Serial killer’s solicitor writes to Surrey police saying claims Bellfield admitted to abducting, raping and killing teenager in police interview were false

Levi Bellfield has denied that he confessed to the murder of Milly Dowler, Surrey police have said.

His solicitor wrote to the force to say that claims he admitted abducting, raping and killing the schoolgirl during an interview with officers last month were false. Police were investigating the possibility that the serial killer had an accomplice when he allegedly confessed.

In a statement released on Friday, Surrey police confirmed they had “received correspondence from solicitors representing Yusuf Rahim, also known as Levi Bellfield”.

“In that correspondence, he denies making any confession. Surrey police stands by its original statement from 27 January.”

The alleged confession, said to have been the first time Bellfield acknowledged killing Milly despite his 2011 conviction, led British police forces to reopen a series of murder files.

Scotland Yard confirmed that it was looking again at cold cases, alongside other forces, amid reports that Bellfield had confessed to other crimes. The Metropolitan police declined to say how many cases or forces were involved.

Colin Sutton, the former Scotland Yard detective whose investigation into the murders of three other young women put Bellfield in prison, said the killer’s claims were breathtaking.

“I am almost lost for words on this,” he said. “He has been toying around with the police and also the victims’ families, particularly the Dowlers. It is even beyond the cruel, wicked games that I know he was capable of. This is almost beyond what I thought even he was capable of.”

“I would be astounded if Surrey police did not have some sort of proper, decent, thorough corroboration of his claims, because when you are dealing with somebody like him you would not go public with it unless you had that.

“Given the high profile nature of this case and who he is, I would be absolutely astounded if there isn’t some sort of unassailable record of these confessions.”

Sutton said he would expect a confession on tape – with or without Bellfield’s knowledge of it being recorded – or a written note of a confession which Bellfield would have signed at the time, which the retired officer said he doubted the killer would do.

He said: “Unless you have that kind of standard of corroboration of his admissions, I think it would be a highly questionable decision to go public with it in the way they have over the last few weeks.”

Sutton said that Bellfield’s retraction of his confession was “yet another [example of] the ever-growing and expanding catalogue of Levi Bellfield’s cruelty on the Dowler family”.

He added: “But of course he’s got nothing else to do in some ways. He’s in prison for ever, he may as well just make mischief, and certainly he’s capable of making the most wicked kind of mischief and that could be what he’s doing.

“It could well be that he’s just playing games. But it could backfire on him because he could be doing it under the impression that Surrey can’t prove that he did say it when in fact they can. In some ways, I hope that’s the case, because it would certainly be the best outcome for Surrey police.”

In a statement released after Surrey police said Bellfield had confessed in late January, the Dowler family said: “The effect of this information has been devastating for a family which has already had to endure so much.”



Milly was snatched from the street while on her way from school to her home in Walton-on-Thames, Surrey, in March 2002. Bellfield was found guilty of abducting and killing her following a trial at the Old Bailey.