Hacking of slain girl’s phone shocks U.K.

LONDON – Britain’s voracious tabloids may have hit a new low: The News of the World was facing claims Tuesday that it hacked into a missing 13-year-old’s phone messages, possibly hampering a police inquiry into her disappearance.

Milly Dowler was found murdered months later and the report that her messages were tampered with has horrified Britons. Major advertisers – including Ford UK – have pulled their ads from the paper.

Britons are used to seeing their tabloid press harass royals, sports stars and celebrities, constantly eavesdropping and paying even the most tangential sources for information about stars’ sex lives and drug problems.

But the latest hacking case was met with revulsion from everyone from British Prime Minister David Cameron to movie stars to people who commented on Twitter.

“(It is) shocking that someone could do this, knowing that the police were trying to find this person and trying to find out what had happened,” Cameron said Tuesday.

The case has refocused the spotlight on the already tainted News of The World, part of Rupert Murdoch’s global media empire at News Corp. It also comes as Murdoch is trying to engineer the politically sensitive, multibillion-pound takeover of broadcaster BSkyB in Britain.

Milly’s disappearance in 2002 while walking home from school in Surrey, south of London, transfixed Britain until her decomposing body was found six months later in the woods by mushroom pickers.

While police were pursuing all leads and Milly’s parents were making dramatic appeals for information, a private investigator working for the News of the World allegedly hacked into her cell phone, listened to her messages and even deleted some to make room for possible new ones.

Mark Lewis, a lawyer representing Milly’s parents, said Tuesday the suspected hacking may have hampered the police investigation and he plans to sue the tabloid for its interference.