Tears well up in Paul Noke’s eyes as he recalls watching the post mortem of murdered teenager Milly Dowler.
Six months earlier, he had been tasked with leading the investigation into the then missing 13-year-old school girl, a case that would become one of the most notorious in British history.
Milly from Walton-on-Thames, Surrey, had been snatched off the streets on her way home from school on March 21 2002. She was never seen alive again.
Her disappearance sparked a high-profile search which ended in tragedy when her remains were discovered by mushroom pickers in the woods 25 miles from her home.
It wasn’t until nine years later that notorious serial killer Levi Bellfield – already serving life sentences for the murders of Marsha McDonnell, 19, and Amélie Delagrange, 22, and attempted murder of 18-year-old Kate Sheedy – was found guilty of killing Milly.
Despite Bellfield being jailed for life for Milly’s murder, it is a case that still haunts former detective inspector Mr Noke nearly 25 years later.
Speaking to The Crime Desk, he says: ‘My frustration is that we couldn’t find him [Bellfield] quicker.
‘And bearing in mind that Levi Bellfield was later apprehended for two further murders and an attempted murder – as a professional and a human being, you question whether we could have made a difference to these people and their families, because he went on for too long with the opportunity to commit further murders.’
Mr Noke said Milly’s disappearance was ‘treated very seriously, very early’ with detectives suspecting immediately that she had been abducted.
He explains: ‘We appeared on Crimewatch to appeal to the public. We had 50 sex offenders that lived within five miles from the abduction site who were all interviewed. We did thousands of house-to-house inquiries over a wide area.’
But there was one house, just yards away from the spot where Milly was last seen alive, which never answered the door.
This, Mr Noke admits, was a huge ‘missed opportunity’.
Officers never contacted the letting agent, nor did they obtain contact details from neighbours to try and trace who was living there.
Detectives believe Bellfield – who has a devil tattoo on his shoulder – murdered Milly shortly after abducting her.
‘We couldn’t have saved her,’ he says. ‘But it was a missed opportunity, and obtaining possible sightings or information from neighbours of his visitations to the flat may have led us to Levi Bellfield.’
By the time they accessed the house, the flat had seen several tenants come and go, with any potential forensic evidence destroyed by redecorating and steam cleaning.
But the missed opportunities did not end there.
The day before Milly was abducted and murdered, Bellfield had attempted to abduct an 11-year-old schoolgirl.
Her mother rang the police when a man in a red car offered her daughter a lift, but no statement was taken and no officer visited her house.
The report was never passed on to Mr Noke and his team and the girl’s mother was not interviewed for another three years.
‘It should have been done,’ he admits. ‘It was a missed opportunity.’
In an era before smart phones, the search for Milly was made increasingly challenging by the lack of witnesses or any CCTV.
Mr Noke explains: ‘No one saw Milly leave that railway station and get into a car or be abducted. Not a single thing. What was really unusual and really frustrating about the case was that there were no witnesses to the abduction, no CCTV and no forensics.’
He recalls following up leads across the country which failed to materialise, leaving members of his team in tears as they were thwarted by false hope time and time again.
On a personal note, Mr Noke’s daughter was also 13 and lived in the same area at the time of Milly’s disappearance.
‘The team were completely passionate and committed, but for me there was a personal touch to it because this could have been my daughter and that gave me an even greater determination and sadness.’
After six months, with Milly’s family demanding answers, Surrey Police had still not found any evidence to support an abduction, nor had they found a body.
‘As a SIO, it is challenging keeping the enthusiasm and the energy of the team going, when every line of inquiry we had came to a dead end.
‘It’s incredibly tough living those emotions with the family and seeing their hope diminish.’
But on September 18 2002, they had a breakthrough. Mr Noke received a phone call from neighbouring Hampshire Police telling him that human remains had been found by mushroom pickers in Yateley Heath Woods.
The body was severely decomposed, but dental records confirmed their suspicions. It was Milly.
The innocent schoolgirl had been abducted, raped and murdered. Her body was then cruelly disposed of by the killer.
Mr Noke recalls a mix of emotions – the tragedy of finding the murdered schoolgirl coupled with the relief of being able to try and bring closure to the family.
‘One of the hardest things we had to do was tell the family that we’d found the remains of their daughter,’ he admits.
What followed was a harrowing month-long search for parts of Milly’s body, which had been spread over the woods after being eaten by animals over the six months.
‘You’re looking for clues, any forensic evidence but there was no clothing at all and her body was decomposed. The cold facts were that there was only teeth and bones. That’s all we found of Milly.’
Mr Noke had to attend Milly’s post-mortem himself – something that sticks with him to this day.
‘The saddest part for me – and there’s only two things in my whole career that really got to me – was when I saw Milly laying there.’
His voice shaking, he adds: ‘And that photograph at the end, even now I can feel the emotion of actually seeing this innocent lovely 13-year-old girl – and my daughter was 13 – just laying there like that.
‘That was incredibly sad. It was some form of closure for the family but with no answers still six months on. It was really hard. It was the hardest thing in my whole career.’
But the agony did not stop there. While they had found Milly, the focus quickly turned onto finding the culprit.
The Dowler family would have to wait nearly eight years before a suspect was charged with Milly’s murder.
Father-of-11 Bellfied abducted Milly and assaulted her at his flat near Walton station before driving her to his mother’s house and raping her. He later took Milly to another location where he raped and tortured her, before strangling her the following day.
Milly was last seen on Station Avenue in Walton, about 50 yards from the flat he was living in with his girlfriend, Emma Mills, in Collingwood Place.
At the time Ms Mills owned a red Daewoo Nexia which Bellfield used and CCTV footage showed a similar car near the abduction site shortly after Milly was last seen alive.
Surrey Police detectives went to America to have the picture enhanced by the FBI and the vehicle was confirmed as the same make and model.
Ms Mills – and other ex-partners – would go on to help police by revealing crucial information about his violent and abusive behaviour, hatred for women and randomly disappearing during the night.
The serial killer was charged with Milly’s murder on March 30 2010 and convicted on June 23 2011, nine years after she went missing.
Ms Mills told the court how Bellfield disappeared on the day Milly went missing, returning with a new set of clothes and coming up with excuses for why the bed was stripped of its sheets.
Another ex-partner, Jo Collings, said he raped her hundreds of times, declaring: ‘We were his property.’
Bellfield yawned in the dock as he was found guilty and failed to show up for his sentencing the day after.
‘He was an evil man that showed no remorse, no emotion, no feelings, no nothing,’ Mr Noke said.
‘You do wonder what does society do with people like that? Because I don’t know if a person like Levi Bellfield will ever be able to change, when showing no remorse and carrying out these heinous crimes so many times.
‘And I think there’s even question marks out there now about what other people he may have murdered, there’s still a number of unsolved cold case murders out there as well.’
Mr Noke said that although he was ‘very happy for the family’ when Bellfield finally confessed in 2016, he questions the serial killer’s motives, especially after he denied making the admission a month later.
‘I think it was most likely to do with power and control once he’d admitted the murders of these other women. He showed no compassion, none whatsoever.
‘For me, because of the links to my daughter at the time, because of how harrowing it was for the team, and because of seeing the immense pain that the family went through, the case still leaves that imprint.’
