Ben Needham: Everything we know about his disappearance

Kerry welcomed baby Ben Stephen Needham on the 29th October 1989 in Sheffield. She was just 17-years-old, but proved to be a natural mother - and, when she was 18-months-old, she and Ben moved to Kos to be closer to her family.

Kerry and Ben moved into a small holiday flat and found work at a local hotel. Ben stayed with her or the rest of the family in the caravan which was parked in an olive grove in an area called Paradisi, near the beach, about 10 minutes' walk from Kos town. They were both very happy in their new lives.

On 24th July, Kerry's family - and a friend, Michaelis Kypreos - ate lunch together in a small farmhouse near a hilly area known as Herakles. Ben was playing on the terrace just outside the door, where they could see him.

At about 2.30pm, Stephen (Kerry’s brother) left the farmhouse on his moped. Ben wanted to go with his uncle. A few minutes after Stephen left, Christine (Kerry’s mother) realised that Ben had gone quiet and went outside. He was nowhere to be seen. She and the others began searching for the boisterous little boy, calling his name as they did so. When they couldn't find him, they assumed he must have gone with Stephen; it was the logical explanation.

In the early evening, Kerry’s father, Eddie, found Stephen at Kerry’s flat - but he didn’t have Ben with him. The family quickly realised that Ben had been missing for several hours, and quickly phoned the police. Officers took Christine to the hotel to tell Kerry, who had now finished her shift, what had happened. Speaking in her book, Ben, Kerry said: “I found my mum huddled on the stone steps, her sobbing face tucked between filed bare arms. Her skin felt cold to cuddle, and not because of the thin shorts and sun top she was wearing. “I’d never seen her like this. I’d never seen anyone like this… [and] I realised I felt sick to the stomach with fear.”

Joined by Kerry’s family, the police began an intense search for Ben, going to places that Ben could never have got to, covering some 15 acres, through olive groves and pomegranate orchards, riverbeds and long grass. However, on the night Ben went missing, Kerry’s father and brother drove to the port on Kos at 3am. There was a line of trucks and cars waiting to board the ferry - but there were no police checking the vehicles. The policeman who had said he would join them there never turned up.

Kos police were immediately hostile to Kerry. She told The Guardian: “They banged their hands on the table. They shouted, 'Where is boy? How can you lose a baby? Why do you go to work? You must not love your child.'"Island gossips quickly blamed Kerry for his disappearance, slamming her as an unfit mother for working instead of looking after her child, as a slut for being an unmarried mother. Some even accused her of not loving her son, and of giving him away or selling him in a bid to be rid of him.The police extensively questioned the Needhams, holding them as prime suspects, and delayed informing airports and docks - or widening their search for the little boy.

Builders working on a property close to the farmhouse where Ben disappeared came forward to police on the 25th July 19991. In their statements, they revealed that they had witnessed a white car parked in the lane around 2.30pm the day Ben vanished. They believed the car to have been a Suzuki Alto or similar model. One of the builders further stated that the car contained 3 occupants - one woman in the rear of the car, and two men in the front.

It took two days for police to finally inform the airport of Ben's disappearance. A woman who worked in a kiosk within the airport reports remembering seeing a child fitting Ben's description in the airport on the same day he disappeared. This boy has never been traced.

Writing on the official Help Find Ben website, Kerry explained: “The British Embassy was informed and was asked to help. “However no support was offered due to us not being under arrest for any crime and the Embassy's feeling that the local police had better knowledge and so it should be best to leave it to them.” In September 1991, after weeks spent searching for Ben and no updates on the case from police, the family moved back to the UK.

Kerry, who moved back in with Ben’s father, Simon Ward, when she arrived in the UK, explained that she found things incredibly difficult. She told The Guardian: "I used to get up in the middle of the night and it was like I was hallucinating that Ben was actually there. We'd decorated a bedroom for him and I used to go in there and pretend to rock him to sleep because I thought I could hear him crying. “I had a psychiatric nurse who was wonderful, and she said that having the bedroom there was making it worse. Obviously I was dreaming that I could hear him crying and I was just automatically getting up in the night and going to rock the baby." Kerry overdosed on antidepressants and attempted to cut her wrists, struggling to deal with the loss of her baby boy.

In 1994, Simon and Kerry welcomed a second baby - this time a girl, whom they named Leighanna. Speaking to The Guardian, Kerry explained that she found it hard to be a mother to her daughter, as she was still desperately missing Ben. She said: “I couldn't be anyone, only Ben Needham's mum. But I couldn't be his mum because he wasn't there. I couldn't cope with being me, I couldn't be a real person. I couldn't cope with anything. It was tough on Leighanna and tough on me. I plodded on but it was a really awful time." By 1996, Kerry, unable to cope, had asked her parents to look after her little girl. But, in 1997, Kerry suddenly realised that she need to be with her daughter. She explained: “It made me realise that life was short and I wanted to be with them [my family].” Her little girl went home with her willingly - and the pair began their life together in earnest.

One of Leighanna's first memories is taking part in a TV reconstruction of Ben's last moments when she was 22 months old - the same age Ben was when he went missing. With her hair especially cut in the same crop as her brother, and wearing boys clothes, she was the living image of Ben."I was very young, but I can remember that day," Leighanna says, "There was a man walking in front of me holding a yellow toy duck so that I'd follow him. In a strange way it has made me feel like I was there the day Ben went missing. "Watch the video reconstruction for yourself here.

