A NORTH Wales mother and daughter who have been charged with snatching £27,000 from the family of the missing toddler Ben Needham should also be tried for perverting the course of justice, a judge has ruled.

The cash was being held in the house of Ben's grandparents.

Joan Jarvis, 48, and her daughter Alison Jarvis, 22, of Wrexham, have been charged with burglary at the home of Ben's grandparents Eddie and Christine Needham at Market Rasen in Lincolnshire on Thursday May 29 this year.

Alison had previously had a relationship with one of Ben's uncles. The two women are due to appear before Lincoln Crown Court on August 21. Both live at Cunningham Avenue in Wrexham and appeared at a preliminary hearing at Mold Crown Court charged with perverting the course of justice.

The charge alleges that at Field View in Wrexham on June 5 they tried to get a woman at Wrexham to provide Alison Jarvis with a false alibi to say she had seen her in Wrexham on the day of the crime and could not have committed the burglary in Lincolnshire.

Judge Huw Daniel agreed to bail them on condition they live at their home, they must report to police and Alison Jarvis, who was due to fly out for a new job in Benidorm, was told to surrender her passport and not to apply for any new travel documents. Judge Daniel directed both charges should be tied up together in one trial.

The complainants in the burglary are the grandparents of Ben Needham who disappeared 12 years ago in Greece and has never been found.

Cash was kept in the house to fund frequent flights the family still made if any new information arose about the missing child.

* Ben Needham went missing on the island of Kos in 1991. He was twoyears-old when he vanished from outside his grandparents' farmhouse.

Police believed at the time that Ben may have been kidnapped and sold to a childless couple. Since his disappearance, there have been more than 200 reported sightings checked out by police and the Needham family.