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MADELEINE MCCANN
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'Allegations Cannot Go Unchallenged'
Saturday
September 01, 2007
A furious Gerry McCann has explained exactly why he and his wife Kate are suing
a Portuguese newspaper over "lurid allegations" about their missing daughter
Madeleine.
The Tal & Qual newspaper published a front-page headline suggesting that
Portuguese police think the McCanns killed the four-year-old.
The couple have now instructed their lawyers to take action against the
newspaper for defamation over the story it printed on August 24.
Explaining their decision, Mr McCann said: "As well as damaging our personal and
professional reputations, such allegations smear the investigation, the campaign
to find Madeleine and cause great offence and anxiety to all our family.
"This is why, after careful consideration, we have issued a writ against the
newspaper for defamation.
"Our focus has, and always will be, on doing our best to help find Madeleine.
"This lurid allegation is so serious and wide of the mark that we feel it cannot
go unchallenged."
They couple have always said they would not jeopardise the investigation by
talking too much about it in public.
But Mr McCann admitted they found it difficult to keep quiet in the face of
slurs about their behaviour on the night Madeleine disappeared.
The McCanns were so angry at the Tal & Qual story they felt they had no choice
but to take legal action.
"We firmly believe that the report was speculative, defamatory and published
despite official statements to the contrary," Madeleine's father wrote on his
blog.
He confirmed the legal expenses for the case will not be paid for out of the
Madeleine fund.
news.sky.com/skynews/arti...99,00.html
Madeleine:
Top cop inisists McCanns are 'victims not suspects'
By SAM
GREENHILL
1st September 2007
One of the detectives leading the inquiry into Madeleine McCann's disappearance
has told reporters her parents are not suspects.
Chief Inspector Olegario Sousa confirmed today that Gerry and Kate McCann are
not under suspicion for their daughter's vanishing on 3 May and described them
as "victims".
"The McCanns are not suspects. They are victims and witnesses," he said.
"I don't know where the newspaper got this information from but it is not true.
His statement comes as the McCanns prepare for a courtroom showdown with a
newspaper that called them child killers.
Kate and Gerry McCann vowed to take the witness stand against journalists who
accused them of giving their daughter a fatal drugs overdose.
They began libel proceedings yesterday, one week after Portuguese tabloid Tal &
Qual ran the front page headline "Police believe that the parents killed
Maddie".
It claimed detectives working on the case believe Madeleine died when her
parents accidentally gave her too many sedatives to help her sleep while they
went out to a nearby tapas restaurant with friends in Praia da Luz.
Mr and Mrs McCann, both doctors, have consistently denied giving their children
any sedatives, and now they have decided to fight back against the wild
allegations that appear daily in the Portuguese press.
Mr McCann said: "Kate and I have been deeply hurt by the report in Tal & Qual.
"The paper claimed we killed our lovely daughter Madeleine. This is without
evidence or truth.
"The past 120 days have been horrific for us, our family and friends.
"We have tried to ignore some of the more ludicrous speculation but we simply
could not ignore T&Q's report.
"We firmly believe that these sorts of unfounded reports distract people from
the only thing that matters - finding Madeleine.
"The police have said time and time again we are not suspects. These are the
facts."
The McCanns are being represented for free by a lawyer in Lisbon, Carlos Pinto
de Abreu, and will not dip into the Madeleine Fund to pay for the case.
Mr Pinto de Abreu has filed a seven-page claim against Tal & Qual's director,
Emidio Fernando, and reporter Catarina Vaz Guerreiro.
A friend of the McCanns said: "They will take it all the way if necessary and
take the witness stand to defend their reputations.
"They are not doing this for money, this is a criminal action. They want their
good name cleared."
Tal & Qual - which translates as "The way it is" - said Portuguese detectives
"are almost absolutely certain that Madeleine was killed by accident by her
parents".
The newspaper attributed its scoop to an anonymous source close to the
investigation, and speculated about the sort of jail sentences someone might get
for homicide by negligence and hiding a body.
Tal & Qual has stood by its story, with Miss Vaz Guerreiro saying: "I can't
reveal my source but I have complete trust in them."
Mainstream Portuguese journalists, however, regard Tal & Qual as a
sensationalist publication not known for having good police sources.
www.dailymail.co.uk/pages...6&ito=1490
After four months Madeleine's mother
says 'My world has fallen apart'
By
SAM GREENHILL
Last updated at 00:14am on 3rd September 2007
As she prepared for another heartbreaking milestone, Madeleine McCann's mother
has told how her world 'fell apart'.
It has been four months since Madeleine vanished from her bed in a holiday
apartment in Praia da Luz on the
Kate McCann said she could scarcely believe so long had passed since she last
heard her "beautiful" daughter's giggle.
Yesterday she and Gerry attended mass at the tiny whitewashed church in Praia
da Luz and was comforted by regulars in the congregation.
Mrs McCann said earlier: "It is four months since Gerry and I have heard
our daughter laugh, seen her smile, read her a story, given her a cuddle.
"Four months of not knowing what our beautiful daughter has had to endure.
Four months since that cold night when our world fell apart."
The 39-year-old GP vowed to continue searching for Madeleine, even though the
McCanns are preparing to wind down their daily campaign in the
She said: "We believe Madeleine was taken alive from her bed. We don't
know who took her, why she was taken or where she is.
"As parents, we cannot give up on our daughter until we know what has
happened. We have to keep doing everything we can to find her. As parents, we
still believe she is alive.
"Each day Gerry and I get up and say, Today could be the day Madeleine
comes home. We have to keep hoping.
"We will leave no stone unturned to find our lovely little girl."
The McCanns are campaigning for political action after learning that great
swathes of
They want an EU-wide register of sex offenders and greater sharing of information
about those banned from working with children.
Mrs McCann said: "Over these past terrible months, Gerry and I have learnt
much about missing and abducted children. We have been shocked to learn the
truth. Sex offenders can roam around with no checks."
Kate and Gerry have remained in the
But with the police investigation floundering, and the McCanns themselves
suffering increasingly hostile sniping from Portuguese media, they are
preparing to go home after the lease on their rented villa expires mid-month.
The community in Rothley is preparing to welcome them, and four local church
groups met at the weekend to contribute prayers to the little girl's safe
return.
Consultant cardiologist Mr McCann, also 39, said: "We would like to thank
everyone who is praying for Madeleine and all those who have sent us messages
of support - you do help to maintain our strength and focus."
Churchgoers in Praia da Luz have created a ball of green wool symbolising hope
for Madeleine, which has given her parents strength.
They used the wool to form a chain of support shortly after Maddie was
snatched, and it still helps Kate and Gerry believe they will be reunited with
the missing four-year-old.
Her great aunt Janet Kennedy, addressing a special prayer service in Rothley on
Saturday, said: "Although Kate and Gerry have lost Madeleine, they have
gained a great deal - people's love and support, messages of hope, gifts for
the children.
"It is a very, very hard journey for them but people are accompanying them
all the way. I am astounded by their strength and perseverance."
The retired teacher told how the parish priest in Praia da Luz "has a ball
of green wool which he passed around the church and everyone became part of
that chain".
www.dailymail.co.uk/pages...6&ito=1490
McCanns call
for Europe sex offender register
By
Caroline Gammell in Praia da Luz
Last Updated: 1:22am BST 03/09/2007
Madeleine McCann's mother has called for a European sex offenders' register as
she insisted she would never give up hope that her daughter was still alive.
Paying tribute to her eldest child - who disappeared four "terrible"
months ago today - Kate McCann revealed how much she missed the four-year-old.
She urged governments to work together to stop sexual predators targeting children
and hiding in "safe havens" across
Reflecting on life without Madeleine, 39-year-old Mrs McCann said: "It is
four months since Gerry and I have heard our daughter laugh, seen her smile,
read her a story, given her a cuddle.
"Four months of not knowing what our beautiful daughter has had to endure
and four months since that cold night when our world fell apart.
"I know many people think our daughter can't be alive. But nothing has
changed our thoughts.
"As parents we cannot give up on our daughter until we know what has
happened. We have to keep doing everything we can to find her.
"Each day Gerry and I get up and say: 'Today could be the day Madeleine
comes home'. We have to keep hoping."
During their search for Madeleine, Mrs McCann said the couple had learnt a
great deal about child abduction.
"We have been shocked to learn the truth," she wrote in a Sunday
newspaper. "Parts of
"If a sex offenders' register helps prevent the abuse of children and the
anguish it causes families, then it will have been worth it."
The McCanns have stayed in the
But as the months pass without any significant developments, the couple concede
that they will have to go home eventually.
The lease on their rented villa runs out in mid-September and they are expected
to come back to the
Throughout their ordeal, the McCanns have relied heavily on their Catholic
faith. Yesterday they attended Sunday mass in Praia da Luz as usual.
In
The wool was presented by Father José Manuel Pacheco and unravelled among the
congregation at the local church as a symbol of solidarity.
Mr McCann recalled afterwards: "We sang a song, and we just kept singing
the same verse, 'Nothing will separate us', over and over again and the church
was completely overflowing.
"The wool finally got all the way round and the message was 'nothing will
separate us and we are all united'."
This weekend, dozens of well-wishers in the couple's home
Mrs Kennedy told the congregation: "Although Kate and Gerry have lost
Madeleine, they have gained a great deal - people's love and support, messages
of hope, gifts for the children.
"It is a very, very hard journey for them but people are accompanying them
all the way."
"I am astounded by their strength and perseverance."
She said the couple had relied on three Portuguese words to get them through -
"esperança" meaning hope, "fe" meaning faith and
"coragem" - courage.
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/...ddy103.xml
From The Times
September 4, 2007
Madeleine: one fact,
many lies, endless grief
It’s now 124 days since Madeleine McCann disappeared. Our correspondent
charts a story that became global, lurid and often invented – and hears how the
McCanns learnt to think positively after imagining the darkest scenarios and
suffering uncontrollable grief
Penny Wark
This is the story that has preoccupied at least two nations and elicited
sympathy around the world. It is now 124 days old and has been told thousands
of times in millions of words. Yet the story has only one fact: on the evening
of May 3, a three-year-old child, Madeleine McCann, disappeared from the
bedroom where she slept. We may think we know more than that, but we don’t, and
no matter how often the story is repeated and the sole fact is spun, all we are
reading is speculation. Or slurs and lies. There have been plenty of those,
too, because when the media run out of facts and speculation, their more
unscrupulous exponents resort to invention.
It’s not pretty. A story that was always tragic and has yet to have any kind of
resolution, let alone a happy ending, is being treated with the abandon more
normally meted out to soap opera characters or to those who elect to engage with
the manufactured world of reality TV. The difference is that Madeleine is
neither fictional nor a wannabe star, and neither are her parents, Gerry and
Kate, who, you will note, don’t need a surname any more. We know them that
well, or we think we do. Note, too, that referring to them as Gerry and Kate
breaks the convention of referring to them as Kate and Gerry: when feeding the
masses a tale of heartbreak the distraught mother is a more emotive presence
than an anguished father.
There is no doubt that Madeleine’s disappearance – and what has happened since
– raises important questions about how we can best protect our children from
those who wish them harm, about the obligations of the media, and about our
responses to the pain of people we don’t know. During the past three weeks I’ve
examined these questions in Praia da Luz, the sunny whitewashed family idyll on
the
As everyone is acutely aware, the reason we know so little about Madeleine’s
disappearance is because she was abducted in
Neil Thompson has 30 years of police experience, latterly as a detective
superintendent in charge of operations for the
“The first two to three hours are vital. The first officer at the scene secures
it and calls in detectives. A good officer has a nose for these things, and you
have a process that tells you when a child has not wandered off. You set up
road blocks, you check ports, you check intelligence – has anyone tried to
snatch a child in the area? Can anyone describe a car? All that is fed into an
incident room and analysed and the senior information officer decides what to
release to the public. In the
We don’t know exactly when Madeline was reported missing, and I am told that
none of the published timelines relating to May 3 are accurate. I have also
learned that the Portuguese response system is slow and unwieldy. The McCanns’
call to the police was received in Portimao, a 30-minute drive away, and the
practice is for a local officer to attend the scene to assess whether a crime
has been committed and whether to call for help. Police officers drove to
“You’re only as good as your expertise,” Thompson says. “If you’re in a country
that hasn’t got a lot of serious crime and the training hasn’t gone into major
investigations, you make mistakes and lose evidence.” Abductions are rare but
not random, he adds. “Most child abductions are planned; it’s not a burglar who
finds a child and takes it. Paedophiles go to places where there are children,
such as Disney World. Whatever this abductor’s motive, he has been in the
vicinity, he knows that there are children in this complex and that when people
are on holiday they’re relaxed, and don’t think about risk. He will know the
area and will have planned what he is going to do with the child. If he’s going
to keep the child in a secure room, he will have been careful not to alert
shopkeepers by buying food he wouldn’t normally buy. If a child is going to be
sold for exploitation, in this case the unprecedented scale of the publicity
has given the abductor a problem because he has an item that is readily
identifiable all over the world and can’t be passed on.”
