John McShane - Predator

T he day started normally for Milly Dowler and her family, a busy Thursday in the middle of a hectic school week. Milly made sure that her father Bob gave her a breakfast-time kiss. He had innocently neglected to kiss the 13-year-old, his youngest daughter, the previous day because he had left home early so he was happy to make amends. It was a bit of a family habit that I gave her a kiss in the morning, he said.

The Dowler family had two cars, a blue Peugeot 206 and a red VW Golf estate, and Bob Dowler planned to take the estate with him to a business meeting not far from their home in Walton- on-Thames in Surrey.

Normally, IT expert Bob would not return home until between 6.30pm and 7.00pm, but as the meeting was in nearby Basingstoke he said he would probably be back by about 4.00pm.He didnt leave until about 9.45am and, around 3.00-3.10pm, he returned to the comfortable, detached family house that had been their home for nine years, earlier than he originally planned. The Dowlers were having some work carried out on the house and it was the builders first day on the job but they had left by then.

In the normal course of events, such trivial timings would be inconsequential. Yet, by that evening and in the years to follow the hours and minutes of that terrible day, 21 March 2002, would be analysed, examined and argued over in the full glare of national and international spotlights. Exactly who was where and at what time was to become of pivotal importance. But all that was still in the future and, mercifully, none of the Dowler family could foresee the horrors that lay in store.

Bob and his wife Sally had met in October 1981 and married two and a half years later. In January 1986, their elder daughter Gemma was born, and on 25 June 1988 another daughter, Amanda, known to everyone as Milly, was born. Sally taught mathematics at Heathside School in Weybridge, where her two daughters were both pupils, and the normal routine was that their mother would drive them to school. Mother and daughters laughed as they listened to the Chris Tarrant show on the Peugeots radio as the DJ humorously tried to arrange a blind-date for one of his on-air team.

That morning, Milly had a drama lesson in which, dressed in a dark blue-black tracksuit, she played a restaurant owner. In the course of that lesson, she spoke to her friends of her excitement at being at a Pop Idol concert on the Tuesday night when she had seen her favourite artist, Gareth Gates, perform. Milly had cried with pleasure at seeing him. The home video of Milly the Monday night before the concert, laughing and smiling while she ironed her jeans, the first time she had ever ironed anything, was later to be seen by millions, released in the hope that it might help find her.

It had been a busy week for Milly. At the weekend, she had taken part in a fun run with her uncle, Brian Gilbertson, who had only come into her life a few months earlier. It had only recently been revealed that her grandmother had given birth to him when she was 16. The happy day had ended with Milly playing the saxophone at the party afterwards.

During that Thursday morning break, Milly ate three packets of crisps and a chocolate muffin. Her friend Danielle Sykes, who was in the same Year 9 form as Milly, said to her jokingly that she was a pig for eating such food. Lessons included drama and science in the afternoon.

Milly had some artwork to finish at school and, as her mother had a tutorial after normal school ended in the afternoon at 2.55pm and Gemma was off to do trampoline exercise, the family would then all leave for home together. But Milly came to see her mother and said that she had done her work at lunchtime and did not want to wait around for a lift. She gave her mother her gym kit and told her she would catch the train from Weybridge instead. The girls were given 2.50 a day for lunch and 80p a day for the train by their parents.

This was the first of many accidents of fate that day which were to place Milly in the presence of the man who was to take her life. How could she or her mother know, how could anyone know that a small change in a mundane routine would have such consequences? No one was to blame; no one was at fault.