Murder Of Milly Dowler
Amanda Jane "Milly" Dowler was a 13-year-old English girl who was abducted on her way home from school in Walton-on-Thames, Surrey, on 21 March 2002, and subsequently murdered. Her body was discovered on 18 September 2002.
On 23 June 2011, Levi Bellfield was found guilty of Dowler's murder and sentenced to a whole-life prison tariff.
Following her death, Dowler's parents established a charity called Milly's Fund to "promote public safety, and in particular the safety of the children and young people". The case also generated debate over the treatment of victims and witnesses in court, after Dowler's family criticised the way they were cross-examined during Bellfield's trial.
Dowler's murder also played a significant role in the News of the World phone-hacking scandal. It was revealed in 2011 that News of the World reporters had accessed her voicemail while she was reported missing. The resulting outcry from the British public contributed to the closure of the newspaper and led to a range of investigations and inquiries into phone hacking and media ethics, and not just at the News of the World.
Read more about Murder Of Milly Dowler: Disappearance, Body Discovery, Investigation, Trial, Post-trial, Legacy
Famous quotes containing the words murder of and/or murder:
“Lizzie Borden took an axe
And gave her mother forty whacks;
When she saw what she had done,
She gave her father forty-one.”
—Anonymous. Late 19th century ballad.
The quatrain refers to the famous case of Lizzie Borden, tried for the murder of her father and stepmother on Aug. 4, 1892, in Fall River, Massachusetts. Though she was found innocent, there were many who contested the verdict, occasioning a prodigious output of articles and books, including, most recently, Frank Spiering’s Lizzie (1985)
“If we Americans are to survive it will have to be because we choose and elect and defend to be first of all Americans; to present to the world one homogeneous and unbroken front, whether of white Americans or black ones or purple or blue or green.... If we in America have reached that point in our desperate culture when we must murder children, no matter for what reason or what color, we don’t deserve to survive, and probably won’t.”
—William Faulkner (1897–1962)