Those who specialise in tracing missing children acknowledge that publicity can
unnerve a perpetrator, but insist that it is key and does save lives. “We know
the public helps us to find missing children and it’s up to law enforcement
officers on each case to make the call as to what they tell the public,” says
Nancy McBride, the national safety director at the US National Center for
Missing and Exploited Children, which has recovered 110,276 (just over 86 per
cent) of the 127,737 children reported missing to it since 1984. “There’s
always a risk, but it’s worth it. We never give up, we never close a case until
we know what’s happened to a child.”
In seeking publicity, the McCanns had the clear objective of finding their
daughter. What they did not envisage was that interest would spread, as Gerry
puts it, like a forest fire, and that 150 journalists would suddenly descend on
Praia da Luz, excited by the prospect of a story of a pretty child with
attractive parents who are also middle class and intelligent – and far away
from the stereotypical image of an inadequate single mother who might
carelessly mislay a child and who certainly couldn’t afford to visit this
aspirational resort. Add to that the parents’ status as doctors, people who
save lives, yet who leave their children, Madeleine and her two-year-old twin
siblings, without adult supervision in an apartment while they eat at a tapas
bar a 52-second walk away, and the chattering classes are simultaneously full
of sympathy and hooked.
When you first see
But these are observations made with the benefit of bitter hindsight. Before
Madeleine became a household name, no one thought like that on holiday,
especially in an English-speaking resort so sedate that it doesn’t even have
facilities for teenagers. In late April the weather is pleasant, the beach is a
five-minute walk away and you’re there to relax and have fun. “It’s a quiet,
safe resort,” says Gerry when we meet in a borrowed flat. “The distance from
the apartment to the restaurant was 50 yards. We dined in the open-air bit and
you can actually see the veranda of the apartment. It’s difficult because if
you are [at home] cutting grass in the back with the mower, and that takes me
about half an hour, and the children are upstairs in a bedroom, you’d never bat
an eyelid. That’s similar to how we felt. We’ve been unfortunately proved
wrong, out of the blue. It’s shattered everything.”
“Everyone I know who had been to
This is the first time that the McCanns have confirmed that the apartment was
broken into. This information does not compromise Madeleine’s safety, and rules
out one of the numerous red herring theories that the police have explored,
that Madeleine wandered away on her own. There is no logic in withholding it
from the public.
“I have no doubt in my mind that she was taken by somebody from the room,” says
Kate. “We don’t know if it was one person, two, or if it was a group of people,
but I know she was taken.”
“There’s still hope because we don’t know who’s taken her, we don’t know where
they’ve taken her and we certainly don’t know where she is,” says Gerry. “The
first time I spoke to Ernie Allen, the chief executive of the National Centre
for Missing and Exploited Children in the States, he said what I wanted to
hear, and they’ve got enough experience of getting children back after long
periods of time still to remain hopeful, and their own experience is that the
younger the child, the less likelihood of serious harm. Don’t get me wrong,
we’re not blinkered. The scenario that everyone thinks about is that a
paedophile took her to abuse her and if that is the situation then
statistically the chances are they would kill her. But we don’t know that and
that’s the difficulty we’re dealing with. There are a range of scenarios and we
want every single avenue explored because they’re all pretty rare. That doesn’t
mean they should be represented in front page headlines as if all of them are
likely, because they’re not.”
Does the Portuguese insistence that no information can be given about the
investigation have any advantages? “For us, not having any information is very
difficult,” Kate replies. “For us as parents it’s beneficial having
information. We know that from our own jobs – the main complaint from patients’
families is lack of communication and not being informed. It’s detrimental.”
Of course the McCanns’ bid for information from the public, unsupported by
details of the abduction, had already been hamstrung by the investigation’s
slow start. There was also a language barrier. They now have phone access to a
police officer who speaks English, but contact is variable, they say. You sense
that they are often in situations where they would like to be forthright, but
are obliged to keep their thoughts to themselves. “It is frustrating,” says
Kate. “The whole situation makes you angry, that’s part of the whole grief that
something like this has happened to Madeleine and to us. They’re all normal
emotions and sometimes you do just want to explode.”
The McCanns sit on a sofa, Kate bone-thin – although I am told that she is very
fit – extremely shy and modest, Gerry composed and easier to read. At the
beginning of our interview Kate holds Madeleine’s pink toy cat in one hand and
clutches her husband’s with the other. Kate’s face looks so tense and agonised
that you might think that she was about to be tortured, and she seems to shrink
into herself.
But as the hour passes she relaxes, takes her hand out of her husband’s and
even laughs at some of the absurdities of their situation, recalling a day on
the beach when she was on the phone to a friend and suddenly found herself
being covered in kisses by a group of Portuguese matrons. Were this couple not
wrapped up in this extraordinary event they would be unremarkable, the husband
an assured man who likes to be in control, the wife a family-orientated mother
who enjoys her job and still has friends from when she was 4.
Both are from working-class backgrounds: Gerry is the youngest of five children
of an Irish matriarch and her joiner husband who brought up their family in
Dumbarton, near
In the immediate aftermath of Madeleine’s disappearance the McCanns found
solace in their Catholic faith and were grateful for the warmth and care that
greeted them at the Nossa Senhora da Luz church, a tiny, beautiful and peaceful
sanctuary that forms a focal point for the community. “I felt cosseted,” Gerry
says. “We felt so fragile and vulnerable. People kept saying ‘you’ll get her
back’. It was what we needed to hear because we just had the blackest and
darkest thoughts in the first 24, 36 hours, as if Madeleine had died. It was
almost uncontrollable grief.
“The psychologist who came out to help us [Alan Pike from the Centre for Crisis
Psychology in Skipton] was very good at turning our thought processes away from
speculation. OK, there’s probabilities, but you don’t know that and he was very
good at challenging the negatives. He was very much, ‘You will feel better
after each thing that you take control of, even simple things’. We were
surrounded by the Ambassador, the consul, PR crisis management, police, and he
was saying ‘The decisions are yours’.”
“All these people we were meeting had to be there, and I felt so out of control
and I found it quite scary,” says Kate. “I felt as if I’d been pushed into
another world. Alan was saying, ‘There are little things you can take control
of’.”
“For example,” says Gerry, “if you are asked ‘Do you want a cup of tea?,’
instead of saying ‘Mmm’, make a positive decision. Decide what you want. That
combination of the Church, the community and the psychology helped very
quickly. We agreed to interact because we thought it would probably help the
search and it would be easier than hiding. Stay in the dark and you’re an enigma.
There wasn’t anything to hide and in the first few weeks we were shown a lot of
respect.”
The launch of the Find Madeleine campaign brought them more respect for their
organisational skills. Friends and family rallied, a strategy was worked out,
the media were fed pictures and quotes, and big businesses, the Chancellor of
the Exchequer, David Beckham and numerous unknown individuals responded with
support and donations. This money – the fund now stands at more than £1 million
– enabled them to appoint a campaign manager and to publicise Madeleine’s
disappearance by visiting other countries. With the possible exception of their
blessing by the Pope at the Vatican, which was the brainwave of a tabloid
newspaper and seemed to contradict the McCanns’ status as ordinary people, they
were beyond reproach as campaigners, particularly as they began to engage with
agencies that have expertise in recovering missing children. The story rolled
along nicely, filling more front pages than any other event since the death of
Diana, Princess of Wales, though not because the McCanns were managing the
media, but because there was increasing evidence that Madeleine sells papers.
Then things started to go wrong. By the end of the second week of August, when
the McCanns marked the 100th day since Madeleine’s disappearance by launching a
YouTube initiative to help to find missing children, the Portuguese media had
suggested that the McCanns could have killed their daughter, and the British
press was not shy about repeating and even revelling in the “monstrous slurs”.
Coincidentally that was the week I first visited Praia da Luz: there were nine
television satellite trucks, each with a noisy generator, on the road outside
The solicitor of Robert Murat, the only person to have been named by police as
a suspect in the Madeleine investigation, didn’t help matters when he announced
that business in Praia da Luz was suffering and that people there wanted “those
bloody McCanns to go home”. However strong a news line this was, it wasn’t
entirely true. Some shopkeepers continued to display posters appealing for
information about Madeleine, others spoke tactfully about their sympathy for
the McCanns. “It’s not that we want the McCanns to go home, it’s just that we
want the bad feeling to go away,” said one café owner, who declined to be
named. “Last year you had to book three weeks ahead to get in here in the
evening, now you don’t need to book. Praia da Luz has become the place where
you lose your children. It’s terribly sad, and it’s terrible for the McCanns.”
Something else was happening, too, that wasn’t entirely edifying. At the church
a steady stream of Portuguese worshippers and tourists approached the shrine to
Madeleine to the left of the altar, and many were devout and respectful. Others
nipped in to take a quick picture of the shrine and left without a bow of the
head; after all, it’s not every year that you go on holiday and find yourself
in the presence of a moment so big that it is being recorded by television
cameras.
Outside Robert Murat’s home, which could not be seen from the road because of a
deep and dense hedge, a Portuguese tourist checked with me that she had the
right house, then stuffed herself into the hedge to get a proper look. (She was
obviously not the first to do so, as sections of the hedge are now dying.) A
hundred yards away sight-seers posed for photographs alongside the television
crews positioned with 5A in the background.
On a seat overlooking the beach, Martin Payne, a well-meaning hairdresser from
“You’ve been reading too many books, Martin,” said his wife. “I feel the same
way that I felt when Princes Diana was killed,” Martin said. “Such a loss to a
lovely family. We want to have a conclusion to this.”
When I suggest to the McCanns that some of the interest in them borders on the
prurient, they seem to be unaware of it. At church they register the crowd
outside as kindly support, and don’t notice those on the fringes who are there
just to spot them. In other contexts their unsought fame appals them. “We feel
totally exposed, as though we have been stripped bare,” says Kate.
They tend not to pick up the more sickly nuances within the press, because they
don’t read it; instead the campaign team (which consists of the full-time
lobbyist the McCanns hired after the fund was set up, plus two other
part-timers who ensure seven-day-a-week cover to field the innumerable media
inquiries) shows them what they need to see, including translations of
Portuguese coverage. And as they demonstrated last week with the announcement
that they are to take legal action against the Portuguese newspaper Tal e Qual,
for its allegation that they killed Madeleine with an overdose of sedatives,
they will no longer tolerate lurid claims that defame them.
“We had no illusions that we could control the media,” says Gerry. “The way
that information has got out has been handled incredibly badly, without a
doubt. It’s almost as though some people are thinking out loud. It’s all very
well to have a potential scenario but that shouldn’t necessarily be written up
as if there is evidence to support it. I think this has been handled very
irresponsibly by a number of people. We don’t believe there is any evidence to
support any of the deluded headlines, and the police have made that clear.”
“There are times when you just want to shout out ‘That’s wrong’, because I
think we’ve been done injustice in a lot of ways,” says Kate.
“There’s a blacker picture painted than what is true,” says Gerry, “whether it
is how much we were drinking, which was a gross exaggeration, or how often we
were checking. We know what we did and we are very responsible. It’s bad enough
for us to have to deal with the fact that someone saw an opportunity – to then
have elements sneering at your behaviour and making it look much worse than it
was. It’s difficult because a lot of untruths, half truths and blatant lies
have been published. It was published that we had 14 bottles of wine.”
“In an hour between us,” interjects Kate. “I’d have been impressed with that in
my student days. Not only that, they qualify it by saying eight bottles of red
and six of white, as though it gives it more credibility. You just want to
scream.”
Where do the Portuguese media get their information? Brendan de Beer, the
editor of the English language Portugal News, is the only journalist to have
spoken at length to Chief Inspector Olegário Sousa, the spokesman for the
PolÍcia Judiciária on the Madeleine investigation. Sousa, who has 20 years’
service and has previously focused on crimes relating to works of art, armed
robberies and car-jacking, suggested that some information is being inadvertently
leaked by officers at informal lunches with friends. De Beer is more specific
and suggests that some of the more incongruous claims are no more than gossip.
Some of the police detectives involved in the case have spoken off the record,
he says, and journalists have contacts within the police just as they do in
“I think that there’s a lot of invention. A journalist might say to a
detective, ‘Do you think Madeleine fell and died and Kate and Gerry got rid of
the body?’ Off the record the detective might say ‘It’s possible’, and they
write a story based on ‘sources close to the investigation.’ I’d be very
surprised if there was any bribery, though a constable does earn only about
€600 or €700 a month, so it could happen. The suggestion that the police were
closing in on the McCanns . . . I’ve been disappointed by some of the
reporting.”
Not that British reporting has been irreproachable. The slurs have been widely
dissected, a suspect has been invented by one needy tabloid, and when I rang
Paolo Marcilemo, the editor of the Correio da Manha, which has a reputation for
scurrilous reporting, he said that he was no longer giving interviews because
the British press has misquoted him.
For the McCanns there is no respite, though they are slowly becoming accustomed
to their grief. “They’re not gone, the feelings,” Gerry says. “When we enjoyed
ourselves with the kids we had guilt – how could we enjoy ourselves when
Madeleine was missing? But it’s so important for the kids that it’s unbridled
love and attention for them. I’m definitely much better at doing that now,
almost carefree for a lot of the time. Not 100 per cent.”
