Levi Bellfield, the convicted serial killer, has prompted calls from Elizabeth Chau's family for police to excavate a site where he claims to have buried the 19-year-old computer studies student. Bellfield, convicted of three murders and one attempted murder, is believed by detectives who investigated him 22 years ago to have committed more crimes, including a number of hammer attacks on girls and young women.
History of Violence and Grooming
Bellfield was part of a grooming gang that drugged, raped and filmed girls at a council flat dubbed the "raping room" by fellow paedophiles. Elizabeth Chau went missing in April 1999, and her remains have never been found.
When first reported on Bellfield's crimes in August 2004, he was still working as a wheel clamper and prowling the streets of west London. The initial report covered the hammer murder of Amelie Delagrange, a 22-year-old French student bludgeoned to death as she walked home across a cricket pitch in Twickenham.
Link to Marsha McDonnell Murder
Detectives linked Delagrange's murder to the hammer killing of 19-year-old student Marsha McDonnell, who bore a striking resemblance to Delagrange and was beaten to death in Hampton in February the year before. Bellfield was arrested three months later and jailed for life in 2008 for both murders and the attempted murder of Kate Sheedy, 18, in 2004.
In May 2011, Bellfield was seen in person for the first time during his Old Bailey trial for the murder of schoolgirl Milly Dowler, who was abducted and killed hours after vanishing while walking home from a train station in Walton-on-Thames in March 2002.
Manipulation from Behind Bars
During the trial, Bellfield refused to give evidence but instructed his barrister to claim he had nothing to do with the murder and that Milly had run away from home. He tried to blame her bereaved parents, causing her mother Sally to collapse and shake with emotion in the witness box.
After Bellfield was convicted of Milly's murder, her sister Gemma said: "It was the worst day of my life. It's hard to believe, but it was worse than when I heard the news that Milly's remains had been found. It can only be described as mental torture. Have they not suffered enough?"
The concern over Bellfield's latest claims is that he is again trying to manipulate a grieving family by making false assertions from behind bars.
