As his family started combing the countryside for the toddler, the police launched a search for the missing boy.
Tragically, Ben was never found but, more than 20 years on, his family have never given up hope of finding him alive.
And in the week Ben would have celebrated his 24th birthday, his sister Leighanna has revealed she is expecting her first child, which is due in April. She now hopes more than ever he will be found, so he can be an uncle.
Speaking exclusively to Closer, Leighanna, who lives with her partner, window-fitter Craig, 24, says: “I’ve been on cloud nine since I found out I was expecting. My mum is so excited and we wish Ben could be here to share in this happy time.
“Being pregnant has made > me realise what my mum went through when my brother disappeared.
“If anything happened to my child, I don’t think I would be able to cope. We’ve always believed Ben was abducted. I’m terrified that my baby may be taken like Ben was. It’s irrational, but I live in fear that someone may have been watching our family and now they will take my baby too.”
Ben’s story made headlines again this week after police DNA tested a man in Cyprus who looked similar to how he would look now but sadly, the tests proved negative.
The Needham's hopes were also raised by the discovery of a young blue-eyed and fair-haired girl known only as Maria, at a Roma gypsy settlement near Larissa, in Greece, where it was once claimed Ben had been spotted.
Now, Christos Salis, 39, and Eleftheria Dimopoulou, 40 – who were posing as Maria’s parents – are awaiting trial, charged with child abduction and document fraud, after DNA tests proved that Maria’s natural mother is, in fact, a Bulgarian Roma woman named Sasha Rusheva, 35.
Leighanna, who works in accounts, says: “When I first found out about Maria, I couldn’t believe what I was hearing – I was in shock. I wanted to scream, because that could have been Ben, all those years ago.
“Greek police told us it was impossible to hide a child, especially one like Ben, with his pale skin and blond hair, but Maria has proven this isn’t true.”
Leighanna, 20, who was born two years after Ben vanished, admits that despite never meeting her brother, he’s always been in her life.
She says: “Our family home is filled with pictures of Ben and Mum made sure I knew about his story. When I was four, I’d point at pictures and ask Mum if we could go and find him.
“Mum was understandably protective over me – she never let me go anywhere alone or let me out of her sight. Sometimes I resented her for sheltering me so much. But now I’m having my own baby, I can understand why she was like that.
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“I’ve helped my family as much as possible in the campaign. There’s not a day that goes by when we’re not talking about Ben. I feel like his older sister because I only know him as a baby in the photographs.”
Despite the Needham family tirelessly working with Greek and British police, they have never found the answers they were looking for.
Since his disappearance, there have been hundreds of possible sightings of Ben in Greece and Kerry, 41, and her father, Eddie, 65 – have visited there numerous times to keep the search alive. Sadly, these sightings have never led them to Ben and, as Leighanna explains, the search has been plagued with difficulties.
She says: “My mum went back to Greece with my grandad so many times – but doors were just shut in their faces. It felt like no one wanted to help find Ben. In 1996, a man claimed he’d seen him living with a gypsy family in a camp – the same one Maria was found in. My grandad went to Greece but, when he tried to get into the camp, he was forced out at gunpoint. We’ve never dared go back.
“It’s so frustrating – if the police had searched the camps, they might have found Ben, but they were too scared to.”
In July 2011, a cold case review was launched by South Yorkshire police, with a handful of police officers set to work on the case after an e-fit of Ben, showing how he would look now, was released that year.
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Then, in 2012, the force sent a team to Kos to excavate a site where they believed Ben may have been buried.
Leighanna says: “We knew Ben wasn’t dead – police thought he may have fallen and been buried under rubble at the house my family were renovating in Kos, but unless he’d buried himself, we knew it couldn’t be true.”
Now, however, Leighanna hopes that the search for Ben will gather speed, after Maria was found in a Greek camp.
“We’ve always believed that gypsies were watching our family that day and that he was taken to be sold on, but the police never listened,” she says.
“Someone somewhere knows where Ben is – we just want them to come forward,” says Leighanna. “We’ve been living in hope for 22 years. We try not to get our hopes up too high – when you never find the answers you are looking for, it’s crushing.”
And the void left by Ben in her mother’s life is now so much more poignant for the mum-to-be. She says: “I’ve spent my whole life watching my mum desperately missing her son, crying for him and willing someone to come forward. Now, I’m about to be a mum and I can finally understand how she feels. We just want Ben back.”
For more information regarding Ben's case, visit www.helpfindben.co.uk