A new person came forward to claim he is Ben Needham, the 21-month-old British boy who mysteriously disappeared on Kos Island, Greece 33 years ago.
The toddler was last seen playing outside a derelict farmhouse on the island. His parents have searched the globe looking for their boy.
The mum of Ben Needham, who went missing in 1991, is waiting on DNA results from a Danish man claiming to be her son.
The man claims his grandparents have told him he was taken from Kos, and is insisting his parents have refused to deny these claims. The man says he was hidden for years and remembers 25 years ago going to a market and someone shouting “Ben” at him. He claims he was then kept in a caravan.
But Kerry Needham, 51, from Sheffield, says she can never get her hopes up, having been in this position multiple times. She told the Mirror: “This man is looking for his real family and he has given Danish police a sample of his DNA, which South Yorkshire Police are trying to get hold of via Interpol to do a comparison with Ben’s.”
What really happened to Ben Needham?
The stranger’s DNA samples will be compared with a blood sample taken from when Ben was born at Boston Hospital in Lincolnshire, for the routine Guthrie heel-prick test. She said: “In 33 years we’ve had hundreds of alleged sightings, the majority of them we have followed up ourselves in the earlier years.
“We’ve had DNA taken from people in Greece, Turkey, Germany and one in Florida and Australia. But at least South Yorkshire Police are trying to get me answers and I can’t praise them enough.”
Kerry Needham moved to Kos from Sheffield and had left her son with his grandparents on 24 July 1991, while she went to work. Ben was last seen playing at his grandparents’ farmhouse and he was first noticed missing at about 2.30pm.
His family had initially thought he had simply wandered off or had been taken out on a moped ride by his uncle – but a search of the area proved fruitless.
Despite over 300 reported sightings, no trace of Ben has ever been found by either British or Greek police.
The force’s theory is that Ben may have died in a digger accident after a witness came forward.
The digger driver, Konstantinos “Dino” Barkas passed away in 2015 from cancer. Following his death, a friend came forward saying that Barkas took a secret with him to his grave — he had admitted to him that he accidentally crushed the toddler with his digger and buried his body.
But blood discovered at the scene in 2016 was found not to belong to Ben, and the witness is refusing to talk to police again.