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Old Bailey Jury Convicts Levi Bellfield of the 2002 Kidnapping and Murder of 13-Year-Old Milly Dowler

Bellfield was already serving a whole-life term for two other murders. The next day the judge imposed a second, calling him a "cruel and pitiless killer."

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Illustration of television camera crews gathered outside a London court building on a summer evening, with a red double-decker bus passing. Not an actual scene from the case.

Milly Dowler, 13, vanished on her way home in Walton-on-Thames, Surrey, in March 2002. On June 23, 2011, an Old Bailey jury convicted Levi Bellfield of her kidnapping and murder.

The jury, which had retired the previous day, returned its verdict at 2:30 p.m., more than six weeks after the trial began before Mr. Justice Wilkie at the Central Criminal Court on May 6. Bellfield, 43, a former nightclub bouncer and wheel clamper, was already serving a whole-life term for the murders of Marsha McDonnell, 19, in 2003 and Amelie Delagrange, 22, in 2004, and the attempted murder of an 18-year-old woman in 2004. Milly's remains were found six months after she disappeared, in woodland in Hampshire. Bellfield had been living about 50 yards from the spot where she was last seen.

The next day Wilkie gave Bellfield a second whole-life term, calling him a "cruel and pitiless killer." He also discharged the jury from returning a verdict on a separate charge that Bellfield had tried to kidnap an 11-year-old girl the day before Milly disappeared, after the defense complained of an "avalanche of publicity adverse to the defendant." In 2012 the High Court found that articles in the Daily Mail and the Daily Mirror on June 24 had created a substantial risk of serious prejudice to that charge. Milly's father said outside court that the family had paid "too high a price for this conviction."

Channel 4 News reported that the jury failed to reach a verdict on the attempted kidnapping charge, while the High Court recorded that the jury was still deliberating when the judge discharged it over press coverage.

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