Ben Needham search: Grandfather visits Kos search site – BBC News

Ben Needham search: Grandfather visits Kos search site – BBC News

Posted by John P. Bradford // October 6, 2016

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The grandfather of missing toddler Ben Needham has visited the site police are searching on the Greek Island of Kos.

Eddie Needham was renovating a property on the island when the 21-month-old, from Sheffield, went missing in 1991.

South Yorkshire Police hoped he would be able to explain how the site looked at the time Ben vanished.

Police are investigating whether the toddler was accidentally killed rather than abducted.

Mr Needham spent around two hours touring the site with officers.

Read more about this story and others from across Sheffield and South Yorkshire

Det Insp Jon Cousins, who is leading the investigation, said: “I want the experts who are here to have a good understanding of his [Mr Needham’s] recollections around the day and the days after Ben’s disappearance.

“It is a very difficult time for Eddie. Very distressing and probably very upsetting.”

Image copyright Needham family

He said the site was now in the state he believed it to have been at the time Ben went missing.

“What we see now is what was there at that time,” he said.

It follows the demolition of an extension to a farmhouse which had been built since Ben’s disappearance.

A team of 19 South Yorkshire Police officers, forensic specialists and an archaeologist are excavating the site and are sifting through the rubble of the extension.

The search, now in its tenth day, was prompted by information given to police following a television appeal in May.

A friend of a digger driver, who had been clearing land with an excavator on the day the toddler went missing, told police the man may have been responsible for Ben’s death.

The driver, Konstantinos Barkas, died of cancer in 2015.

Read more: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-south-yorkshire-37561015