MUM'S PAIN
My son Ben Needham vanished more than 30 years ago – cops need to find out if body of boy found in river is him
THE mum of a toddler who went missing in Greece 32 years ago is calling on cops to check if a body found in Germany is her son.
Little Ben Needham was playing at his grandparents' farmhouse on the Greek island of Kos when he disappeared on July 24, 1991.
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British police believe Ben was killed by a digger driver near the farmhouse in a tragic accident.
But the failure to find Ben's body has fuelled speculation about what exactly happened to him.
Now his mum, Kerry Needham, 51, has alerted South Yorkshire Police to an Interpol appeal to identify a kid’s body found in the River Danube, reports .
Kerry said: “I am hoping our British police will check this out and contact the German officers about this. We need to rule it out.
“I’ve always said all along that I don’t believe he’s died.”
Interpol last week released a reconstruction of the boy who was 3ft 6ins tall and had brown hair.
They believe the young child, whose body had been wrapped in foil and weighed down with a flagstone, may have been trafficked.
Kerry, from Sheffield, said: “The reconstruction has a look of Ben. I never realised how child trafficking is so rife and massive.
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“I spoke to a man this week who was trafficked out of Greece in the 1950s. It is still happening today in Greece but very underground.”
Ben vanished more than three decades ago while playing at his grandparents' farmhouse.
Kerry had recently moved to Kos from Sheffield, to start a new life with her family, when the tragedy happened.
She had left her son with her grandparents while she went to work, not realising she would never see him again.
Ben had been coming in and out of the home - a farmhouse that was being renovated by the family - when, at around 2.30pm, it was discovered the young child had disappeared.
At first, Ben's family began to search nearby for the tot, assuming that he had wandered off, or that Kerry’s teenage brother Stephen had taken him out for a ride on his moped.
However, there was no sign of Ben and eventually the search for him was widened.
Police efforts to dig the land at the farmhouse failed to uncover remains, though it was reportedly their “professional belief” that Ben died when a digger driver accidentally ran over him.
South Yorkshire Police have twice sent a team of their own to the island, the latest time being after a witness came forward to say that before his death, digger driver Konstantinos “Dino” Barkas, who has since died, confessed to killing Ben.
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