Journalists told police they had accessed Milly Dowler’s voicemail messages, court told

Journalists at Rupert Murdoch's News of the World told police hunting for a missing schoolgirl in 2002 they had accessed her phone's voicemail messages, a London court heard yesterday, as prosecutors focused in on the case at the heart of the trial.

Stuart Kuttner, then managing editor of the tabloid, contacted Surrey police investigating the disappearance of Milly Dowler to say they had details of her voicemails, according to testimony the prosecution gave to show Kuttner was aware of the phone-hacking. Milly Dowler was later found murdered.

The paper later ran a story quoting the messages, the court was told, and police took no action at the time.

Mr Kuttner is on trial accused of conspiracy to illegally access voicemails on mobile phones alongside former editors Rebekah Brooks and Andy Coulson, who both have close links to prime minister David Cameron. They deny the charges.

Glenn Mulcaire, a private eye who worked for the now defunct paper, has admitted hacking Milly Dowler’s phone. Three journalists from the paper have also pleaded guilty to conspiracy to hack phones.

News of the Dowler hacking in the summer of 2011 caused a media firestorm which engulfed News International, the British newspaper arm of Murdoch’s News Corp, and led to the closure of the 168-year-old paper.

Timeline
On Tuesday, the prosecution gave a timeline of events surrounding the hacking of the 13-year-old's phone after she went missing on her way back from school in March 2002.

The court heard that on April 13th, Mr Kuttner and other News of the World reporters contacted Surrey police to say the paper had significant new information, and revealed they were in possession of recordings of her voicemail messages.

“Mr Kuttner when asked, supplied the mobile telephone [number] the calls were recorded on,” Det Sgt Kevin McEntee said in a statement read to the court. “Mr Kuttner told me they had confirmed with schoolfriends this was the number.”

A reporter also spoke to Sarah McGregor, who was head of communications at Surrey police, and played a recording of one of the hacked messages. She said senior officers would have been aware of the hacked messages but she was unaware of any discussions of action against the News of the World.

Later that day, the paper, which was being edited by the then deputy editor Andy Coulson while Ms Brooks was on holiday in Dubai, ran an article that quoted from a message from a recruiting agency which later turned out to have been a wrong number.

The second edition featured a story without details of the message, however, which the prosecution suggested followed text message contact between Ms Brooks and Mr Coulson. Jonathan Laidlaw, Ms Brooks’s lawyer, said that she had not made any direct telephone calls to the newspaper between the two editions.

A holidaymaker in Dubai, who socialised with Ms Brooks and her then husband, TV soap actor Ross Kemp, told the court he remembered Ms Brooks being distracted on one occasion by work. “She said it’s something do with the missing Surrey schoolgirl and it’s important,” said William Hennessey, adding the “very nice, pleasant” Ms Brooks had spent a lot of time on the phone when they were together.

– (Reuters)