Email clue to Milly 'boyfriend'

Information contained on missing schoolgirl Amanda Dowler's computer has thrown up a string of new leads in the hunt for the teenager, police said today.

Detectives are studying a list of emails to friends who the 13-year-old - known to her family and friends as Milly - talked to before she disappeared. Officers are probing the possibility she could have met a mystery boyfriend via an internet chatroom.

A police spokeswoman today confirmed that information from her computer is being looked at but refused to comment further. She said: "Milly was, like most youngsters her age, active in the computer world. There are a number of lines of inquiry, obtained from details contained on her computer, which are being examined. It is all part of trying to build up a comprehensive picture of Milly."

A message she left on the popular FriendsReunited website, which helps people get in touch with former school colleagues, is also being studied.

Her letters, mobile phone records and diaries are being examined to see if she had arranged to meet anybody on the day she vanished as she walked to her home in Walton-on-Thames, Surrey. Officers yesterday intensified their search of the area where she was last seen. Gardens and undergrowth on the route she would have taken home were being checked for anything that might have belonged to the schoolgirl, who disappeared on 21 March.

Last night the Dowler family were to have seen the West End musical My Fair Lady as a treat for Milly. Jonathan Pryce, who plays Professor Higgins at the Theatre Royal in Drury Lane, made an appeal for her safe return.