful pleas from the family. Please, Milly. Please call. Please.
Police are now re-investigating other missing child cases that happened since 2002, this time for similar journalistic patterns by the same tabloid. As of yet, we have no evidence that any of the other killings of children and young women committed by this individual were caused by the diversions and delays. Until Scotland Yard finishes their probe, we will not know whether there were additional killings due to any hampering of other police investigations.
There is no link, none, between Murdoch himself and this latest hacking horror. In fact the woman Murdoch hired to run the tabloid for him says she had no idea, no idea at all, of how the publication she directed managed to get hold of such a continuous flow of secret information.
Murdoch publications in the United States have a documented, well known bias toward conservatism, in some cases becoming an arm of the Republican Party. But this was not a case of political partiality or ideological spin.
This was a quantum exaggeration of the most common bias held for ages by irresponsible journalism of all stripes: If it bleeds, it leads. The Murdoch tabloid just helped the bleeding from that family flow a little redder.
Good for circulation.