Rachel Cowles 'was scared and in tears' after turning down lift from man said to be Levi Bellfield
A schoolgirl whom double murderer Levi Bellfield allegedly tried to entice into his car the day before Milly Dowler disappeared told a court the incident left her scared and in tears.
Rachel Cowles, now 21, was 11 and bore an "uncanny resemblance" to Milly when a man in a red car, claiming to be a new neighbour, offered her a lift as she walked home from school. She refused and the car drove off after a police car passed in the opposite direction, the Old Bailey was told.
When she got home she looked but could not see the car parked outside any neighbouring houses.
After her mother phoned police, she burst into tears as she spoke to a police operator. "I felt scared. I suddenly realised the enormity of what had happened," she told the jury.
Rachel, who was wearing school uniform and had her hair in a ponytail, was walking home from school alone in Shepperton – three miles from where Milly vanished in Walton-on-Thames, Surrey, the next day. Milly's unclothed body was found 25 miles away in Yateley Heath Wood, Hampshire, six months later.
Bellfield, 43, a former club doorman, formerly of West Drayton, west London, denies the kidnap and murder of Milly, aged 13, on 21 March 2002, and the attempted abduction of Rachel the previous day.
Recalling the incident nine years ago, Rachel Cowles said a red car pulled alongside her around 3.30pm that day. The passenger window was wound down and the driver leaned towards her. "I remember him saying, 'Hello, I've just moved in next door; would you like a lift home?' " she said. "I said, 'No thank you. It's all right.' "
She was "half-confused" and "not comfortable", she said, and when she got home "I checked to see if I could see his car."
She said the driver was white, in his 30s or 40s and was a skinhead or bald. His face was "rather chubby, round" and he had a gold hoop earring in his left ear. His upper body "looked rather large to me".
Cowles said she believed the car might have driven up the opposite side of the dual carriageway and turned round, "but I don't remember seeing it turn round". She described it as red, non-metallic with five doors, smaller than her parents' Rover but bigger than a Peugeot 106.
She was about one foot away and, looking through the rear passenger window, she saw about 20 magazines strewn on the floor and noticed two "booster seats", child seats she thought were for children aged between one and two. One was blue and green and the other was pink, she said.
Prosecutors claim the man was Bellfield, who lived yards from where Milly disappeared and was driving a red Daewoo Nexia at the time.
The jury has been told Bellfield was convicted in 2008 of the murders of Amelie Delagrange, 22, and Marsha McDonnell, 19, and the attempted murder of Kate Sheedy, 18.
Cowles did not give any description to police about the car driver when she spoke to them immediately after the incident. When questioned about the driver by a police operator over the phone, she replied, "I don't know." No police officer came to interview her at the time, the court heard.
Three years later, in March 2005, her mother, Diana, a lab technician, rang police after seeing a GMTV report linking a red car with the kidnap and murder of Milly, and also suggesting a possible link between the Dowler inquiry and the murder on Twickenham Green of Delagrange, the court heard.
Police took a statement three weeks later, in which Cowles described the driver.
Jeffrey Samuels QC, representing Bellfield, asked: "Were you aware of the detail and description of the man who had been arrested in respect of that Twickenham Green incident?" She replied she had not looked at any media regarding the Twickenham incident.
"Do you think your description, which emerges for the first time in the statement in April 2005, might just have been influenced by what you had seen on GMTV or other things in the paper or something that may have been said to you?" asked Samuels, "No," she replied.
"Do you think that maybe your memory and therefore your description of the vehicle in the statement may have been influenced by footage you had seen on GMTV?" asked Samuels. "No," she replied.
Jurors were told Cowles had failed to identify Bellfield in an identity parade in 2005.
Her mother told police in 2005 her daughter remembered the driver being balding, with a beard, and wearing an earring, the court heard. Giving evidence, her mother said she did not know where she had got the description of a beard from.
The trial continues.
--
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/may/13/milly-dowler-murder-levi-bellfield
~
Manage subscription | Powered by rssforward.com
Tidak ada komentar:
Posting Komentar