They will return to their home in Rothley, in the
Gerry has been home twice, he says, and has been inside the house. “I was
pretty anxious about it, but it’s now a comfort. We’ll go back when we’ve done
as much as we possibly can for Madeleine. We’re at a point where staying here
is not necessarily adding anything to the campaign to find her.”
He has also discussed returning to work with his line manager; he elected to
take unpaid leave rather than compassionate leave shortly after Madeleine’s
disappearance. As a cardiologist who deals with very sick patients he doesn’t
want to return immediately to a full-time schedule of patient care, but plans
to focus initially on MRI scans, administration and academic work. “When you’re
seeing 12 or 15 patients a day you have to be focused on them and can’t be
thinking about what you want to do for missing children in
As a part-time GP, Kate’s job is patient-centred, and she has yet to decide
whether she will return to it. What they are certain of is that they will
continue to campaign for systems to be established to help to recover missing
children.
Fortunately, the
women.timesonline.co.uk/t...379833.ece
McCann twins
leave out food for Madeleine
By
Caroline Gammell in Praia da Luz
Last Updated: 8:20am BST 04/09/2007
Four months after her disappearance, the brother and sister of Madeleine McCann
still insist on leaving a plate of food out for the missing girl, it was
revealed yesterday.
Two-year-old twins Sean and Amelie often ask parents Gerry and Kate to lay a
place for their older sister at meal times at the villa where they are staying
in the
The toddlers have also refused to unwrap some of the many presents from
well-wishers – including a jigsaw and cuddly toys – so they can give them to
Madeleine when she comes home.
The poignant image emerged as the McCanns, from Rothley in Leicestershire, turn
their attention to returning to the
The lease on their rented Portuguese home runs out in mid-September and soon
they will have to make a decision about how long to stay.
They are reluctant to leave until the results of forensic tests undertaken last
month are known.
Two weeks ago, they finally told Sean and Amelie that four-year-old Madeleine
was missing and that “mummy and daddy were looking for her’’.
The couple, both 39, have done their best to make life as normal as possible,
taking the twins to the creche in the morning and swimming or going to the zoo
in the afternoon.
But despite the routine, Sean and Amelie are keenly aware that Madeleine is not
there.
A family friend said yesterday that the twins recently set aside a plate of
pasta salad for their sister as they enjoyed their own food.
“It has happened on a number of occasions – not every night.
“The kids love potatoes, meat and sweetcorn. Sometimes when given a plate of
food, they will say 'this is for Madeleine’. It always comes from them.”
The McCanns have regularly taken advice from child psychologists about how to
tell Sean and Amelie about their sister’s disappearance.
Originally they told them she had gone on a “short holiday’’ but have gradually
introduced the idea that she might not be coming home.
The family’s spokeswoman said: “They have taken professional advice right from
the beginning about how to handle this with the children.
“They are loving parents and take their parenting responsibilities very
seriously. They would never do or say anything that would cause them distress
or hinder their development.
“They have handled it extremely delicately over the four months, using careful
language appropriate for their age given to them by experts to help the
children understand why Madeleine is not with them.”
But in
Clinical psychologist Louis Villas-Boas, director of children’s refuge Aboim
Ascensao in Faro, told local newspaper Diario de Noticias that the couple had
made an “error”.
He said the toddlers would have “no comprehension of what the disappearance of
a person means” and should not have been told until the age of three or four.
“It is not necessary to use an adult language to communicate to the twins a
situation which is strange or foreign to them,” he added.
Yesterday, Mr McCann asked holidaymakers to continue putting up posters for
Madeleine even though the couple is trying to play down their own role.
The cardiologist said they had been advised by the National Centre for Missing
and Exploited Children that any signs highlighting Madeleine’s disappearance
increased the chances of her being found.
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/...ddy104.xml
Madeleine's parents: We WERE wrong to believe she was safe
alone
by
ARTHUR MARTIN
Last updated at 11:06am on 4th September 2007
Gerry and Kate McCann have admitted that they were wrong when they believed their
daughter Madeleine would be safe alone while they were just yards away.
In a new interview they said that when they were eating outside at the tapas
bar they could see the verandah of the apartment.
"It's difficult because if you are at home cutting grass in the back with
the mower, and that takes about half an hour, and the children are upstairs in
their bedroom, you'd never bat an eyelid," Mr McCann said.
"That's similar to how we felt. We've been unfortunately proved wrong, out
of the blue. It's shattered everything."
Mrs McCann added: "Everyone I know who has been to
"If I'd had to think for one second about it, it wouldn't have happened. I
never even had to think like that, to make the decision. It felt so safe that I
didn't even have to - I mean, I don't think we took a risk.
"If I put the children in the car the chances of having an accident would
be greater than somebody coming in, breaking into your apartment and lifting a
child out of your bed. But you never think I shouldn't put the children in the
car."
Mr McCann said he was given hope after meeting Ernie Allen, the chief executive
of the National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children, who explained to the
couple how there have been times when kidnapped children have been found after
a long time gap.
"I've no doubt in my mind that she was take by somebody from the
room," he told The Times. "We don't know if it was one person, two,
or if it was a group of people, but I know she was taken.
"There's still hope because we don't know who's taken her. We don't know
where they've taken her and we certainly don't know where she is.
"Don't get me wrong, we're not blinkered. The scenario that everybody
thinks about is that a paedophile took her to abuse her. But we don't know that
and that's the difficulty we're dealing with.
"There are a range of scenarios and we want every single avenue explored
because they're all pretty rare. That doesn't mean they should be represented
in front page headlines as if all of them are likely, because they're
not."
In the heart-rending interview to The Times, Mrs McCann also describes how hard
it is to receive no information from the Portuguese police - a practice which
occurs in all investigations in the country.
She said: "For us as parents it's beneficial having information. We know
that from our own jobs - the main complaint from patients' families is lack of
communication and not being informed. It's detrimental."
The McCann's bid for information from the public has also been hampered by the
slow start to the investigation and the language barrier.
"The whole situation makes you angry, that's part of the whole grief that
something like this has happened to Madeleine and to us," Mrs McCann said.
"They're all normal emotions and sometimes you do just want to
explode."
In the immediate aftermath of Madeleine's disappearance, her parents found
solace in their Catholic faith and were greeted warmly in the Nossa Senhora da
Luz - the local church.
Mr McCann said: "I felt cosseted. We felt so fragile and vulnerable.
People kept saying 'you'll get her back'.
"It was what we needed to hear because we just had the blackest and
darkest thoughts in the first 24, 36 hours, as if Madeleine had died. It was
almost uncontrollable grief."
www.dailymail.co.uk/pages...ge_id=1811
Madeleine:
Forensic Results Returned
Updated:
18:48, Wednesday September 05, 2007
Police hunting missing Madeleine McCann have finally received the results of
forensic tests from a laboratory in Britain.
Sky News crime correspondent Martin Brunt has learned that the results are
expected to lead to a significant development.
The tests were carried out on a large volume of material taken from the holiday
apartment in Praia da Luz,
Forensic scientists in
They have also been looking for evidence of other people who could be linked to
the investigation.
Sky's Martin Brunt said: "It could identify new suspects, it could affect
the status of the only suspect in the case, Robert Murat.
"It could explain something of what happened on the night she disappeared
- or the tests could be inconclusive, which could lead to the winding down of
the investigation."
He said that the fact that the apartment had been re-let after Madeleine's
disappearance meant that finding relevant forensic information had always been
considered a "difficult task" as it could have been contaminated by
people staying there.
Portuguese police are not commenting on the results.
Brunt said the McCanns had not been officially told that the results had been
handed over to the Portuguese police.
But he said both the family and the McCanns have invested the forensic tests
with a great deal of importance, and that detectives were expected to have a
meeting with the family about the results.
The only person named as a suspect so far is British expat Robert Murat, who
lives near the apartment the family was staying in at the time.
He insists that he had nothing to do with Madeleine's disappearance.
news.sky.com/skynews/arti...26,00.html
A 2nd version
Madeleine police
handed forensic evidence
By Caroline Gammell in Praia da Luz
Last Updated: 8:45pm BST 05/09/2007
Detectives investigating the disappearance of Madeleine McCann have been handed
significant forensic evidence which could lead to arrests in the case.
The potentially crucial breakthrough came after specialists in the
It included traces of blood found in the apartment in the Portuguese resort of
Praia da Luz where the four-year-old disappeared on May 3.
However, her parents Kate and Gerry McCann were left in the dark about the
development after Portuguese police failed to inform them.
Mr and Mrs McCann only found out through the media when they were interrupted
during a jog by their campaign manager Justine McGuinness.
A family friend said Mr McCann was “upset and frustrated” by the fact that he
had not heard the news from the Portuguese authorities.
“As the parents of a missing child you would expect the police to let you know
about any major developments.
“The police have Gerry’s mobile phone number and can call him at any time, but
he was not called before he found out from the newspapers. That is bound to be
frustrating.
“They used to have a good working relationship with the police.”
It is not the first time that relations between the McCanns and the Portuguese
police have been strained.
On August 11 - the 100th day after Madeleine went missing – police spokesman
chief inspector Olegario Sousa went on television to reveal Madeleine could be
dead - without telling her family first.
At the time a friend of the McCanns said it was “extraordinary” the police had
“not had the decency” to contact the couple before giving the interview.
The couple’s spokeswoman confirmed that they had not spoken to police in
“The Portuguese police have not phoned them and have not told them about the
test results.
“We will await official confirmation as they always do.
“If this takes us a step closer to establishing exactly what happened on May 3
they will be relieved.
“They want to know what happened to their daughter and want to be reunited with
her.”
The McCanns, from Rothley in Leicestershire, were warned the forensic results
would take weeks and have talked about the anguish of waiting for the results.
Traces of blood, hair and fibres from the apartment where Madeleine disappeared
were among the samples examined by the Forensic Science Services (FSS) in
They were gathered 10 weeks after the four-year-old went missing – after
another family had stayed in the apartment - using trained British sniffer
dogs.
Samples were also taken from the McCanns, the group of friends who were on
holiday with them in the
Mr Murat’s spokesman Tuck Price said the 33-year-old British expat had not been
told about any developments in the case.
Specialists from the FSS – which describes itself as the world’s leading forensic
laboratory – are working closely with Leicestershire police on the case, often
speaking on a daily basis.
A source linked to the investigation said any developments were immediately
passed onto the police.
“The FSS has been in close liaison with
“Information is always being fed back which
“On something so important, any information would not be sat on - it is always
being fed back.”
A FSS spokeswoman refused to comment on the specifics of the case, but
confirmed investigations were still continuing.
Portuguese police spokesman Chief Inspector Olegario Sousa would not confirm
that the results had been received.
“The information is that the results haven’t arrived yet, but it might be they
arrive during the day.
“The lines of inquiry are the same from the beginning and are all open. We said
the results are important for the hypothesis of the little girl being dead.
“At this moment we are taking special attention on the hypothesis of death.”
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/...ddy105.xml
Another media attention grabber
MADELEINE ARREST
Thursday September 6,2007
By Martin Evans and Padraic Flanagan in
DNA tests produce vital result
POLICE who are hunting for missing Madeleine McCann are expected to make
an arrest in days.
The news comes after a long-awaited forensic breakthrough.
The results of DNA tests, which have taken a month to complete, were given to
detectives in
But they are also expected to provide detectives with vital information about a
new suspect they have been monitoring, allowing them to move in and make an
arrest.
The results of the DNA analysis by British scientists has given the
investigation renewed urgency after weeks of frustrating stagnation.
Experts at the Forensic Science Service (FSS) laboratory in
Among the most important samples identified were tiny traces of blood, hair and
saliva, collected in the McCanns’ holiday apartment at the Ocean Club in Praia
da Luz.
Tests were also undertaken on items recovered from a number of vehicles as well
as samples taken from an area of coastline near to the
While some work is still to be completed the Daily Express has learnt that
“highly significant” initial results have been passed to the Portuguese Policia
Judiciaria via their counterparts in Leicestershire – home of Gerry and Kate
McCann.
A source linked to the investigation said: “The FSS has been in close liaison
with Leicestershire Police on a regular basis and that information has been fed
back to the Portuguese authorities.
“The Portuguese are leading on the investigation and they have to be the ones
to act. Ultimately, what happens now will be up to the police in
The official Portuguese police spokesman Oligario Sousa last night refused to
confirm that the DNA results had been received.
He said: “The lines are the same since the beginning – they are all open. We
said the results are important for one of the lines, the one that considers the
hypothesis of the little girl being dead. At this moment we are paying special
attention to the hypothesis of death.”
A spokeswoman for the FSS would only say the investigations were still ongoing.
But a Portuguese police source said: “The initial results have been received by
the PJ and they are highly significant. It is what everyone in this
investigation has been waiting for. We hope the case can now move forward very
quickly, it is what everyone wants.”
The results had been expected several weeks ago, prompting senior officers on
the
It was believed they had identified a suspect and were waiting for forensic
confirmation before moving in.
However, with experts warning that the test results could take many more weeks
to complete, the trail once again went cold.
The four-month investigation into Madeleine’s disappearance has been plagued by
setbacks and frustration.
