How will Bellfield’s confession affect his victims’ families?

The victims

vil Levi Bellfield E had always refused to admit to killing schoolgirl Milly Dowler – despite being convicted of her murder five years ago – so it came as a huge shock when he confessed his guilt last week and sickeningly revealed he’d also raped her.

LITTLE COMFORT

While the 47-year-old former bouncer’s admission has devastated Milly’s family, it will also have had huge repercussions for the families of his other victims, students Amélie Delagrange and Marsha Mcdonnell. Despite being found guilty of their murders, Bellfield, who now calls himself Yusuf Rahim, has never admitted killing them.

Rose Dixon, CEO of charity Support After Murder And Manslaughter says the confession will bring little, if any, comfort to the families.

She says: “Families who have been through a similar situation have told me a confession such as this has stirred up traumatic memories and taken them right back to how they felt when the murders first happened.

STILL SUFFERING

“It’s an extremely distressing thing for people to endure. It will take time for them to cope with the news. It may help families in their situation if the perpetrator, in this case Bellfield, apologises or shows remorse. There will

Bellfield murdered Amélie Delagrange and Marsha

Mcdonnell, while Kate Sheedy survived his brutal attack cope with the support of others.”

Milly was 13 when she was snatched by Bellfield on her way home from school in Walton-onthames, Surrey, in March 2002. Her badly decomposed body was found six months later 25 miles away in Yateley, Hampshire – and experts were unable to determine a cause of death.

Despite a £6m operation involving over 100 police officers, Bellfield only became a suspect two years later when he was arrested for the murder of French-born Amélie Delagrange, 22, in 2004. It was another seven years before he was convicted of Milly’s murder.

By then Bellfield was already serving a whole life sentence for murdering gap-year student Marsha Mcdonnell, 19, with a hammer blow to the head in