THE New Year’s Day murderer David Atkinson was stationed at an army barracks less than a mile from the woodland grave where the body of the schoolgirl Milly Dowler was discovered.

The 31-year-old soldier jumped to his death from a Glasgow hotel eight days ago after murdering Sally Geeson, 22, a week earlier. He had previously been convicted of abducting another young woman.

Last week Surrey police confirmed that they are investigating Atkinson’s background to see whether he can be accounted for at the time when Milly, 13, went missing.

She was last seen on March 21, 2002 walking to her home in Walton-on-Thames, Surrey, after catching a train from school. The remains of her body were found six months later.

Officers from Operation Ruby, investigating her murder, were working this weekend with the Ministry of Defence (MoD) to piece together a time line of Atkinson’s movements around the date of her disappearance.

Atkinson, a lance-corporal in the Royal Engineers, was stationed at barracks in Minley, Hampshire, before Milly vanished. Soldiers from the barracks train just 100 yards from where her skull and bones were found.

At the time of the discovery police checked the records of 876 staff at the barracks. They did not, however, look into the background of Atkinson, who had left five months earlier. He was stationed in Kent when Milly disappeared.

He would have been an obvious suspect as he had been convicted of falsely imprisoning a teenage Polish girl in 1997. A court martial had cleared him of further charges of indecent assault and kidnap.

Police have never revealed whether any DNA evidence from Milly’s killer was found. Surrey police said last week that Atkinson was being treated as a “person of interest” in the hunt for Milly’s killer.

A spokesman said: “Surrey police are in contact with the (senior investigating officer) of the Sally Geeson inquiry to see if we can establish a time line for (Atkinson’s) movements.

“They are also liaising with military police to find out his exact whereabouts at the time of Milly’s murder, and what he was doing on that day.”

Atkinson is reported to have left a suicide note admitting that he killed Geeson with his bare hands. He is thought to have picked her up in his Range Rover in the early hours of New Year’s Day after she became separated from friends in Cambridge.

Police in Britain and in Germany, where Atkinson was also stationed, are now re-examining “cold” cases after Geeson’s murder.

Officers in Strathclyde are reviewing all unsolved assaults, rapes and murders of women in both East Kilbride, where Atkinson grew up, and in nearby Glasgow. Their trawl will cover the period from 1987 until 1991, when Atkinson left Scotland to join the army.

Police are also reopening investigations into an earlier attack on a woman in Cambridge by a man who spoke with a Scottish accent. He told his victim that he was in the army and that his name was David.

The suspect drove a Range Rover identical to the one that police believe was used to abduct Geeson.

In Germany police have reopened the case of a prostitute who was murdered near the Rhineland town of Krefeld in April 1998, where Atkinson lived with his then wife Liane. Police say they have DNA evidence from the case and can share data with British officers.

The year before the Krefeld killing, Atkinson served eight months on remand in a military prison and was fined £1,000 after he abducted Katrin Schyroki, an 18-year-old Polish student.

Last week Schyroki revealed that Atkinson had forced her into his car, tore at her clothes as she struggled and fled only after a passer-by came to her aid. Both Atkinson’s former wife and his ex-girlfriend, Rebecca Chorley, 24, have also alleged that he assaulted them.

Last week the MoD launched an investigation into why military police failed to take a DNA sample from Atkinson in 1997, contrary to normal policy. Since 1995 British police forces, both civilian and military, have taken samples for a national database from people accused of serious crimes.

Although Atkinson’s DNA was found on Geeson’s body, police would have been unable to use it to link him to the murder because there was no sample of his DNA on the database to compare it with.

Atkinson became a suspect in the case only when he drew attention to himself by setting fire to a bed at his barracks, then going absent without leave.

The MoD has announced that it will review procedures in case “lessons can be learnt”. Among issues to be examined is whether civilian police forces should routinely be informed of soldiers’ convictions.

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