The Mystery of Ben Needham

Mimi wrote:In the film "somebody Knows" Christine says that Kerry dropped Ben off at the caravan at 8 o`clock.  I believe Kerry said it was later and that she stayed and had a coffee with her Mum even though she was late for work.

Another thing in the film, Eddie says he thought Ben got wet because he was playing with the hose, so there must have been mains water - you wouldn`t let a child waste water if you had to be careful with it.

Another thing - where did their sewerage go?  Did they have a septic tank?

If you click on the gallery pictures on the below link then there are a few of the septic tank.

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/ben-needham-missing-police-dig-8946192

Andrew wrote:

Mimi wrote:In the film "somebody Knows" Christine says that Kerry dropped Ben off at the caravan at 8 o`clock.  I believe Kerry said it was later and that she stayed and had a coffee with her Mum even though she was late for work.

Another thing in the film, Eddie says he thought Ben got wet because he was playing with the hose, so there must have been mains water - you wouldn`t let a child waste water if you had to be careful with it.

Another thing - where did their sewerage go?  Did they have a septic tank?

If you click on the gallery pictures on the below link then there are a few of the septic tank.

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/ben-needham-missing-police-dig-8946192

Thanks Andrew. Found this video on youtube which says the septic tank is not believed to have existed 25 years ago. (at 2:25mins). You don`t know what to believe.



Any thoughts on why Ben was playing with a hose/water - did they have mains water?

Was there any mention of the septic tank in the book at all?

You'd think that if there was a hose then it would be connected to a mains supply somewhere.

Seahorse made a comment a while back about Michaelis saying they could connect it for free (or something similar), which made me think that he owned the house where the old lady lived.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2323846/Ben-Needhams-grandmother-writes-open-letter-missing-grandson.html

An article from 2013 but thought I'd stick it up.

The first bit - Christine believes he was taken by gypsies who were watching the family - reminds me alas of another even more unlikely assertion that the McCanns were being watched by a paedo abductor.

Andrew wrote:Was there any mention of the septic tank in the book at all?

You'd think that if there was a hose then it would be connected to a mains supply somewhere.

Seahorse made a comment a while back about Michaelis saying they could connect it for free (or something similar), which made me think that he owned the house where the old lady lived.

Thanks Andrew.

I`ve ordered the book so will see if it`s mentioned.

Freedom wrote:The first bit - Christine believes he was taken by gypsies who were watching the family - reminds me alas of another even more unlikely assertion that the McCanns were being watched by a paedo abductor.

Well she`d know if there were any gypsy camps nearby.  I thought it was the first time she had gone to the farmhouse with Ben.

I still think he was taken (by gypsies, another abductor or a member of the family) because they put his green shorts on him before he disappeared. (and I believe Christine).

Even such a provable thing as to whether or not this was Ben's first visit is in dispute. Kerry stated in a 2007 blog and in her book that he had been there many times before.

He must indeed have been taken away by someone; he'd have been found if he had just wandered a little way.

https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=R2u9AwAAQBAJ&pg=PA155&lpg=PA155&dq=ben+needham+grandparents&source=bl&ots=v7W-XyEkcC&sig=xS-bD7GWZWt6Bngj2eIqt8vti7E&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwie2MDovf3PAhVIPxoKHU6ADJM4MhDoAQgwMAU#v=onepage&q=ben%20needham%20grandparents&f=false

Some more of the book you can read on here.

Satsuma wrote:It's a mystery why Dino and his digger were ever given any credibility as  suspects

p88 of the book describes  the lane just after BN's disappearance as being "barren and empty". Apparently the ditches were inspected for signs of him

No mention of a whacking great noisy digger churning up the plot next door

You can't miss seeing one of those though, especially when your kid's just run off

From the book also:

In between the sound of them all calling out, there was the occasional putt-putt of a distant scooter or slow-moving truck crawling up the main road. There were no other human sounds. Just the wind and the animals puncturing the silence.

The book is available for Kindle at £4.99.

If it was a stranger that took him, they must have had the quietest of steps not to alert the dog. Also back then it was a rough driveway - difficult to walk on that without making a sound.

I don't think there was an abduction, Mimi. Just like there wasn't an abduction in the higher profile case of Madeleine McCann.

Just my opinion.

Andrew wrote:I don't think there was an abduction, Mimi. Just like there wasn't an abduction in the higher profile case of Madeleine McCann.

Just my opinion.

From what I`ve watched/read I think Kerry is genuine. Watch this video from 1:17mins. She would not be feeling this way if she knew what had happened - IMO that is genuine anger/heartache.

Mimi wrote:

Andrew wrote:I don't think there was an abduction, Mimi. Just like there wasn't an abduction in the higher profile case of Madeleine McCann.

Just my opinion.

From what I`ve watched/read I think Kerry is genuine.  Watch this video from 1:17mins.  She would not be feeling this way if she knew what had happened - IMO that is genuine anger/heartache.

I agree. Genuine grief and distress. I don't think for a second she doubts that it was Dinos. But just IF it didn't happen that way, how much worse is it that whoever did do it is smearing someone else?

In this video Christine (at 5:55mins) says they "bought tables and chairs from the gypsies that came up and down". So they were aware of the gypsies in the seemingly very local area and obviously had conversed with them over buying stuff from them.

chirpyinsect wrote:
I agree. Genuine grief and distress. I don't think for a second she doubts that it was Dinos. But just IF it didn't happen that way, how much worse is it that whoever did do it is smearing someone else?

Can't be much worse than the cops telling her to prepare for the worst,with little or nothing to back that up.

Andrew wrote:http://www.itv.com/news/calendar/2016-10-28/picture-exclusive-the-toy-car-that-led-to-end-of-ben-needham-search/

Snipped:
In response to questions from Calendar South Yorkshire Police say the funding for Operation Ben will be in place until the end of November to allow for the forensic analysis of items brought back from Kos to the UK. Funding was due to end on October 31.


So according to this article there is more than the car being forensically analysed.

seahorse wrote:
The car found in Kos is thought to be similar to this one

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-south-yorkshire-37688475

For what it's worth the above car was made by a company called Summer (Hong Kong), so not a dinky toy (Meccano Ltd). I suppose most die-cast cars were called dinky cars though, regardless of brand.

S688   MERCEDES-BENZ           (200 SERIES)  (1968)       YELLOW   LUCKY STAR  #88 BENZINE


What is the provenance of the pic used by the BBC in the above article? Is it just a random pic of a yellow diecast car, similar to the one SYP found?

Just bringing this back up since it seems the same model car. Produced in 1968. Did they buy it secondhand?

Andrew wrote:I don't want to disrupt the current line of thinking etc, but just want to put this article here. It's from 2013. One of Kerry's partners, or someone she loved was murdered... I've never heard of that before.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2013/apr/28/ben-needham-kerry-needham-interview

This is not that dissimilar to the piece that Jez Wilkins's partner, journalist Bridget O'Donnell, wrote for the Guardian in the months after Madeleine disappeared. There really are many parallels in the cases, imo.

I suspect that, as with the McCann case, there are those in the media who know what happened.

Anyone with an inquiring mind could read between the lines in these cases, imo, and pretty much work out what happened to these children. As Kate quotes in her book, in the vast majority of cases of missing children, the family or those who know the child well are responsible for what happened.


I see nothing in either of these cases to persuade me that they do not follow the statistical norm for cases of missing children.