Gerry McCann, 39, recently voiced his growing concern at the lack of leads
being identified but Portuguese detectives remained confident the breakthrough
would come with the forensic evidence.
The McCanns apartment, 5A, from where Madeleine went missing on May 3, became
the focus of the investigation after previous leads proved fruitless.
Last month, detectives ordered fresh searches of the property using a
specialist team from the
Two tiny specks of blood, which had previously been missed, were discovered on
the wall and the curtain of the bedroom.
Unfortunately, the decision to re-let the apartment after the McCanns left, and
the Portuguese police’s failure to preserve the crime scene, meant DNA analysis
became extremely difficult.
However, the FSS laboratory in
Last night police on the
“But they have been working on a hypothesis for some time now and have
identified a new suspect.”
The only official suspect in the case is British expat Robert Murat, 33. It is
thought the breakthrough will officially clear him.
www.dailyexpress.co.uk/posts/view/18384
Madeleine police handed forensic evidence
By
Caroline Gammell in
Last Updated: 1:19am BST 06/09/2007
Detectives investigating the disappearance of Madeleine McCann have been handed
significant forensic evidence which could lead to arrests in the case.
The potentially crucial breakthrough came after specialists in the
It included traces of blood found in the apartment in the Portuguese resort of
Praia da Luz where the four-year-old disappeared on May 3.
However, her parents Kate and Gerry McCann were left in the dark about the
development after Portuguese police failed to inform them.
Mr and Mrs McCann only found out through the media when they were interrupted
during a jog by their campaign manager Justine McGuinness.
A family friend said Mr McCann was “upset and frustrated” by the fact that he
had not heard the news from the Portuguese authorities.
“As the parents of a missing child you would expect the police to let you know
about any major developments.
“The police have Gerry’s mobile phone number and can call him at any time, but
he was not called before he found out from the newspapers. That is bound to be
frustrating.
“They used to have a good working relationship with the police.”
It is not the first time that relations between the McCanns and the Portuguese
police have been strained.
On August 11 - the 100th day after Madeleine went missing – police spokesman
chief inspector Olegario Sousa went on television to reveal Madeleine could be
dead - without telling her family first.
At the time a friend of the McCanns said it was “extraordinary” the police had
“not had the decency” to contact the couple before giving the interview.
The couple’s spokeswoman confirmed that they had not spoken to police in
“The Portuguese police have not phoned them and have not told them about the
test results.
“We will await official confirmation as they always do.
“If this takes us a step closer to establishing exactly what happened on May 3
they will be relieved.
“They want to know what happened to their daughter and want to be reunited with
her.”
The McCanns, from Rothley in Leicestershire, were warned the forensic results
would take weeks and have talked about the anguish of waiting for the results.
Traces of blood, hair and fibres from the apartment where Madeleine disappeared
were among the samples examined by the Forensic Science Services (FSS) in
They were gathered 10 weeks after the four-year-old went missing – after
another family had stayed in the apartment - using trained British sniffer
dogs.
Samples were also taken from the McCanns, the group of friends who were on
holiday with them in the
Mr Murat’s spokesman Tuck Price said the 33-year-old British expat had not been
told about any developments in the case.
Specialists from the FSS – which describes itself as the world’s leading
forensic laboratory – are working closely with Leicestershire police on the
case, often speaking on a daily basis.
A source linked to the investigation said any developments were immediately
passed onto the police.
“The FSS has been in close liaison with
“Information is always being fed back which
“On something so important, any information would not be sat on - it is always
being fed back.”
A FSS spokeswoman refused to comment on the specifics of the case, but
confirmed investigations were still continuing.
Portuguese police spokesman Chief Inspector Olegario Sousa would not confirm
that the results had been received.
“The information is that the results haven’t arrived yet, but it might be they
arrive during the day.
“The lines of inquiry are the same from the beginning and are all open. We said
the results are important for the hypothesis of the little girl being dead.
“At this moment we are taking special attention on the hypothesis of death.”
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/...ddy105.xml
Odor
de Cadaver Na Roupa De Kate
Translation:Odor
of Cadaver In the Clothes De Kate
http://www.correiomanha.pt/noticia.a...idCanal=20&p=0
Translated
Decisive results
Confirmed ADN of Maddie
Biological fluids of Maddie had been found by the laboratory of Birmingham
in the samples sent by the Judiciary Policy for England.
The cm knows that these vestiges - by rough estimate found not perceivable
residues of naked blood in the apartment of the Oce-an Club and in the car
rented for the McCann - already if find in the ownership of the PJ and will
have to determine immediate developments of the case. Most important she will
have to be a new interrogation to the parents of Madeleine and to some of the
friends of the couple who if found of vacation in the
www.correiodamanha.pt/not...nal=9&p=20
McCanns
Being Quizzed Separately
Updated:
14:30, Thursday September 06, 2007
Madeleine McCann's mother Kate has arrived at a police station in Portugal to
be re-interviewed by detectives investigating the four-year-old's
disappearance.
Mrs McCann was driven to Portimao by her husband Gerry from their rented house
in Praia da Luz.
He dropped her off at the entrance and gave her a goodbye kiss.
Mr McCann will be questioned separately tomorrow.
Sky News Crime Correspondent Martin Brunt said police wanted to re-interview
the McCanns as witnesses.
But he added: "According to the McCann family it appears to be more
formal."
Portuguese police called Mr McCann on Monday to request the interviews,
specifying that Mrs McCann should be questioned first.
It is only the second time she has been formally interviewed by police, the
first being on May 4, the day after Madeleine went missing.
Detectives have already questioned Gerry McCann twice.
It is expected that Mrs McCann's interview will be longer than the one she gave
officers in May, which lasted between three and four hours.
The development comes after officers leading the investigation were given DNA
test results.
Sky News has learned vital clues from the results are expected to lead to a
significant development.
Experts at the Forensic Science Service (FSS) in
The evidence recovered includes blood flecks found by British sniffer dogs on
the wall in Madeleine's bedroom, where she vanished on May 3.
A source has confirmed that information gathered by the FSS had been
"regularly fed back" to investigators in
An FSS spokeswoman would not comment on the specifics of the case, but said:
"There has been a lot of speculation. The tests are ongoing.
"There has been no change in that, despite what the reports say. It's a
live investigation and we are working with the police."
The only official suspect in the case, 33-year-old ex-pat Robert Murat,
believes the Portuguese authorities will shortly clear him formally.
His spokesman Tuck Price said he had not been told about any developments in
the case.
"Why are they holding him in limbo?" he added. "That is still a
concern - unless they are using him as cover so that they can continue
investigating somebody else...
"It's still very frustrating - it's been five weeks since they went back
in there again (to search Mr Murat's house for a second time), and we thought
this would all be sewn up."
news.sky.com/skynews/arti...55,00.html
MADELEINE:
ARREST IS NOW 'CLOSE'
Thursday September 6,2007
By Martin Evans
and Padraic Flanagan in Praia da Luz
POLICE who are hunting for missing Madeleine McCann are expected to make an
arrest in days.
The news comes after a long-awaited forensic breakthrough.
The results of DNA tests, which have taken a month to complete, were given to
detectives in
But they are also expected to provide detectives with vital information about a
new suspect they have been monitoring, allowing them to move in and make an
arrest.
The results of the DNA analysis by British scientists has given the
investigation renewed urgency after weeks of frustrating stagnation.
Experts at the Forensic Science Service (FSS) laboratory in
Among the most important samples identified were tiny traces of blood, hair and
saliva, collected in the McCanns’ holiday apartment at the Ocean Club in Praia
da Luz.
Tests were also undertaken on items recovered from a number of vehicles as well
as samples taken from an area of coastline near to the
While some work is still to be completed the Daily Express has learnt that
“highly significant” initial results have been passed to the Portuguese Policia
Judiciaria via their counterparts in Leicestershire – home of Gerry and Kate McCann.
source linked to the investigation said: “The FSS has been in close liaison
with Leicestershire Police on a regular basis and that information has been fed
back to the Portuguese authorities.
“The Portuguese are leading on the investigation and they have to be the ones
to act. Ultimately, what happens now will be up to the police in
The official Portuguese police spokesman Oligario Sousa last night refused to
confirm that the DNA results had been received.
He said: “The lines are the same since the beginning – they are all open. We
said the results are important for one of the lines, the one that considers the
hypothesis of the little girl being dead. At this moment we are paying special
attention to the hypothesis of death.”
A spokeswoman for the FSS would only say the investigations were still ongoing.
But a Portuguese police source said: “The initial results have been received by
the PJ and they are highly significant. It is what everyone in this
investigation has been waiting for. We hope the case can now move forward very
quickly, it is what everyone wants.”
The results had been expected several weeks ago, prompting senior officers on
the
It was believed they had identified a suspect and were waiting for forensic
confirmation before moving in.
However, with experts warning that the test results could take many more weeks
to complete, the trail once again went cold.
The four-month investigation into Madeleine’s disappearance has been plagued by
setbacks and frustration.
Gerry McCann, 39, recently voiced his growing concern at the lack of leads
being identified but Portuguese detectives remained confident the breakthrough
would come with the forensic evidence.
The McCanns apartment, 5A, from where Madeleine went missing on May 3, became
the focus of the investigation after previous leads proved fruitless.
Last month, detectives ordered fresh searches of the property using a
specialist team from the
Two tiny specks of blood, which had previously been missed, were discovered on
the wall and the curtain of the bedroom.
Unfortunately, the decision to re-let the apartment after the McCanns left, and
the Portuguese police’s failure to preserve the crime scene, meant DNA analysis
became extremely difficult.
However, the FSS laboratory in
Last night police on the
“But they have been working on a hypothesis for some time now and have
identified a new suspect.”
The only official suspect in the case is British expat Robert Murat, 33. It is
thought the breakthrough will officially clear him.
www.express.co.uk/posts/v...now-close-
'It's Not
Too Late, Let Her Go'
Updated:
15:34, Thursday September 06, 2007
The parents of missing Madeleine McCann have issued a new statement.
It comes after it was revealed both Kate and Gerry would be re-interviewed by
police in
Here is the statement in full, as read by family spokeswoman Justine
McGuinness:
Today Kate McCann has returned to Portimao to be questioned by Portuguese
police, to assist them with their investigations.
Kate and Gerry are happy to help the police in their investigations to find
their daughter Madeleine, as they have been since she was taken.
Kate continues to believe that Madeleine is still alive and to hope and pray
that she will be returned soon.
Kate is a loving, gentle mother, one of the victims in an extraordinary and
terrible set of events.
Kate has asked me to read this message:
"I miss Madeleine so much. Gerry and I want to appeal again to the person
or people who took her or know who took her to do the right thing.
"It's not too late. Please let her go or call the police.
"We came to
"We just want to know what happened on the third of May and want to go
home a family reunited."
news.sky.com/skynews/arti...80,00.html
McCanns
Fear Being Named Suspects
Updated:
00:15, Friday September 07, 2007
Missing Madeleine McCann's family fear that detectives may be about to start
treating them as suspects, according to Sky sources.
The four-year-old's mother Kate is still being interviewed by police in
Police have said they are being interviewed as witnesses, but the family are
said to fear that this might be about to change.
Sky News crime correspondent Martin Brunt said that Kate McCann had been with
the police for eight hours so far.
Her lawyer had said she had been told she was still being inteviwed as a
witness.
But the family have made it very clear they fear this may change because of the
continued questioning and in the light of continuing attacks in the Portuguese
media.
However, he added, the McCanns have emphasised that these concerns are dwarfed
by their overriding concern for their daughter.
It is only the second time Mrs McCann has been formally interviewed by police,
the first being on May 4, the day after Madeleine went missing.
Detectives have already questioned Gerry McCann twice.
Earlier, Mrs McCann issued a new appeal to her daughter's abductor.
In a statement read out by family spokeswoman Justine McGuinness, she said:
"I miss Madeleine so much.
"Gerry and I want to appeal again to the person or people who took her or
know who took her to do the right thing.
"It's not too late. Please let her go or call the police."
news.sky.com/skynews/arti...22,00.html
'It Must Be
Terrifying For Them'
By
Kate Sullivan
Sky News Online, Portugal
Updated: 17:03, Thursday September 06, 2007
Minutes before Kate McCann arrived at the Policia Judiciara, the TV and press
queues blocking the road began a huge shouting match.
It was intimidating, it was aggressive and it was necessary ... everybody
wanted the best pictures.
The yelling that greeted Mrs McCann - reporters and photographers shouting at
rivals to "get out of the way" - was less of a media circus and more
like one of those punch-ups familiar to foreign parliaments.
One television report described it as "a colossal media scrum".
Yet even though the slim Mrs McCann was being rushed at by burly men shoving
heavy, intrusive cameras into her face, she carried on.
A "nervous smile" is how Sky News Crime corespondent Martin Brunt
described her expression.
Others watching the spectacle disagreed.
"She didn't show any emotion - nothing at all," said one onlooker.
Tourists Gordon Ross and David Allan, from Aberdeenshire, were impressed. They
thought the couple looked composed.
"But it must be terrifying for them," David said, "seeing all
those cameras pointing at them. Their situation is bad enough as it is."
