With just hours to go before the Ben Needham search was called off, South Yorkshire Police feared they would find no clue as to what happened to the missing toddler, the Mirror Online reported.
But then came the major breakthrough that linked the youngster to a secret fly-tipping site where digger driver Konstantinos “Dino” Barkas dumped his waste.
A little yellow car Ben was almost certainly playing with on the day he vanished in Kos was discovered among the dust and dirt.
Ben’s grandmother Christine told how she and his mum Kerry broke down when officers showed them the toy – after announcing it was “very likely” he had died under the tracks of Dino’s digger in an accident.
The 64-year-old said: “I was shaken by it and both me and Kerry cried. I just felt sick really. It was a shock.”
On the toy car find, she added: “I expected it to have no paint on but I was 90 per cent sure it was Ben’s.
“When I saw it I felt disbelief. It must have been dumped at that site by Dino. It didn’t walk there.
“Obviously it had not rusted because it had been hidden in dust and not in the wet.”
BELIEF BEN’S BODY WAS MOVED
The well-preserved yellow metal toy had a number 88 still on the roof and ‘benzine’ written on the bonnet.
It was found on Sunday at the fly-tipping site half a mile away from the farmhouse at Iraklis where Ben and his family were staying when he disappeared 25 years ago.
Police believe the 21-month-old’s body was moved after the accident and the find could support that fear.
BEN “HAPPILY” PLAYED WITH TOY CAR
The toy car will now be taken back to the UK for tests, announced SYP.
It was one of two Christine said she remembered buying in Kos town in the summer of 1991 and Ben had been playing with as they walked to the farmhouse the day he vanished.
She added: “It was the first time he’d not tried to climb out of the pushchair, so I was quite pleased. He sat happily in, they kept him really busy all the way up there.
“He had one in one hand and another in the other and he was banging them together to make a clanking noise.
“They were going ‘clank, clank’ but I thought it was quite good because it kept him occupied. I remember buying the two cars.
“We didn’t have much money so couldn’t afford much. He had a pull-along bus thing he used to sit on and these two cars.
“We were building up his toy collection because Kerry had just moved to Kos and she only bought a few bits and pieces with her.”
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