‘Milk Carton Kids’ reporter calls for public inquiry into ‘appalling’ failings
Journalist in plea over police handling of case
AFORMER Birmingham Mail journalist who has investigated the disappearance of the “Milk Carton Kids” since the two boys vanished in 1996 says a public inquiry is needed into the “appalling” failings of West Midlands Police.
Investigative journalist Leda Reynolds compiled a dossier and sent it to the force in 2006.
Until that point the disappearance of David Spencer and Patrick Warren, who were 13 and 11, had been treated only as a missing persons enquiry.
Her files prompted the force to upgrade the investigation to a murder probe and sparked a dig in Solihull in 2006. It was a search that yielded no result, and no closure for the families.
Reynolds says it was her investigation which first connected Brian Field, a convicted child killer from Solihull, with the boys’ disappearance.
He is currently in prison for the kidnap,
rape and murder of Surrey schoolboy Roy Tutill in 1968 – but has always denied any involvement in the disappearance of David and Patrick.
Now volunteers are digging at a new Solihull site where Field is alleged to have been seen “filling in holes” – despite a plea from police to stop.
Criminologist Prof David Wilson recently fronted Channel 4 documentary In the Footsteps of Killers, which prompted the new search.
It claimed that Field had contact with the boys a few days before they disappeared. Prof Wilson said police needed to take the alleged link between Field and the boys seriously.
Reynolds said the police investigation had to be scrutinised. She said: “I think there should be a public inquiry into West Midlands Police’s handling of the case from the very start – 25 years after the boys disappeared we are no further forward with the case.”
Reynolds said she was “appalled and horrified” that West Midlands Police were allowing the current unofficial
dig to continue. She said she was “unnerved” by the search in case volunteers missed crucial evidence and said police should be out digging themselves.
“I was standing there in 2006 along with all the other journalists in the rain. None of us could understand why they were digging in Old Damson Lane when Brian Field worked [nearby] and they weren’t digging there.”
She added: “I was working at the Birmingham Mail. I went with this dossier of information and I said, ‘look, you need to look at Brian Field’. They were still treating it as a missing person case and quite frankly I don’t think they want to even entertain the idea it was Brian Field because they know they’ve made so many mistakes from the beginning.”
In a Twitter post she claimed that a senior police officer, referring to the children, said “The little sh*ts have run away”.
A West Midlands Police spokesman said: “Nothing further to add from us.”