Ben Needham: Man who believes he is missing Sheffield toddler who disappeared in Greece asks SYP for DNA test
A man has reportedly come forward concerned he could be missing Sheffield toddler Ben Needham, who disappeared 34 years ago.
Ben was just 21 months old when he vanished on the Greek island of Kos in July 1991 while playing outside a farmhouse his grandparents were renovating.
To this day, his family says there is no proof Ben is dead and that "someone out there knows exactly where Ben is".
In the decades since his disappearance, mum Kerry Needham has never given up hope she will see her son again one day.
Now, the 53-year-old mum has revealed a potential new lead has emerged after a man came forward this month claiming he could be Ben.
Kerry told The Sun she was emailed last week by a woman convinced her boyfriend is Ben, reportedly writing there are “a lot of coincidences” and “a lot of things don’t add up.”
However, she told the national paper she did not “jump for joy” over the message, claiming she has not seen a picture of the man and has “very little information.”
In recent years, Ms Needham has reportedly begun investigating suggestions Ben was trafficked off the Greek island by a gang for an illegal adoption racket.
Her enquiries reportedly led her to meet an elderly man who was trafficked from Greece to New York as a baby.
The suggestion is that the unknown man who has now come forward could be Ben, who was trafficked off Kos and sold in an illegal adoption.
However, it is not the first time someone has come forward claiming to be the missing toddler.
In July 2024, a Danish man claimed his grandparents told him he was taken from Kos as a child, and remembers an incident as a boy where someone approached him from out of a crowd calling him “Ben.”
DNA later proved he was not the missing Sheffield tot.
Indeed, by July 2024, he was reportedly the third person that year to come forward claiming to be Ben.
Although The Sun and the Daily Mail both wrote the latest man claiming to be Ben is now set for a DNA test, South Yorkshire Police said it would investigate the claim first.
A spokesperson said: “We recently received a report of a woman who believes her partner to be missing person Ben Needham.
“Enquiries are ongoing into the report. Ben's family are aware of this report, and we will continue to keep them up to date with our enquiries.
“We will continue to support them in their endeavour to discover the truth of what happened on July 24, 1991.”
In 2016, a team of officers from South Yorkshire Police spent three weeks excavating land in Iraklis, Kos, over a tip off Ben was hit and killed by a digger.
In December 2025, Ben’s family created an official website collating information about his disappearance: https://findbenneedham.com/