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Prosecutors Say Convicted Killer Levi Bellfield Will Be Charged With the 2002 Murder of Milly Dowler

The schoolgirl vanished walking home in Walton-on-Thames, Surrey. Bellfield, already serving life for two murders, had been named a prime suspect in 2008.

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Illustration of tied case files, a telephone and a lamp on an office desk by a rainy window. Not an actual scene from the case.

Milly Dowler, 13, vanished while walking home from school in Surrey in 2002, and her killing went unsolved for eight years. On March 30, 2010, prosecutors said Levi Bellfield, already a convicted murderer, would be charged.

A Crown Prosecution Service solicitor said he had decided to charge Bellfield, 41, with three offenses: Milly's abduction and murder, and attempting to kidnap another victim in Shepperton, Surrey, the day before Milly disappeared. A summons would soon be served, he said. Milly vanished in Walton-on-Thames on March 21, 2002, and six months later mushroom pickers found her remains in woods in Hampshire. Bellfield had been arrested on suspicion of her killing in 2005 but was not charged. In February 2008, he was convicted of the murders of Amelie Delagrange and Marsha McDonnell and the attempted murder of a third woman, and Surrey Police then said he had been identified as a prime suspect in Milly's case. In August 2009, the force sent a dossier of evidence against him to the CPS.

"We are pleased that Levi Bellfield has been charged with abduction and murder," Milly's parents, Bob and Sally Dowler, said in a statement, adding that they hoped it would "go some way towards providing justice for our darling Milly." Bellfield first appeared by video link to face the charges on April 13, 2010.

The Yorkshire Post reported that Milly's remains were found 30 miles away, while ITV News later put the distance at around 25 miles from her home.

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