But the scrum was justified, according to George Maughan, who is here on his
holiday from
Holding up his palm-sized digital camera, he admitted that he feels fine about
taking his own pictures, which will take pride of place among his other holiday
snaps.
"Everyone is so interested," he said.
But George nevertheless has a lot of sympathy for the McCanns. His grandson,
Bertie, is the same age as Madeleine.
"It's so sad," his wife Mary said. "And the worst bit is all the
conclusions people jump to, just because they've been called in to give a
statement at a police station."
Earlier in the day, there were just two satellite trucks at the car park
opposite the PJ.
In the hour before the McCanns' arrival, dozens pulled up.
It is easy to see why reporters get labelled 'vultures'.
Everywhere you look there are cameras, cables, tripods, notepads, pens,
microphones and mobile phones.
But it is with good reason - how else would the world know the news?
news.sky.com/skynews/arti...99,00.html
Madeleine:
'Now they are trying to frame me' says mother quizzed by police
05.09.07
The mother of Madeleine McCann was dramatically reinterviewed by police
yesterday - and is terrified they are trying to frame her.
Kate McCann was questioned at police headquarters in Portimao, 30 miles from
Praia da Luz for over eleven hours.
It is the first time she has been formally interviewed since May 4, the day
after her daughter vanished from her bed in the Mark Warner holiday complex.
Mrs McCann, 39, had a lawyer present, something that has not happened in any
previous meetings with the Portuguese police.
Friends said she was extremely nervous about being "set up" and fears
detectives were attempting to crack the case by pinning the blame for
Madeleine's disappearance on her.
A Portuguese newspaper stoked her fears yesterday with hurtful slurs about a
"scent of death" allegedly detected on her clothing.
Although police made clear the McCanns are witnesses and not suspects, it is
understood that inquiries are concentrating on alleged discrepancies in their
accounts of the night Madeleine disappeared.
A British source with knowledge of the investigation claimed: "Forensic
tests have opened new lines of inquiry which undermines their version of
events."
Mr McCann will be interviewed separately today.
Their answers will be compared and police will decide whether or not to change
their status to "arguido", the Portuguese term for suspect.
Under Portuguese law, an arguido is someone who is under ongoing questioning.
Arrests can be made only once someone is an arguido.
Friends said Mrs McCann had absolutely nothing to hide and had chosen to walk
through the police station front door with her head held high.
Neither she nor her husband are under arrest, they are not suspects, and they
were not being interviewed under oath.
But a friend of the couple said: "Kate is terrified that she is being set
up. This has been the worst week since Madeleine vanished, and we're not
through it yet.
"They have no idea why they have been called back.
"Police have refused to tell them. They fear that they might be
suspects."
The extraordinary development blows apart the couple's plans to return home to
Rothley, Leicestershire, which they had been arranging to do this coming
Sunday.
Now their departure is on hold while the latest drama unfolds.
And it came a day after a forensics breakthrough when police took delivery of
"significant" results on samples of blood, hair and fibres found in
Madeleine's bedroom and elsewhere.
Scientists in
It raised the prospect that an arrest could be imminent, although police
refused to speculate.
It is 127 days since Madeleine went missing, just before her fourth birthday,
while her parents ate with friends at a tapas restaurant 50 yards from the
holiday apartment.
The police investigation has been beset with blunders and, in recent weeks, the
McCanns have been dogged by hurtful allegations in the Portuguese media that
police believe they could have had something to do with Madeleine's
disappearance.
Yesterday morning the couple prayed together at the church in Praia da Luz.
Then at 1.55pm, Mrs McCann braved a scrum of photographers and walked into
Portimao police station, clutching Madeleine's favourite Cuddle Cat soft toy.
She had been driven there by her husband, who gave her a supportive kiss before
returning to Praia da Luz.
Mrs McCann was kept waiting an hour and 15 minutes before the interview began,
and she had to choose an interpreter from a list.
Police interviews are not tape-recorded in
Portuguese newspapers appear to be in no doubt that detectives' attention has
been focused very much on the McCanns lately.
Yesterday the barrage of smears continued as national daily paper Correio de
Manha ran the astonishing claim that a sniffer dog had detected the "scent
of death" on Cuddle Cat and on Mrs McCann's clothing.
The paper alleged that a dog specifically trained to sniff out a corpse had
reacted positively when presented with the cuddly toy and also Mrs McCann's
blouse and a pair of her jeans.
Friends of the couple dismissed the lurid accusations as "complete
fabrication".
www.thisislondon.co.uk/ne...ays+mother
A Long, Agonising
Night For The McCanns
By
Kate Sullivan
Sky News Online,
Updated: 02:33, Friday September 07, 2007
It had been a long day for the reporters - it must have been agony for the
McCanns.
The throngs of gawping tourists slowly ebbed away as the sunlight faded.
The raucous crowd of media, who had spent the day both laughing and
complaining, had begun to pack up and by nightfall just a few cameras were
left.
All this time Kate McCann was inside the police station - and nobody outside
could confirm why.
The only thing there could be no doubt over was that Mrs McCann had been inside
for long, long time - much longer than expected.
Despite all of the media's eyes being on the police station, another crowd had
formed just steps away.
They were watching children - from Madeleine's age to teenagers - practice on a
huge, raised runway for a fashion show.
It's a big thing for the town apparently and plenty of people are involved in
Friday evening's event.
But seeing the young girls dressed in pink make their way coyly along the
catwalk was a cruel irony that would be hard for anyone to miss.
The parents were watching proudly as the kiddies were organised by a stage
manager. There were plenty of smiles outside the PJ.
And another little diversion - a tiny puppy was delighting some of the
Portuguese people on the square.
But for hours, the McCann circus had been nothing but a waiting game.
Fast-forward to around 10pm and a rush of people and lights promised news at
last.
Yet it wasn't Mrs McCann finally being let out. It was a lawyer who confirmed
two things: that Madeleine's mother was still in the PJ and Mr McCann would be
questioned the following day. So no news.
It would be a long night for the news crews - and terrible night for the
McCanns.
news.sky.com/skynews/arti...33,00.html
Kate McCann
Quizzed For 11 Hours
Updated:
03:15, Friday September 07, 2007
The mother of missing four-year-old Madeleine McCann has left a police station
in Portimao, after 11 hours of questioning.
Kate McCann looked drawn and tired as she emerged from the headquarters of the
Policia Judiciaria alongside her lawyer and her sister-in-law Trisha Cameron.
She is still being treated as a witness, according to her lawyer Carlo Pinto de
Brao.
In a short statement he said: "The investigation is still going to
continue; as you know our secrecy laws don't allow us to say any more.
"I can assure you that she was heard all day long as a witness and that is
all that we have to say."
Mrs McCann's lawyer also confirmed that Madeleine's father Gerry is due to
return for separate questioning later today.
Portuguese police have not revealed why they want to speak to the McCanns
again.
But there is speculation the move may be linked to forensic tests on samples
taken from the family's holiday apartment in Praia da Luz, or to their plans to
return to
Detectives telephoned Mr McCann on Monday to summon the couple back to Portimao
police station, specifying that his wife should be questioned first.
A family friend of the McCanns said they regarded the interviews as a
"step forward in the investigation" but were apprehensive about their
significance.
"They do fear they are about to become suspects," the friend added,
stressing that they remained witnesses in the case.
Mr Pinto de Abreu travelled down to the
Portuguese police have repeatedly said that the couple are not suspects in the
case, but they have endured a series of "hurtful and untrue" media
reports alleging they were involved.
news.sky.com/skynews/arti...32,00.html
Madeleine's
parents grilled by police
September 07 2007 at 07:11AM
Portimao, Portugal - The mother of missing British toddler Madeleine
McCann will be questioned again on Friday morning by police investigators
following 11 hours of questioning the day before, a police source told the
Portuguese news agency Lusa.
Kate McCann was questioned for nearly 11 hours on Thursday by police
investigating the disappearance of her then three-year-old daughter on May 3
from the vacation apartment they were staying at in the seaside resort of Praia
da Luz.
Her husband Gerry was also due to be questioned on Friday.
Emerging from the police station after the 11 hours of questioning, Kate
McCann's lawyer said she was still considered a witness and the investigation
was continuing.
Portuguese laws severely restrict what those privy to an investigation may say
publicly.
The Portuguese police have confirmed that they received on Wednesday part of
the forensic laboratory results of traces of blood found in the room in the
apartment where Madeleine had been sleeping before she disappeared.
The police have made no statement as to what the lab results showed, or whether
the blood belonged to the child or to someone else.
www.iol.co.za/index.php?s...831C553385
http://www.channel4.com/news/article...suspect/774352
Kate
McCann to be named suspect
Last Modified: 07 Sep 2007
By: Channel 4 News
Kate McCann, the mother of missing Madeleine McCann, will be named as a formal
suspect later today, according to a family spokesman.
Mrs McCann - who was questioned by Portuguese police for 11 hours yesterday -
will be made an 'arguido' - a formal suspect - after she returns for more
questioning at 10.30am.
Her husband, Gerry, will be interviewed separately this afternoon.
The only other formal suspect so far was Robert Murat, an expatriate Briton who
lived nearby the apartment where Madeleine went missing on 3 May, 127 days ago.
IMAGE 1
Formal suspects under Portuguese law receive more legal protection, including
the right to remain silent during questioning and the right to legal
representation.
Kate McCann faced a gruelling session yesterday at the headquarters of the
Policia Judiciaria -
Her lawyer Carlos Pinto de Abreu read a brief statement to the waiting
journalists.
He said: "Kate was held throughout the whole day as a witness and she
remains a witness.
"It is obvious that investigations will continue, and I cannot say
anything else because of the secrecy laws."
When it became clear that Mrs McCann would be required to return for more
questioning, her status as a formal suspect became inevitable.
The family spokesman said: "Just before the session ended last night, they
made it clear they had some further questions to ask which would require her to
be in arguido status rather than just witness status."
Referring to Mrs McCann's condition the spokesman added: "She is shocked
and surprised in several ways. First of all that such an accusation could be
made against her.
"And obviously she is concerned that such a line of investigation can
become a distraction from further attempts to find Madeleine."
Four-year-old Madeleine went missing from her family's flat in Praia da Luz
back in May while her parents ate at a nearby tapas restaurant.
_
Madeleine:
Separating Fact From Gossip
By
Kate Sullivan
Sky News Online,
Updated: 14:03, Friday September 07, 2007
The rumour mill has been churning in the
Secrecy laws in
This has only added fuel to the gossip, which has really been flying since Kate
McCann was called in for further questioning by detectives.
Nevertheless, no one here knows, or seems able to remember, where many of the
rumours originated.
One couple standing outside the police station in Portimao quoted "a woman
at the hotel who knows someone".
Another person said a cafe owner apparently married to a police officer had
told them all the latest.
Yet another person quoted the Portuguese media, while someone else spouted a
taxi driver's take on the case.
It's easy to see how the tittle-tattle ends up in the papers - it is bandied
about the streets of the
Some of the "wild accusations", as Sky News's crime correspondent
Martin Brunt called them, centre around the night Madeleine went missing.
Rumours also abound about the little girl's favourite cuddly toy, phantom
syringes and one of the hire cars used by the McCanns.
But people here are more circumspect when pressed. "We only heard that...
it's not that we believe it," they say.
Up to 300 people were outside the police station when Kate McCann was released
after 11 hours of questioning on Thursday.
The expression on her face when she left the police station showed she knew
exactly what people were asking: "Why was she held for so long?"
"It's terrible that people are jumping to conclusions," said
Jacqueline, who declined to give her full name.
"You can't imagine the family doing what some people say - never in the
world. But a lot of Portuguese people have been talking like this for a long
time."
Recently, Gerry McCann complained about a lack of restraint by the Portuguese
media.
Perhaps Jacqueline knows why there have been so many negative stories about the
McCanns.
"Everybody wants to know there is no kidnapper or murderer in the
news.sky.com/skynews/arti...71,00.html
Madeleine:
Mum 'May Be Charged'
Updated:
14:49, Friday September 07, 2007
![]()
Kate McCann could be charged with the accidental death of her daughter,
according to a family member.
Philomena McCann told Sky News that police have suggested Kate killed Madeleine
by mistake.
Madeleine's aunt dismissed the allegations and insisted Kate was innocent.
She said: "I have never heard anything so utterly ludicrous in my entire
life."
Kate has been made a formal suspect in the case, a family friend said.
Portuguese police suggested to Mrs McCann that traces of Madeleine's blood were
found in a car the family hired 25 days after the girl went missing.
She told them there was "no way" her daughter's blood could have been
found inside the vehicle, the friend said.
However, her lawyer, Carlos Pinto de Abreu, warned her she could be charged
today.
Madeleine's father Gerry is still being treated as a witness.
The McCann family spokesperson Justine McGuiness said: "The police are
treating Kate as if she is involved in the death of her daughter.
"That suggestion hasn't been put to Gerry, so they are treating them
differently.
"It is a ridiculous suggestion."
The McCanns announced on August 31 that they would take legal action against a
Portuguese newspaper which claimed they killed Madeleine.
A large crowd whistled and shouted as Kate arrived back in Portimao for more
questioning.
