Rebekah Brooks ‘knew about hacking of Milly Dowler's phone’
FORMER News International boss Rebekah Brooks interrupted a holiday with EastEnders star Ross Kemp to “make a phone call” about missing schoolgirl Milly Dowler, the phone hacking trial was told yesterday.
The Old Bailey heard that her then fiance jokingly told her off when she left him in a Dubai bar to make her business call.
Prosecutors claim that the contact between the then editor of the News of the World and her journalists is evidence she knew they had hacked into murdered 13-year-old Milly’s mobile.
It is alleged Brooks kept in touch with the office when, as chief of the now-defunct Sunday tabloid, she took her break with Kemp in April 2002.
William Hennessy, in Dubai at the same time and who knew the couple through a friend, told the trial she spent up to 60 per cent of her time on the phone.
He said Kemp, who Brooks married two months later but has since divorced, jokingly ticked her off for working during their break.
Mr Hennessy, a distribution and marketing director for Hertz, said: “He [Ross] said, ‘You are always working’. He remonstrated that she was on holiday. I think it was very light-hearted.
“She said it was something to do with the missing Surrey schoolgirl and it was important.”
The jury heard that Stuart Kuttner, the News of the World’s managing editor, admitted to Surrey Police they had hacked into Milly’s phone.
The executive called officers on April 13, 2002 – when Brooks was in Dubai – to tell them of a message left in error by a recruitment agency. He revealed reporters at the paper had listened to her messages.
Kuttner was told the voicemail was thought to have been left by a professional hoaxer and the paper ran a story about it the next day. The article read: “The hunt for missing Milly Dowler took a new twist last night when it emerged that messages have been sent to her mobile phone after she vanished.”
In the first edition on Page 9, it quoted a voicemail message: “Hello, Mandy. We are ringing because we have some interviews starting. Can you call me back?”
But in the second edition, sent to press at 9.30pm, the story had been relegated to Page 30 and only alluded to voicemail messages without including a quote.
Mark Bryant-Heron, prosecuting, told the jury Brooks had called the News of the World after the first edition and followed it at 7.56pm with a text to her deputy Andy Coulson, with whom she was allegedly having affair.
Brooks, 45, of Churchill, Oxon, Coulson, 45, of Charing, Kent, and Kuttner, 73, of Woodford Green, Essex, deny conspiracy to intercept communications. Five other defendants have pleaded not guilty to similar charges.
The trial continues.