In 1996, a prisoner named Andonis Bedzios came forward and claimed that he had seen a little blonde boy living with the Keremi family (a well-known gypsy family) in Veria. When he had asked them who the boy was, he said, they had told him that they had got the child from Kos.A taxi driver corroborated Bedzios’ story, stating he had seen Ben in his cab with a member of the Kerimi family.On 4th September 1997, Gordon Bernard from the British Embassy in Athens was given telephone instructions from Bedzios (in prison) regarding the location of Ben. He was led to a Mercedes with German number plates - but Ben was not inside, as had been promised. Bedzios gave police a sworn statement naming the man who had told him about the car, as well as his telephone number, but they did not investigate the matter further.

In January 1998, Bedzios offered to lead undercover armed police officers to Ben. However, the Kos public prosecutor would not agree to it, insisting that Bedzios was “willing to make up any story to get out. His primary objective is to escape. “If we took him to Kos, he would run away." Speaking about this, and Greece’s ‘crooked’ police force, Kerry Needham said: “To us, this did not make sense. “If a prisoner is under guard by the police, surely he can't escape?”

In July 2000, Kerry travelled to Kos to pick up Ben’s case file - and was shocked to discover that the white car seen in the lane in Herakles at around 2.30pm on the day Ben vanished had finally been traced. They said it had belonged to Xanthippi, the shopkeeper who acted as the family’s translator during the initial investigation. Kerry said: “Chief Baffoonis was asked why Xanthippi was there, and he said that she had been visiting our family. This was not true! “The police were therefore asked to investigate her claims again.” Upon leaving the police station, the Needhams headed straight to visit Xanthippi, where she denied what the police had just told them and threatened legal action against them. She claimed that, at the time of Ben’s disappearance, she did not have the white car as she had given it up for subsidy. However, upon visiting the Transport Department, the Needhams quickly proved that Xanthippi’s claims were incorrect; she had not given away her white car until October 1991 - several months after Ben’s disappearance. “There may be a perfectly good explanation," said Kerry to The Guardian, but she added that she wants Xanthippi’s claims to be properly investigated.

Stephen Needham had been the last to seen Ben alive, when he turned the little boy down when he asked for a ride on his moped. However, police accused the young man of taking Ben on his moped, crashing it, and and accidentally killing the child. They said that this was why his moped shows signs of damage - despite the fact Stephen had told them repeatedly that it had been damaged earlier, as he tried to avoid tourists on quad bikes. "You fall off, kill the child, bury him?" they asked over and over again. In 2001, Stephen underwent hypnosis on camera, to confront the doubts created by the police interrogation. He recalled crashing his motor scooter and burying Ben with a spade - but the memory was proven to be a false one.His mother Christine told GMTV: “Stephen’s last image of Ben was him playing in shorts. But he was not wearing shorts, so I must have been the last to see him. “Stephen was so brave to have to go through this and to be virtually accused... “We are very upset about it. “People have to see this (the documentary) before they jump to conclusions.”

In 2007, Madeleine McCann vanished from her holiday apartment in Portugal - and Ben’s abduction was brought back into the public eye. As Ben’s 18th birthday approached, an Age Progression photo was released and a young man came forward in Pathos, Cyprus, saying that he believed it could be him. While the resemblance to the age progression photo was remarkable, the young man was not Kerry Needham’s missing son. Eddie Needham, Kerry’s father, said: "I wish it'd been my grandson, because he was a gentleman and I'd have been very proud of him, but he was Romanian. “Hugged him, kissed him, checked the birthmark on his neck just to make sure, that's how close it was. He didn't have the birthmark."

In 2008, Kerry Needham returned to Kos and asked why police had still not investigated Xanthippi and her white car. They had no explanation. She then went to find Xanthippi at her shop, but came face to face with her daughter instead. Writing on the official Help Find Ben website, Kerry’s family explained: “When her daughter realised why we were there she went into a rage and shouted all sorts of abuse at Kerry. She also tried to attack Kerry’s daughter. “At that point we left. “This young woman’s hatred for our family was unbelievable considering she must have only been around five years old at the time Ben went missing. What had she been told all these years?"

In 2015, South Yorkshire Police were granted £700,000 in funding to work with Greek police on Ben's disappearance - and launched a TV appeal in Greece which was viewed by over 60% of the population." We've had a lot of information which is consistent with information we've had before but we've also had a lot of good new information," Detective Inspector Cousins said." I have to follow every line of inquiry and I think this is the best opportunity we've had to find out what happened to Ben." Kerry said: “We are ecstatic with the amount of information that has come through… hundreds of calls came through over the weekend, more emails, so it just shows that the Greek public are more trusting and more willing to give up that information.” She added firmly: “We are very happy that the British are working very closely with the Greek police… it’s more than we could ask for."

Sitting down on ITV’s This Morning, Kerry Needham was asked by Phillip Schofield whether she was any closer to reconciling the events of what had happened that fateful day in her head - to which Kerry surprisingly replied that police now have an eyewitness to Ben’s disappearance. She said simply: “I think it has now been confirmed that it was an abduction. “I don’t know any more details than that… I assume [the call came through from] someone who heard that someone had taken Ben, or that they had witnessed the abduction.”

"I will never give up the search until I find out what happened to Ben. "Myself and my family are stronger than ever now and we will do whatever it takes to find Ben and let him know the truth of who he is."