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Levi Bellfield goes on trial at Old Bailey accused of 13-year-old Milly Dowler's kidnap and murder nine years ago
Schoolgirl Milly Dowler disappeared from a suburban street in broad daylight "in the blink of an eye" when she was snatched by a "predatory and violent" man who went on to murder two other young women and tried to kill a third, a court was told.
Levi Bellfield, a 42-year-old former wheelclamper and bouncer, has gone on trial at the Old Bailey nine years after Milly's abduction and murder resulted in a major missing persons inquiry and a nationwide police investigation.
He is charged with the 13-year-old's kidnap and murder and the attempted abduction of another schoolgirl, 11-year-old Rachel Cowles, the day before Milly "disappeared in a flash".
Describing "every parent's nightmare", Brian Altman QC said Milly disappeared as she walked home from school after sharing some chips with friends in the cafe at Walton-on-Thames railway station, in Surrey, on 21 March 2002.
The "slim, pretty and intelligent" teenager was wearing her school uniform when she vanished. Six months later, her unclothed and decomposed body was found by mushroom pickers in Yateley Heath Wood, Hampshire, 25 miles away.
Bellfield, formerly of West Drayton, west London, had been living in a flat yards from the road where Milly was last seen, Altman said.
He told the jury that the day before Milly disappeared, Rachel Cowles was walking home from school when she was approached by a man in a red car in Shepperton, Surrey. The man tried but failed to trick her into getting into the car.
The court heard that Milly, whose real name was Amanda, took a train from Weybridge, where her school was, and got off at Walton-on-Thames rather than her usual stop at Hersham to spend time with her friends before leaving to walk home.
"Within moments of leaving the station to walk along the road, just a few minutes after 4pm, she vanished – gone in the blink of an eye," Altman said.
The "entirely innocent and quite ordinary diversion to a station cafe to buy some chips with some school friends was a decision that was to cost Milly her life, because it meant taking a fateful journey along Station Avenue where ... her abductor and killer was soon to strike", he said. "Milly had simply disappeared in a flash from a street in a suburban town in broad daylight."
Her parents suffered for six months the "excruciating agony" of not knowing her fate, until her body was found.
Bellfield was living with his partner, Emma Mills, their two children and a Staffordshire bull terrier dog in a rented flat in Collingwood Place, yards from the spot where Milly was last seen alive.
They were house-sitting for a friend in West Drayton at the time of Milly's disappearance, but there was evidence Bellfield was in the vicinity of the flat on that day, the jury heard.
A red Daewoo Nexia car he was using at the time was captured on CCTV leaving the access road to their rented flat 22 minutes after what the prosecution say was Milly's abduction.
The day before, at around the same time, there was an attempt to abduct Cowles in Shepperton, "a mere nine minutes drive and a 3.3-miles car journey north of Walton", Altman said.
She was approached by a small red car driven by a man resembling Bellfield. The driver told her he had just moved in next door and asked if she wanted a lift. "Sensibly, she did not accept," Altman said, adding that the driver may have been spooked by a police car driving past.
Years later, Rachel failed to pick out Bellfield at an identification parade, the jury heard.
"The prosecution say there can be no doubt that Levi Bellfield, and no one else, was responsible for both [crimes]," Altman said.
The jury heard that Bellfield was convicted in 2008 for the murders of Marsha McDonnell in 2003, and Amelie Delagrange in 2004, by striking them over the head with a blunt instrument, and the attempted murder of Kate Sheedy in 2004, by deliberately running her over in a car.
The offences were "all committed by him within a period of just over two years" of those he is currently charged with.
In the cases of Rachel and Milly, there were "such similiarities between the offences that the chances of them having been committed by two or more men working independently of each other can safely and sensibly be excluded", Altman said.
He said that although the offences for which Bellfield was convicted were committed after Milly's murder and the attempted abduction of Rachel, it "makes it more likely that he is the man who committed those [earlier] offences too".
Bellfield denies the charges. The case continues.