Mrs McCann was greeted by journalists, locals and holidaymakers, many of them
whistling and shouting at her.
One British tourist shouted: "We believe you, Kate." But there were
apparent jeers from other people in the crowd.
Madeleine's mother has been made an "arguida", a formal suspect, in
the case, according to her friend.
An arguida receives more protection under Portuguese law, including the right
to remain silent in formal interviews.
Sky News Crime Correspondent Martin Brunt said: "The police are doing this
so they can ask her a list of 22 questions about the night Madeleine
disappeared."
"There are specific questions they need to ask and they can only do that
if she is a suspect."
The friend added: "She is shocked and surprised in several ways. First of
all that such an accusation could be made against her.
"And obviously she is concerned that such a line of investigation can
become a distraction from further attempts to find Madeleine."
Gerry McCann is due to be re-interviewed this afternoon.
news.sky.com/skynews/arti...58,00.html
Madeleine:
Mum 'Offered Deal To Confess'
Updated:
22:37, Friday September 07, 2007
Kate McCann has been named as a formal suspect in the "death" of her
missing four-year-old daughter Madeleine.
A family member has claimed she was offered a deal by police - that she would
serve only two years in prison if she admitted accidentally killing her
daughter.
Police are said to believe that Madeleine was killed accidentally and that her
body was hidden, then moved and hidden again.
They are not treating Madeleine's disappearance as murder.
There have been reports that Mrs McCann, 39, is likely to be charged with
causing the accidental death of her daughter.
She was questioned by police again today but released without being charged.
Detectives quizzed her for 11 hours yesterday.
Police have suggested that Madeleine's blood was found in a car hired by the
McCanns 25 days after their daughter's disappearance.
Gerry McCann's sister Philomena said Mrs McCann was offered a deal through her
lawyer to confess to killing her daughter by accident and then disposing of her
daughter.
Mr McCann is now being questioned in the same police station in
Before he arrived he said that any suggestion that his wife was involved in
Madeleine's disappearance from their holiday apartment on May 3 was
"ludicrous".
Writing on his blog he said: "Anyone who knows anything about May 3 knows
that Kate is completely innocent. We will fight this all the way and we will
not stop looking for Madeleine."
Mrs McCann's father Brian Healy told Sky News: "It would be a joke if it
wasn't so disgusting. My daughter's not like that. I just want to hug
her."
Family and friends in Rothley, Leicestershire, have said there is
"something untoward" in the police investigation. Mrs McCann's mother
Susan Healy has suggested that evidence may have been planted in the hired car.
Portuguese police have confirmed that they have a new formal suspect - or
arguida - in the case but did not identify them. However, family friends have
said that Kate McCann is that suspect.
The only person previously named as a suspect is British expat Robert Murat. He
has denied any involvement.
Sky News crime correspondent Martin Brunt said Mrs McCann, who has returned to
her home after being questioned by police again today, reportedly remains
concerned that she could be charged very soon.
The McCann family spokeswoman Justine McGuiness said: "The police are
treating Kate as if she is involved in the death of her daughter.
"That suggestion hasn't been put to Gerry, so they are treating them
differently. It is a ridiculous suggestion."
A large crowd whistled and shouted as Mrs McCann arrived back in Portimao for
more questioning.
One British tourist shouted: "We believe you, Kate." But there seemed
to be jeers from other people in the crowd.
Portuguese criminal law expert Luis Rolo told Sky News: "To be named an
arguida means the police already have a few suspicions that this person might
have committed a crime."
He said a judge may now ask Mrs McCann to hand over her passport or impose
other conditions on her behaviour.
A friend of the McCanns said of Kate: "She is shocked and surprised in
several ways. First of all that such an accusation could be made against her.
"And obviously she is concerned that such a line of investigation can
become a distraction from further attempts to find Madeleine."
news.sky.com/skynews/arti...58,00.htm
'Ludicrous,
Unbelievable And Wrong'
Updated:
20:48, Friday September 07, 2007
Friends and family of Madeleine McCann's parents have reacted with horror to
the news that suspicion has fallen on the missing girl's mother.
Kate McCann has been named a formal suspect - an "arguida" - by
police investigating the four-year-old's disappearance.
Mrs McCann's mother, Susan Healy, said the family were concerned that evidence
may have been planted in order to incriminate Madeleine's parents.
Mrs Healy told Channel 4 News: "She's very angry about her position. She
knows perfectly well that if this evidence exists, then it is proof that there
is somebody inside either the police department or who had access to their
apartment and their belongings who has planted this evidence.
"She knows that, so you can imagine how anxious that is making her feel.
"It is OK if you think you tell the truth and everything will be all
right, but that doesn't appear to be the case here so we are extremely
concerned at this time."
Dr Doug Skehan said: "I am horrified to be honest that Kate or Gerry could
themselves be suspects.
"They are two fine people who are great parents and who have gone through
great trauma."
Dr Skehan - a cardiologist like Mr McCann and clinical director at
"Everyone who has spoken to me about this today wanted to send their
support to Gerry and Kate."
Gerry McCann has slammed suggestions his wife was involved in their daughter's
disappearance as "ludicrous".
"Anyone who knows anything about the 3rd May knows that Kate is completely
innocent," he wrote on his blog.
"We will fight this all the way and we will not stop looking for
Madeleine."
Others have also leapt to Kate's defence.
Madeleine's aunt, Philomena McCann, said the development was a "complete
outrage".
She said: "To actually claim that Kate is a suspect is ludicrous as much
as it is insulting.
"It just seems ridiculous. It's so untrue its just not possible."
Gerry's brother John McCann said the prospect of her becoming a suspect was
"unbelievable".
Speaking from his home in
"We cannot believe the line that they are going down - we just find it
unbelievable."
He also called for the Portuguese police to get their investigation back on
track.
"There's a degree of almost anger, it's more frustration. We just want
them to get on with the real focus," he said.
"My wee niece is missing and it's not Gerry and Kate that are involved in
this.
"Let's get back to the real reason. What's happened to that?"
A group of friends who were with the McCanns on holiday when Madeleine
disappeared on May 3 from the family's apartment released a statement.
It said: "We are totally appalled at any suggestion that Kate had anything
to do with Madeleine's disappearance.
"She is innocent - we know this because we are her friends, we were with
her on the night, and we witnessed first hand the unimaginable grief Kate and
Gerry suffered."
Madeleine's great uncle Brian Kennedy said: "As you can imagine, the
family of Kate and Gerry McCann have been shocked by the news of recent events
in
"And we are sure that all those who have given their tremendous support
over the past months will be equally amazed and disbelieving of what this
wonderful couple are having to contend with, having already suffered the loss
of their much-loved Madeleine.
"The notion that either of them would or could harm one of their children
is ludicrous."
A McCann family spokesman said: "Kate is shocked ... and concerned that
such a line of investigation can become a distraction from further attempts to
find Madeleine."
news.sky.com/skynews/arti...17,00.html
The 17 key
questions detectives may have asked Madeleine's mother
By
SAM GREENHILL
8th September 2007
During 15 hours of questions, police put a series of key points to Kate McCann
in their attempt to solve the Madeleine mystery. Sam Greenhill examines some of
the likely demands detectives would have made of the 39-year-old GP in the
interview room.
Did you kill your daughter?
Mr and Mrs McCann have long been aware that they were the subject of rumour and
suspicion but this is the first time the police have put it to them. Her
friends and family cannot believe that the "imbecile" police have the
nerve even to ask it.
Did you sedate Madeleine?
The couple have repeatedly denied using sedatives on their children to help
them sleep at night while they went out. They have strongly rebutted
accusations they accidentally gave her an overdose. There has been persistent
speculation over why the couple's twin son and daughter slept soundly
throughout the abduction and subsequent commotion once Madeleine was discovered
missing. The McCanns say they have never used any kind of sedative on their
children and never would.
Did you have any syringes in the apartment?
An astonishing claim in a Portuguese newspaper alleged that police think there
could have been a tranquilliser kit used on Madeleine. Mrs McCann is believed
to have fiercely rejected this, and the couple have stated there was no syringe
in the apartment.
How much did you drink on the night?
Some reports have suggested the McCanns and their friends sank 14 bottles of
wine at dinner that night, but they insist they got through no more than three
bottles between nine adults.
Did you ever leave Madeleine all evening to go into town?
It was reported that a barman claimed he had seen the McCanns one evening in
the town of Lagos, five miles away, although they insist they ate every night
at the Ocean Club restaurant in Praia da Luz, and none of their friends has
disputed this.
Who checked on the children and at what times, exactly?
Confusion has always surrounded the exact timings because no one was supposed
to discuss the case or give a timeline in detail. From clues and comments
pieced together over the past months, it appears the McCanns and their friends
agree that Gerry checked at 9.05pm, friend Matthew Oldfield at 9.30pm (but he
did not actually go into Madeleine's bedroom) and then Kate at 10pm. But
detectives are interested in the period from 8pm when it is understood that no
one apart from the McCanns saw Madeleine.
Did you ever leave her unattended for much longer than you claim?
Statements from witnesses near the apartment allegedly claim that in the
evenings before her disappearance, Madeleine was heard crying for her parents
for long periods. The McCanns deny this, saying they checked on their children
regularly and are responsible parents.
Does your husband know about it?
Mrs McCann is likely to be invited to implicate her husband. The McCanns have
always stood strong together and say the crisis has strengthened the bond
between them, although Gerry did storm out of a TV interview recently leaving
his wife behind when he was asked about the investigation.
Does anyone else know? Do your friends know?
The idea that any of the McCanns' seven companions, some of them doctors, could
have been involved in such a huge conspiracy and then convincingly maintained
the secret is one of the most puzzling aspects of what appears to be the
police's theory. Yet officers are focusing on alleged discrepancies in their
statements.
Why did you shout: 'They've taken her, they've taken her!' after returning
from Madeleine's room on the night of her disappearance?
These were the words Mrs McCann was reported to have screamed as she ran back
to the restaurant table in a panic. The police were intrigued by her use of the
word "they".
Why did a dog detect the smell of a corpse on your clothes?
A British dog trained to find dead bodies is alleged to have smelled something
on Mrs McCann's jeans and T- shirt, and also on Madeleine's toy Cuddle Cat. Mrs
McCann is believed to have replied that she came into contact with at least six
dead people in her work as a GP in the period leading up to the holiday. Could
Cuddle Cat, which she always holds close to her, have been contaminated from
her clothes?
Why did you hire a car?
The McCanns did not hire a car until 25 days after Madeleine went missing.
Until then, they did without one, apparently remaining in Praia da Luz or being
driven around by police, embassy staff or friends. But in recent weeks, Mr
McCann has regularly talked about using the hired silver Renault Scenic to
ferry visiting friends and relatives to and from the airport in Faro.
Why did you hire it the day before going to see the Pope?
Detectives are puzzled why the McCanns needed to hire a car the day before they
knew they would be leaving
Did the hire car contain any of Madeleine's belongings?
If forensic evidence of Madeleine was found in the car, such as a hair, is
there a legitimate explanation? Perhaps something belonging to her was later
put in the car, for example when the McCanns moved to their new villa.
Could Madeleine have bled on something which was later put in the hire car?
Madeleine did slip and bang her leg, filmed on a family mobile phone video, as
she boarded the holiday aircraft. Could she have shed blood on to some clothing
which the McCanns later moved in the hire car?
Did you move Madeleine's body in your hire car?
Forensic evidence apparently points to Madeleine in the car. Mrs McCann
strenuously denies any suggestion she moved any body.
Tell us what you did with her...
Mrs McCann was asked this directly, according to her husband's sister
Philomena. Her reply was said to be: "You must be insane to think we'd put
ourselves through this."
www.dailymail.co.uk/pages...to=newsnow
Madeleine: Shattered Gerry and Kate McCann BOTH declared suspects
By
SAM GREENHILL and STEPHEN WRIGHT
Last updated at 00:43am on 8th September 2007
IMAGE 3
• Police have suspected McCanns for over a month
• Intimate conversations between Kate and Gerry have been listened to
• Portugese police have been deliberately leaking details to the press in hopes
McCanns will crack
•Kate swore at detectives when asked, 'Did you kill your daughter?'
Tonight Portugese police have declared that Gerry McCann is a formal suspect
in the disappearance of his missing four-year-old daughter Madeleine.
Madeleine's father, who has always looked so determined and been a key, firm
voice in the campaign to find her, looked shattered.
He did not say anything as he was caught in the flashlights of the waiting
press photographers and journalists.
He looked nauseous and started straight ahead as his lawyer, Carlos Pinto de
Abreu, read out a statement that said no charges had been brought and no bail
conditions had been set.
Earlier police accused Madeleine's mother Kate of killing her daughter
Madeleine and put her under intense pressure to confess.
In a day of extraordinary developments, detectives alleged that Mrs McCann
accidentally gave Madeleine a fatal overdose of sedative and then engaged with
her husband Gerry in a monumental cover-up of her death.
It also emerged that Mrs McCann had been offered a plea bargain deal - to
confess in exchange for a "light" sentence.
In an angry confrontation which lasted more than four hours at police
headquarters in Portimao, detectives finally demanded: "Tell us what
you've done with her."
