LONDON, Jan. 23 (UPI) -- News of the World reporters lied to police after hacking the mobile phone of Milly Dowler, a 13-year-old who disappeared in 2002, Surrey, England, police said.
The Surrey police report, released Monday, said journalists who hacked Dowler's phone deliberately misconstrued evidence, interfering in the case, The Guardian reported.
Reporters from the now-defunct News of the World allegedly got the pin number to Dowler's voice mail from one of the schoolgirl's friends, then released transcripts from a message from an employment recruitment agency that contacted the girl by mistake, the police report said.
Police discovered the message from the recruitment agency was "a pure coincidence ... of no evidential value," but News of the World reporters hounded both the police and the recruitment agency for more information, The Guardian said.
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One reporter said, "What the Surrey police press officer was telling him was not true and was inconceivable ... the NoW was moving its investigation to the north of England, that Milly had been there in person and that she had applied for a job in a factory." The reporter whose name has been withheld, said that the NoW "know this 110 percent -- we are absolutely certain."
Dowler, who disappeared on March 21, 2002, was later found killed.
Conservative Member of Parliament John Whittingdale, said it "appears as if they may have actually interfered or impeded the police in their investigations."
Conservative MP Damian Collins said: "Of all of the documents and evidence that have been produced by our phone-hacking inquiry, this is the most sickening and exposes the black hearts of those involved in perpetrating and covering up this scandal."
