BEN Needham’s mother is facing a brutal wait to learn if DNA results will confirm whether a Danish man is her son.
Mum Kerry Needham, 51, also shared her pain with Jay Slater‘s grieving family after the teen’s body was found on Monday.
Ben was just 21 months old when he disappeared from the Greek island of Kos on July 24, 1991, and was last seen playing outside a crumbling farmhouse.
His parents have desperately searched the globe looking for their boy for the past 33 years.
But a man from Denmark has now claimed that his grandparents told him he was abducted off Kos, and that his parents refused to reject the allegations.
He is now the third person claiming to be the missing toddler.
The stranger recalled an incident 25 years ago when someone shouted “Ben” at him in a market before he was kept in a caravan.
Kerry said she won’t be getting her hopes up yet again as she’s been in a similar situation many times, only to be disappointed.
The distraught mum from Sheffield told the Mirror: “This man is looking for his real family and he has given Danish police a sample of his DNA […]
“In 33 years we’ve had hundreds of alleged sightings, the majority of them we have followed up ourselves in the earlier years.”
The man’s DNA will be matched to a blood sample collected when Ben was born at Boston Hospital in Lincolnshire, as part of the usual Guthrie heel-prick test.
Cops had presented a theory that Ben may have died in a digger accident, after a witness came forward.
But blood discovered at the scene in 2016 was found not to belong to the toddler, and the witness is refusing to talk to the police again.
Kerry told the Mirror: “You can’t end an investigation with nothing to go on and a man’s claim who now won’t talk.
“I can’t believe it’s been 33 years and in October he will be 35 […].”
The mother added she feels the pain of Jay Slater’s distraught family, saying her “heart is completely with them”, the Mirror reports.
“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,” she said.
Kerry also warned heartless trolls of the damage they are causing, saying: “People have been so cruel. You have no idea of the heartbreak and pain it causes. The trolling has to stop.”
Kerry previously alerted cops to an Interpol appeal to identify a child’s body discovered in the River Danube in Grossmehring in Bavaria, Germany.
Interpol shared a sketch of a toddler found in the water on May 19, 2022. The child was estimated to be around five or six-years-old.
But cops have since confirmed the young boy was not Ben.
The mum also said that six sickening words from a prisoner could hold the key to the mystery surrounding Ben’s disappearance.
She urged police to re-investigate an inmate who suggested her toddler was a child trafficking victim.
Kerry’s parents Eddie and Christine Needham, had appeared on a Greek version of the family-reuniting TV show Surprise Surprise in 1996, five years after Ben’s disappearance.
That’s when a prisoner named Andonis Bedzios phoned in and dramatically told the couple: “I have Ben in my hands.”
He claimed to be calling from Larissa prison in Greece.
Kerry also revealed she didn’t believe the police theory after a picture showing how Ben would look aged 31 was released on July 23, 2021.
In September 2018, forensic experts in Oxford told Kerry they had discovered a poor DNA profile from decomposed blood inside a car near to where Ben went missing.
But after giving a DNA sample, she was met with frustration once more as there was no positive match.
Kerry said at the time: “If that blood is not Ben’s – then who does it belong to? It’s devastating.
“We had built ourselves up thinking it would be a positive result and would prove Ben had died.
“It would have given us closure and we would have been able to start the grieving process.
“When it came back negative it was a shock. I don’t know what to think now. Is Ben dead or is he still alive?”
She added: “I’m angry and I can’t stop shaking my head.
“Some people on Kos have been lying for 27 years and we’ve suffered years of torture, slow torture.”