The 39-year-old GP was asked to explain traces of her daughter's blood
allegedly found in the family's hired Renault Scenic car.
A friend revealed, Mrs McCann shook with rage and replied: "How dare you?
How dare you use emotional blackmail to make me confess something I didn't
do?"
Asked how her husband Gerry was taking this situation, the friend replied:
"How do you think a red-blooded Scottish male would react when defending
the honour of his wife?"
Police apparently believe Mrs McCann, rather than her husband, is their main
suspect because of a "scent of death" allegedly detected on her
clothes by sniffer dogs trained to find a corpse.
She was named during the afternoon as an "arguida" or official
suspect.
The McCanns have been under round-the-clock surveillance by Portuguese police
for more than a month, it emerged.
The covert operation was launched after suspicions grew that they could be
linked to the disappearance of their daughter.
Intimate conversations between the pair have been secretly listened to and
their movements tracked by investigators.
A British source added: "After a slow start, the police inquiry is a lot
more focused and professional.
"There is a great deal of co-operation between the Portuguese and British
police. There are likely to be further dramatic developments in the next few
days.
"A lot of people will be surprised by what else is going to come
out."
Dozens of British detectives have been drafted into the inquiry in recent
weeks. Sources said 55 officers were now working on the case.
It is believed they are carrying out urgent inquiries on behalf of the
Portuguese police into the background of the McCanns.
Investigators want to learn more about the state of their marriage, their
relationship and whether either of them are prone to losing their temper.
It can also be revealed that Portuguese police have been deliberately leaking
details of their inquiry to local media as part of an investigative strategy to
put more pressure on the McCanns in recent weeks.
It has never been established when Madeleine was last seen in public and it may
even be the case that she was alone with her family from earlier than 5pm.
Madeleine was photographed at the poolside that day at 2.29pm but there is no
evidence to suggest she was seen in public after that.
If a fatal accident had occurred some time that day, the McCanns could have had
more than three hours to hide or move the body and to plan their actions.
Mrs McCann's transformation from victim to suspect came in a whirlwind 24 hours
of drama.
There were chaotic scenes outside police headquarters in the town of
Police eventually closed off the road to traffic.
At 11.07am, Mrs McCann stepped out of a car driven by her spokesman Justine
McGuinness, only ten hours after she had left the police station at 12.55am.
There were ugly scenes with booing and jeering from some Portuguese onlookers.
But one British tourist shouted out: "We believe you Kate."
As with her first day of the interview on Wednesday, she had her lawyer Carlos
Pinto de Abreu present.
The second day of Mrs McCann's interview, 128 days since Madeleine vanished
from the family's holiday apartment in Praia da Luz, began with her being
officially informed she was no longer a witness but a suspect.
Detectives then put 22 key questions to her.
She was directly asked: "Did you kill your daughter?" and was so
taken aback she swore at detectives.
It is understood detectives had not asked her on Wednesday about the events of
May 3, but they did tell her traces of Madeleine's blood had been found in the
hire car.
At the second interview, they launched a more aggressive line of questioning,
accusing her of killing her daughter and then concocting an incredible
smokescreen by pretending she was abducted.
They suggested she had moved her daughter's body in the boot of the family's
hire car, and said police dogs had detected the smell of a corpse on her
T-shirt and jeans and on Madeleine's favourite toy Cuddle Cat.
Gerry McCann reported to the police station for his own questioning at 3.37pm,
seven minutes after detectives finished with his wife.
She was freed and returned to the couple's rented villa in Praia da Luz, where
she gave two-year-old twins Sean and Amelie an enormous hug. Later she called
on the local Anglican priest for prayers.
The McCanns, who have remained in the
As arguidos, they could be taken before a judge for restrictions to be placed
on their movements, they could be banned from leaving
Bewildered members of the McCanns' family in
Casting aside their usual diplomacy, they said police had botched the entire
investigation.
They raised questions such as why, if police think Madeleine was accidentally
given an overdose, there would be blood stains in the car, and how the McCanns
were supposed to have moved a body when the eyes of the world were on them.
There was also scepticism that a dog could accurately detect the scent of a
corpse after three months.
Gerry's sister Philomena McCann said: "We are furious, the utter
incompetence of the investigation has led to this, and all the while the
perpetrator of the crime is walking free and could possibly do this again.
"They were saying, 'Tell us what you did with her?' and Kate was like,
'You must be insane to think we'd put ourselves through this'."
She told ITV News: "They tried to get Kate to confess to having
accidentally killed Madeleine by offering her a deal through her lawyer.
"It was, 'If you say you killed Madeleine by accident and hid her and then
disposed of the body, we can guarantee you a two-year jail sentence or even
less. You may even get off earlier because people feel sorry for you. It was an
accident'."
• Two men stand to benefit directly from the Portuguese police decision to
focus their inquiry on Kate and Gerry McCann.
One is Robert Murat, the British expat named as the only official suspect over
Madeleine McCann's disappearance ten days after she vanished.
The other is publicist Max Clifford, who was last night preparing to market
Murat's story to the world's media.
Murat, 33, a sometime estate agent who lives with his mother 100 yards from the
McCanns' holiday apartment, fell under suspicion after he spent long hours with
police and journalists investigating the Madeleine mystery.
He helped officers translate, and asked increasingly probing questions of
reporters.
His home has been searched repeatedly, but nothing appears to have been found
to connect him with the missing child.
From the start he has protested his innocence.
A spokesman for Max Clifford said the publicist was preparing to represent
Murat to the media if Portuguese police declare his "arguido" status
has been lifted.
She said it was not yet decided if he would be asking for money to tell his
story.
www.dailymail.co.uk/pages...=1770&ct=5
Gerry McCann
Declared A Formal Suspect
Updated:
02:28, Saturday September 08, 2007
![]()
Gerry McCann has been declared an arguido, or formal suspect, by police
investigating the disappearance of his daughter Madeleine, his lawyer Carlos
Pinto de Abreu has said.
Both the parents of missing Madeleine McCann are now formal suspects in her
disappearance.
Kate McCann was named an "arguida" on Friday morning before
undergoing questioning during which she was asked if she accidentally killed
her daughter.
No charges have been brought against Madeleine's parents and no bail conditions
have been imposed, their lawyer said.
Gerry McCann left the Portimao police station after being quizzed by detectives
amid fears his wife will be charged with killing their daughter.
He walked out of the regional headquarters of the Policia Judiciaria -
Earlier his wife Kate endured being asked directly by detectives whether she
accidentally killed Madeleine.
Portuguese detectives appear to be working on the theory that Mrs McCann killed
her daughter by accident and covered up the death by claiming she was abducted.
Test results from the Forensic Science Service in
Detectives offered her a "deal" - a guaranteed jail sentence of no
more than two years - if she confessed to accidentally killing her daughter, Mr
McCann's sister Philomena McCann said yesterday.
Mr McCann's alleged role is not clear, but sources said police believe he was
an accessory to the killing.
Family and friends of the McCanns dismissed any suggestion Mrs McCann could
have been involved in Madeleine's disappearance on May 3 as
"ridiculous".
It is not uncommon for people caught up in criminal investigations in
Until today, police have always stressed that the McCanns were being spoken to
as witnesses.
The latest developments have upset the McCanns' plans to return to their home
in Rothley, Leicestershire, with their two-year-old twins Sean and Amelie on
Sunday.
news.sky.com/skynews/arti...78,00.html
Kate McCann:
The claims and case for defence
By
Gordon Rayner, Chief Reporter
Last Updated: 2:07am BST 08/09/2007
Salacious reports of blood spots, intercepted phone calls and child sedation so
far have been dismissed as nothing more than libellous slurs by the McCann
family.
Now there is the very real prospect that Kate McCann be charged and tried over
Madeleine's disappearance.
But any suggestion that Mrs McCann accidentally killed her daughter by some
unknown means, then hid her body for almost a month before disposing of it
using a hire car, is not only vigorously denied by the family but raises more
questions than answers.
Traces of dried blood, said to be Madeleine's, have allegedly been found in a
car hired by the McCanns 25 days after Madeleine's disappearance.
The blood is said to have been found in the boot of the Renault Scenic hire car
after sniffer dogs were brought in by British police as part of a review of the
investigation.
Tests by the Forensic Science Service in
Unsubstantiated reports in one Portuguese newspaper claimed the dogs also
detected 'the strong scent of a corpse' on the keys to the car. The same dogs
found blood spots in the McCanns' apartment, which were later found not to be
Madeleine's.
There were also reports that the dogs had picked up a trail on a beach near
Praia da Luz, leading to speculation that a body had been dumped at sea.
Then last month there were speculative claims that the McCanns, both doctors,
may have 'doped' Madeleine to get her off to sleep before they set off for
dinner at a tapas bar near the apartment.
There were reports today that the police were questioning Mrs McCann about
giving Madeleine a dose of a sedative.
Portuguese newspapers also claimed that police had 'intercepted' phone calls
and emails between the McCanns and their friends.
Throughout the investigation police found no forensic evidence of an intruder
in the McCanns' apartment, and there were no consistent witness accounts of a
suspect being seen near the apartment at the relevant time, reinforcing the
theory that no-one else was involved.
The case for the defence
Mrs McCann's lawyers will already have identified several huge holes in the
theory that she could have killed Madeleine.
How, for example, could she have killed her daughter, removed her body from the
apartment and hidden it while her friends sat just yards away in a tapas bar?
And how, four weeks later, was one of the most watched women in the world able
to bundle a body into a hire car and dispose of it under the noses of her
family, police liaison officers and the world's press?
Nor have the police offered any suggestions so far as to how Madeleine may have
died - something they will be unable to do unless her body is found.
The McCanns were among a party of nine people on the day Madeleine disappeared,
in a resort full of tourists, and were never away from their friends for more
than a few minutes at a time.
It would surely have been impossible for Mrs McCann to kill her daughter and
hide the body in such a short space of time without being seen, not to mention
returning to the restaurant as if nothing had happened.
The only other window of opportunity would have been in the two and half hours
between the time when Madeleine was last seen alive and when the couple met
their friends for dinner.
Again, is it really possible that Mrs McCann could have killed her daughter,
hidden her body and shown no signs of anxiety? Where was her husband Gerry at
the time?
Most implausible of all, perhaps, is the suggestion that Mrs McCann returned to
the place where she had hidden the body a month later, put it in the boot of
her hire car and driven somewhere to dispose of the body.
Ever since Madeleine's disappearance the McCanns have been surrounded by
friends and family, police officers and the media - are we to believe that she
somehow gave them all the slip and buried her daughter or threw her out to sea?
Furthermore, could she really have gone through 127 days of constant interviews
and media exposure without once showing any signs of guilt?
On a procedural level, a catalogue of blunders by the police, who failed to
seal off the crime scene, would be likely to render any forensic evidence
unreliable.
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/...ddy807.xml
Parents of
Missing British Girl Madeleine McCann Want to Leave Portugal
Saturday,
September 08, 2007
PRAIA DA LUZ, Portugal — The parents of missing 4-year-old Madeleine McCann
are keen to leave Portugal as soon as possible and return to Britain to clear
their names after Portuguese police named them as suspects in their daughter's
disappearance, a family friend said Saturday.
Clarence Mitchell said father Gerry McCann told him that he and his wife
expected clarification of their legal status within 48 hours. Their lawyer said
late Friday that police had declared the parents suspects in the May 3
disappearance.
"They are in broad agreement that they should get out as soon as they
can," Mitchell told The Associated Press by telephone from
Mitchell said Kate and Gerry McCann had previously intended to leave southern
"They are determined to prove this is a travesty ... and clear their
names," Mitchell said of the police allegations about their possible
involvement.
The police decision to name the parents as suspects brought a dramatic twist in
the four-month-old case. Their ordeal has drawn attention around the world,
partly because of an international campaign they have run to find their
daughter.
Mitchell said the McCanns, both doctors from central
The McCanns' Portuguese lawyer, Carlos Pinto Abreu, said police have not
brought charges against them and that the investigation was continuing.
British media quoted unnamed friends of the McCanns as saying the couple were
keen to return to
The McCanns have strenuously professed their innocence, and relatives said
police should reveal what, if any, evidence there is against them.
"If this is what it takes to speed up the process of absolutely
exonerating Gerry and Kate, let's get on with it," Gerry's brother John
McCann told British Broadcasting Corp. radio. "I hope the police can move
quickly, bring whatever evidence they have got and discuss with Gerry and Kate
why they think what they think."
Until Friday, suspicion had focused on a British man who lived near the hotel
from which Madeleine disappeared and who was the only formal suspect. But
police said new forensic tests done on evidence gathered months after the girl
vanished found traces of blood in the couple's car, according to Justine
McGuinness, a spokeswoman for the family.
The new evidence -- including the traces of blood missed in earlier forensic
tests -- was uncovered by sniffer dogs brought from
The McCanns have strenuously professed their innocence.
Kate McCann underwent two straight days of interrogation at a police station in
southern
The girl's aunt said that during the questioning of Kate McCann police
suggested Madeleine might have been killed accidentally and offered the mother
a plea deal if she confessed.
