No evidence has been found to link the serial killer Levi Bellfield to any fresh crimes, say officers who have been reexamining files after claims he confessed to a series of unsolved rapes and murders.
The operation, which involved 10 police forces across the country and was being coordinated by the Metropolitan police, has been closed as a result.
“It has taken a considerable amount of time and police resources to conduct the investigation. All lines of enquiry have now been exhausted and the decision has been taken to close this investigation as there is no evidence to link the individual to any case for which he has not already been convicted,” Scotland Yard said in a statement released on Wednesday.
The investigation was launched after police received information in early 2015 that Bellfield had admitted various “serious crimes” while in his prison cell at Wakefield prison.
Police have informed the families of people thought to have been additional victims of Bellfield that the investigation will now be closed. Bellfield, who now calls himself Yusuf Rahim, murdered the teenagers Milly Dowler and Marsha McDonnell, and 22-year-old Amelie Delagrange. He has also been informed.
Though police have long believed he is linked to other crimes, officers were said to be treating his reported confessions with skepticism when they announced they were investigating in January this year.
Officers looking into claims that Bellfield had an accomplice arrested a man but released him with no further action soon afterwards.
Bellfield had long denied any involvement in the murder of Dowler, of which he was convicted in 2011, but finally confessed this year. Soon after, his solicitor wrote to Surrey police to say that claims he had, during an interview with officers, admitted abducting, raping and killing the schoolgirl were false. The force said it stood by its statement.
Dowler was the first of Bellfield’s known victims. The murder of 19-year-old Marsha McDonnell followed in 2003, before he then tried to kill 18-year-old Kate Sheedy in May the following year. She was injured but managed to survive the attack.
Three months after that, he attacked and killed the French student Amelie Delagrange.
