Mum waiting for DNA results after man claims he’s her son who went missing in 1991

It's the third time this year that an individual has claimed to be the woman's missing son.

51-year-old Kerry Needham from Sheffield has spent the last 33 years desperately searching for her son Ben who went missing on the Greek island of Kos in 1991 when he was just 21-month's-old.

On 24 July 1991, Ben Needham vanished from his maternal grandparent's holiday home in the village of Iraklis, near Kos town.

On the day of his disappearance, Ben had been left in the care of his grandparents, Eddie and Christine Needham, while his mother went to work at a local hotel. Ben had been coming in and out of a farmhouse the family were renovating when, at approximately 2:30pm, the adults realised he had disappeared.

The family first searched the area for Ben, assuming he had wandered off, or that the boy's teenage uncle, Stephen, had taken him out on his moped. When no trace of the boy was found, the police were notified.

Authorities initially questioned the Needhams, viewing them as suspects, which delayed notification of airports and docks.

Over the following 11 days, searches of the area were carried out by Hellenic Police, Hellenic Army and fire brigade personnel.

Nikolaos Dakouras, the island's chief of police, told the media at the time: "We now believe we have searched every possible part of that area, and the boy is not there. It leaves us with a great mystery. We have no theories. We have no solutions."

Following a request from UK Prime Minister John Major, the Hellenic Army undertook further searches of the island in January 1993.

There have been countless alleged sightings of the missing child in the years since, but nothing has ever come to fruition.

In October 2012, South Yorkshire Police began to follow a line of inquiry which suggested that Ben had been accidentally killed and buried in a mound of rubble by an excavator driver working in a field adjoining the house where he was last seen.

Extensive excavation of the rubble was undertaken by British and Greek Police. One item of particular interest to the police was a Dinky toy car, which they hoped to recover and believed could be "key to discovering his fate." The search failed to detect any human remains or items belonging to Ben.

In September 2016, the police returned to Kos to carry out further excavations.

Although no remains were found, a yellow Dinky car, believed to have been Ben's, was recovered.

Detective Inspector Jon Cousins, heading the inquiry, said: "It is my professional belief that Ben Needham died as a result of an accident near to the farmhouse in Iraklis where he was last seen playing. The recovery of this item, and its location, further adds to my belief that material was removed from the farmhouse on or shortly after the day that Ben disappeared."

In November 2018, British police said that blood found on the aforementioned toy car was not Ben's.

Kerry Needham has made numerous public appeals over the years for information on her son's whereabouts.

Now, over three decades on and approaching the 33rd anniversary of 21-month-old Ben’s disappearance, Kerry is eagerly awaiting the DNA results of a Danish man who believes that he could be the missing boy.

According to The Mirror, the man claims that his grandparents told him that he had been taken from Kos when he was a child, and adds that his own parents have refused to deny these claims.

He also reported that he was hidden for years and recalls a memory from 25 years ago of going to a market and someone shouting “Ben” at him. He claims he was then kept in a caravan for a period of time.

Speaking about the claims, Kerry said: "This man is looking for his real family and he has given Danish police a sample of his DNA, which South Yorkshire Police are trying to get hold of via Interpol to do a comparison with Ben’s.

"In 33 years we’ve had hundreds of alleged sightings, the majority of them we have followed up ourselves in the earlier years," she added. "We’ve had DNA taken from people in Greece, Turkey, Germany and one in Florida and Australia.

"But at least South Yorkshire Police are trying to get me answers and I can’t praise them enough."

The stranger’s DNA samples will be compared with a blood sample taken from when Ben was born at Boston Hospital in Lincolnshire, for the routine Guthrie heel-prick test.

Kerry also expressed her condolences to the family of Jay Slater, the missing teen from Lancashire whose remains were found in Tenerife last week.

Kerry told how her “heart is completely with them”, and added: “All I can say to give them a little comfort is that it’s better to know because living year by year, not knowing is torture. I feel their pain.”