Ben Needham's family launch appeal in Scandinavia to trace 'video footage' of toddler

Calendar
Ben Needham
Greece
Scandinavia
Wednesday 30 March 2016 at 11:25am

The family of Ben Needham has launched an appeal in Scandinavia to find what could be the only moving images of the toddler, who disappeared from Kos in July 1991.

Ben's grandmother Christine has appeared on Swedish TV to ask tourists who visited the island to search for the film, which was shot at a hotel where Ben's mum Kerry was working.

The footage was taken in June or July 1991 at the Palm Beach Hotel by a tourist Christine believes, from her accent, to be Scandinavian. She filmed Ben in the hotel pool because he was playing with a kitten and making other holidaymakers laugh with his antics.

The programme also showed an age-progressed image of what Ben could look like now

The hotel catered for mainly English and Scandinavian guests, which is why the appeal has gone out for information in Sweden, Norway and Denmark.

This morning, using an ITV Calendar interview specially recorded for the show, the Swedish Channel TV4 featured the appeal in a bid to jog people's memories to see if they could find the footage.

The programme segment, in the breakfast TV show, is hosted by Hasse Aro and called "Krimkvarten", which translates to "Fifteen Minutes of Crime".

The family tried to make an appeal for the footage a number of years ago, but made no headway. With the help of ITV Calendar the appeal has now gone out on Swedish TV and Norwegian and Danish Press websites.

Ben's mum Kerry said finding the footage would be "amazing" but would also be difficult to watch.

Ben was being mischievous and running around the pool area, all eyes on him, trying to put a kitten in the pool and we kept trying to stop him. He was adamant he was going to put this cat in for a swim and because of how funny it was at the time, everyone took notice. I remember a lady filming him and I think she was Scandinavian by the accent but we've got no knowledge of how long she'd been there, what day it was, what week it was. It was obviously before he disappeared, so it could be vital. We just presume she was Scandinavian, she wasn't English and the Palm Beach took Scandinavian guests and British guests so we eliminated the English as she wasn't English. She had a video camera and was taking a video of Ben and his antics, so if we could trace this lady, or anyone who remembers that time, or maybe someone in her party remembers it, it will be really vital for us to get that footage.

The South Yorkshire Police team investigating Ben's disappearance was recently given a funding extension to allow officers to look into leads and information.

You can watch a full video report below: