New evidence has emerged suggesting that the deletion of messages from Milly Dowler’s voicemail account was not deliberately performed by journalists from the News of the World.

According to the Metropolitan Police, the messages were “most likely” deleted automatically. The Met also told the Leveson inquiry that it has no evidence to prove the claim that journalists directly deleted messages from the murdered schoolgirl’s voicemail.

If true, this new claim severely undermines articles written by the Guardian‘s Nick Davies and Amelia Hill, who accused journalists from the tabloid of deleting messages, “thirsty for more information”.

The article, published July 4, was the catalyst that has since seen the News of the World closed, public opinion of journalists soured, and a hard-lined commitment by the government to investigate press standards within the UK.

However, News of the World journalists who did listen to Milly’s voicemail messages could still have been to blame for the deletion of older messages. According to the police, Milly’s mobile phone would automatically delete messages 72 hours after they had been listened to.

The Guardian has responded cautiously. The article that ran the original accusation has been amended with a footnote, stating that the News of the World “was not responsible for the deletion of voicemails from Milly Dowler’s mobile phone”.

Nick Davies, writing a riposte to the revelation, continued to assert that the newspaper “had indeed hired a private investigator” to “hack into the voicemail of the missing girl”.

Defending his original article, he says the accusation was made after the Guardian had “confirmed directly or indirectly from Scotland Yard, Surrey Police, the Dowler family and even by Glenn Mulcaire” that the News of the World was responsible for the disappearing messages.

Davies also argues against the suggestion that the messages deleted themselves. Records showed that the messages hadn’t been listened to within the 72 hour time-frame that the messages began to be deleted. “This leaves open the possibility that, before Glenn Mulcaire was tasked, that [a] journalist separately was hacking the girl’s messages and made deletions.” He concedes that there is “no confirmation” of that, and that currently there is “no explanation” for what happened to the messages on Milly Dowler’s phone.

(Sources: BBC News, The Guardian)

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