On 21 March 2002, Amanda Jane "Milly" Dowler, a 13-year-old English schoolgirl, was reported missing by her parents after failing to return home from school and not being seen since walking along Station Avenue in Walton-on-Thames, Surrey, that afternoon.

The case generated debate over the treatment of victims and witnesses in court after Dowler's family criticised the way they were cross-examined during Bellfield's trial.

[11] A plea was also made by Pop Idol winner Will Young, whose concert Dowler had attended shortly before her disappearance.

[12] The Independent reported in 2011 that Dowler had, some time previously, written a mock leaving-home letter and notes showing she had been unhappy.

They reasoned that while she was unlikely to have gone off with someone she did not know of her own free will, no-one had come forward who had witnessed a struggle despite a number of apparent sightings of her prior to her disappearance.

[15] In June 2002, despite further searches, the offer of a £100,000 reward by national tabloid newspaper The Sun[16] and her parents continuing to send text messages to her mobile telephone in hope of a reply,[17] Dowler remained missing.

[13][24] On 23 March 2003, DNA of an unidentified male was discovered on an item of Dowler's clothing in her bedroom, suggesting that her killer may have met her before.

Hughes sent the letters while imprisoned for indecently assaulting a 12-year-old girl; the prison service apologised for not screening mail effectively.

Newman was jailed in April 2003 for five months after pleading guilty to five counts of making phone calls to cause annoyance, inconvenience, or needless anxiety.

Farr was sectioned indefinitely under the Mental Health Act on 19 October 2006 for being a serious psychological danger to the public after admitting a charge of harassment.

[29] In October 2009, Bedfont Lakes Country Park in West London was searched by police in the hope of finding the red Daewoo Nexia, but they recovered neither the car nor anything else of interest to their inquiry.

[34] Bellfield's trial began on 10 May 2011 at the Central Criminal Court before Mr Justice Wilkie[4] and concluded on 23 June 2011; the jury found him guilty.

[37] The trial of Bellfield on another charge for the attempted abduction of Rachel Cowles, an 11-year-old girl known to have been offered a lift in the Walton area by a man in a red car on 20 March 2002, was abandoned due to newspapers publishing prejudicial material.

The programme explored how Bellfield was caught, and featured a reconstruction of how the crime was believed to have unfolded based on court transcripts.

[43]Chief Constable Mark Rowley, who oversaw the investigation, joined the Director of Public Prosecutions in calling for changes and for greater protection of victims and witnesses during court cases.

[44] Rowley said it was a "most bizarre and distressing coincidence" that the Dowler family had their privacy "destroyed", at a time when footballers and celebrities were being granted super-injunctions to protect details of their personal lives.

Clarke said that, while Bellfield had been convicted of previous murders, he had to be presumed innocent in the Dowler case and found guilty by a jury in a full court process.

[46] The Guardian reported on 4 July 2011 that Scotland Yard had discovered Dowler's voicemail had been accessed by journalists working for the News of the World and the newspaper's private investigator Glenn Mulcaire.

[47] The Guardian also reported that, during the police investigation into that newspaper's phone hacking activities, detectives discovered that journalists had deleted some messages—potential evidence—in Dowler's voicemail box because it was full, in order to free up space for new messages, to which they could listen.

[55] Milly's Fund commissioned a five-part soap opera titled Watch Over Me (2003), which encourages personal safety for teenagers,[56] to be distributed to every school in the UK.