"They tried to get her to confess to having accidentally killed Madeleine
by offering her a deal through her lawyer -- 'If you say you killed Madeleine
by accident and then hid her and disposed of the body, then we can guarantee
you a two-year jail sentence or even less,"' Gerry McCann's sister,
Philomena, told ITV news on Friday.
A police spokesman, Olegario Sousa, confirmed to The Associated Press that
police had named a new suspect, but would not say it was Mrs. McCann. He cited
privacy laws in declining to comment further. He could not be reached for
comment Saturday on the McCanns' apparent desire to leave
The McCanns said they were dining with friends in a hotel restaurant when
Madeleine vanished. Their daughter was in their hotel room with her twin
2-year-old siblings, and the parents said they returned frequently to check on
them.
Since then, the McCanns have toured Europe with photos of Madeleine and the
child's stuffed animals and clothing, even meeting with Pope Benedict XVI at
the
The only formal suspect until now has been Robert Murat, who lives with his
mother near the hotel from which the girl disappeared. He has always maintained
his innocence. Sousa said Murat's status as a suspect had not changed.
www.foxnews.com/story/0,2...50,00.html
BBC NEWS UK
Madeleine parents
'will fight on'
Saturday, 8 September 2007
Madeleine McCann's parents plan to stay in Portugal to prove their innocence
after being named official suspects in the case, friends have told the BBC.
Jon Corner said Gerry and Kate McCann, both 39, were determined the search for
their daughter would not be "derailed".
The four-year-old disappeared from the family's holiday apartment in Praia da
Luz in
Earlier, a family spokesman said police believed Mrs McCann, of Rothley, Leics,
had killed Madeleine accidentally.
'Intimidatory' questioning
No bail conditions, travel restrictions or charges have been imposed on the
couple, who had been questioned separately for more than 24 hours.
Mr McCann was officially given "arguido" status 12 hours after his
wife.
The move allows the authorities to put certain questions to Mr and Mrs McCann,
and also gives them the right to remain silent.
The couple have opted to stay in
Philomena McCann said her brother Mr McCann "doesn't want it to look as if
they are running away".
Mr Corner said: "I spoke to Gerry in the early hours this morning and he
wasn't surprised that he was named as an official suspect.
"The process of questioning I think is designed to be intimidatory, but
Gerry is frustrated by the line of questioning and where the inquiry is going.
"But he's also fighting and I think he's determined that the search for
Madeleine is not going to be derailed by this."
Quick closure
Mr Corner said the developments pointed to the "mindset of the Portuguese
police".
"Clearly, they're not investigating or doing the detective work to find
Madeleine," he said.
"They're actually looking for a very quick, clean closure on the case, and
that means turning their focus into the family."
The BBC understands that the police put it to Mrs McCann that she was somehow
responsible for the accidental death of Madeleine inside the apartment.
They went on to say that with the help of her husband she then hid the body
temporarily and then moved it later using the couple's hire car.
The McCanns vehemently deny such claims.
Mrs McCann's uncle Brian Kennedy said: "The notion that even accidentally
they killed their daughter, hid her body, then put her body in a car hired 25
days later while the glare of the international publicity is on them, and when
they are always with friends and family, is fatuous beyond words.
"I just find the notion repulsive."
Set
sentence
Mr Corner had previously said Mrs McCann had told him officers had tried to
"cut her a deal" where she would serve only two years in jail if she
confessed.
But Portugal-based British journalist Paul Luckman told the BBC that under
Portuguese law there is a set sentence for each crime which not even a judge
can change.
He said it would be simply not possible for the police to make such a deal.
Local lawyer Oliveira Trindade said: "Legally, if the prosecutor has
enough evidence they have to charge the arguidos within the next 10 days.
"If they don't have enough evidence the investigation will continue."
TV crews and photographers, who had been camped outside the police station in
Portimao, have moved on to the McCanns' rented house in Praia da Luz.
Mr and Mrs McCann called off plans to attend a service at the village
news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/6984781.stm
The Daily Mail
The
three crucial hours before the alarm was raised that Madeleine was missing
By
NEIL SEARS
Last updated at 15:30pm on 8th September 2007
The three hours before Madeleine was reported missing at 10pm on May 3 are now
at the heart of the police inquiry.
Kate and Gerry McCann have never publicly revealed their exact movements over
that evening, saying this is barred by
For the same reason, the Portuguese police have disclosed virtually nothing
about their understanding of what happened - whereas British detectives would
probably have publicised any details likely to encourage witnesses to come
forward.
But based on reports and statements from other parties, it is possible to say
with some accuracy what seems to have happened in those fateful hours before
Madeleine went missing.
Doctors Gerry and Kate McCann were nearing the end of their Mark Warner holiday
in Praia da Luz.
As had become their custom, they had put their three children to bed in their
flat at 7pm before going to a nearby tapas bar half an hour later.
They did not use a listening device to monitor their twins Sean and Amelie,
two, and Madeleine, three.
But as they were sitting no more than 70 yards from the rear door of their
ground-floor flat, they felt confident that their established childcare
arrangements were sufficient.
With them at dinner were the seven friends from
Each couple were responsible for checking their own children, but other members
of the group occasionally took turns to check all the children were sleeping
soundly.
It is unclear what happened between 7.30pm and and 9pm, but Mr McCann has said
that he went on a checking trip at 9.05pm - and noticed a door which he thought
had been left shut in the flat was ajar.
He thought nothing of it, however, as his children were fast asleep.
Another member of the group, Jane Tanner, took a turn around ten minutes later.
She has told police that as she returned to the bar she saw a dark-haired man
aged around 35 carrying a child. Again, she thought nothing of it.
Then, at 9.45pm, Dr Matthew Oldfield went on a checking trip.
It has been speculated some of the checks did not involve the group actually
seeing the sleeping children, but that they simply listened from outside.
There have been claims that Dr Oldfield either simply listened at the McCann
children's bedroom door or that he looked into the room and believed he saw
Madeleine there.
According to the latter claim, he is also said to have reported that light was
coming in as if the shutters had been opened.
Finally, at 10pm Mrs McCann went to check - and within seconds had emerged
screaming that her daughter had gone.
She is understood to have been certain that Madeleine had been taken, rather
than that she had wandered off, or hidden, because her favourite soft toy,
Cuddle Cat, which had been with her in bed, had been placed on a high ledge.
That is as close to the McCann group's statements to the police as it is
possible to get.
And it is clear that by this account there are a number of windows of
opportunity in which Madeleine could have been whisked away - either by an
abductor, or, according to the theory Portuguese police are seemingly
exploring, by her own family after a terrible accident.
It has already been suggested that other statements have clashed with the
accounts of the McCanns and their friends.
One tapas bar worker suggested that only one man in the group left their table
all evening. And a teacher who went to chat with the McCanns that night claimed
that no one left the table between 9.30 and 10pm.
A further detail from the evening is that the McCanns' friend Dr Russell O'Brien,
36, is understood to have left the table at some time after 9pm, to attend to
his own ill daughter.
It has been widely assumed the McCanns had either been stalked by a kidnapper
who observed their behaviour and knew when to strike, or that a chance attacker
saw an opportunity and seized it.
But the Portuguese police now evidently believe that clarifying exactly what
happened in the hours before Madeleine disappeared could offer a startlingly
different solution.
www.dailymail.co.uk/pages...=1770&ct=5
Daily Mail
Kate McCann 'fears she
will be charged today' as police push for confession
By SAM GREENHILL and STEPHEN WRIGHT
Last updated at 15:30pm on 8th September 2007
As Madeleine's parents are named as suspects, police ask Kate:
•Why was her blood in your car?
•Did you drug her that night?
•Confess and get just two years
Kate McCann fears she will now be charged over her daughter's death after
Portuguese police accused her directly of killing Madeleine.
Police have now declared both Kate and Gerry McCann as formal suspects in the
disappearance of the four-year-old.
Detectives alleged that Mrs McCann accidentally gave Madeleine a fatal overdose
of sedatives.
They claimed she then engaged with her husband in a monumental cover-up.
It's emerged today that Mrs McCann had been offered a plea bargain deal - to
confess in exchange for a 'light' sentence of perhaps, only two years.
In an angry confrontation which lasted more than four hours at police
headquarters in Portimao, detectives finally demanded: 'Tell us what you've
done with her.'
The 39-year-old GP was asked to explain traces of her daughter's blood
allegedly found in the family's hired Renault Scenic car.
Police apparently believe Mrs McCann, rather than her husband Gerry, is their
main suspect because of a 'scent of death' allegedly detected on her clothes by
sniffer dogs trained to find a corpse.
Gerry did not say anything as he was caught in the flashlights of the waiting
press photographers and journalists.
He looked nauseous and started straight ahead as his lawyer, Carlos Pinto de
Abreu, read out a statement that said no charges had been brought and no bail
conditions had been set.
The McCanns' spokesman David Hughes refused to say whether the McCanns would
now be leaving
However, friends of the couple said they were free to do so and could head home
in the next few days as they had planned.
A friend revealed that the 39-year-old GP shook with rage and replied:
"How dare you? How dare you use emotional blackmail to make me confess
something I didn't do?"
Asked how her husband was taking this situation, the friend replied: "How
do you think a red-blooded Scottish male would react when defending the honour
of his wife?"
As she was speaking Mr McCann was in the police station facing similar
questions. Mr Hughes said he did not know exactly what questions he had been
asked but understood they were along the same lines as those posed to his wife.
Police apparently believe Mrs McCann, rather than her husband, is their main
suspect because of a "scent of death" allegedly detected on her
clothes by sniffer dogs trained to find a corpse.
She was named during the afternoon as an "arguida" or official
suspect.
The McCanns have been under round-the-clock surveillance by Portuguese police
for more than a month, it emerged.
The covert operation was launched after suspicions grew that they could be
linked to the disappearance of their daughter.
Intimate conversations between the pair have been secretly listened to and
their movements tracked by investigators.
A British source added: "After a slow start, the police inquiry is a lot
more focused and professional.
"There is a great deal of co-operation between the Portuguese and British
police. There are likely to be further dramatic developments in the next few
days.
"A lot of people will be surprised by what else is going to come
out."
Dozens of British detectives have been drafted into the inquiry in recent
weeks. Sources said 55 officers were now working on the case.
It is believed they are carrying out urgent inquiries on behalf of the
Portuguese police into the background of the McCanns.
Investigators want to learn more about the state of their marriage, their
relationship and whether either of them are prone to losing their temper.
It can also be revealed that Portuguese police have been deliberately leaking
details of their inquiry to local media as part of an investigative strategy to
put more pressure on the McCanns in recent weeks.
It has never been established when Madeleine was last seen in public and it may
even be the case that she was alone with her family from earlier than 5pm.
Madeleine was photographed at the poolside that day at 2.29pm but there is no
evidence to suggest she was seen in public after that.
If a fatal accident had occurred some time that day, the McCanns could have had
more than three hours to hide or move the body and to plan their actions.
Mrs McCann's transformation from victim to suspect came in a whirlwind 24 hours
of drama.
There were chaotic scenes outside police headquarters in the town of
Police eventually closed off the road to traffic.
At 11.07am, Mrs McCann stepped out of a car driven by her spokesman Justine
McGuinness, only ten hours after she had left the police station at 12.55am.
There were ugly scenes with booing and jeering from some Portuguese onlookers.
But one British tourist shouted out: "We believe you Kate."
As with her first day of the interview on Wednesday, she had her lawyer Carlos
Pinto de Abreu present.
The second day of Mrs McCann's interview, 128 days since Madeleine vanished
from the family's holiday apartment in Praia da Luz, began with her being
officially informed she was no longer a witness but a suspect.
Detectives then put 22 key questions to her.
She was directly asked: "Did you kill your daughter?" and was so taken
aback she swore at detectives.
It is understood detectives had not asked her on Wednesday about the events of
May 3, but they did tell her traces of Madeleine's blood had been found in the
hire car.
At the second interview they launched a more aggressive line of questioning,
accusing her of killing her daughter and then concocting an incredible
smokescreen by pretending she was abducted.
They suggested she had moved her daughter's body in the boot of the family's
hire car, and said police dogs had detected the smell of a corpse on her
T-shirt and jeans and on Madeleine's favourite toy Cuddle Cat.
Mr McCann reported to the police station for his own questioning at 3.37pm,
seven minutes after detectives finished with his wife.
She was freed and returned to the couple's rented villa in Praia da Luz, where
she gave two-year-old twins Sean and Amelie an enormous hug. Later she called
on the local Anglican priest for prayers.
The McCanns, who have remained in the
As arguidos, they could be taken before a judge for restrictions to be placed
on their movements, they could be banned from leaving
Bewildered members of the McCanns' family in
Casting aside their usual diplomacy, they said police had botched the entire
investigation.
They raised questions such as why, if police think Madeleine was accidentally
given an overdose, there would be blood stains in the car, and how the McCanns
were supposed to have moved a body when the eyes of the world were on them.
There was also scepticism that a dog could accurately detect the scent of a
corpse after three months.
Gerry's sister Philomena McCann said: "We are furious, the utter
incompetence of the investigation has led to this, and all the while the
perpetrator of the crime is walking free and could possibly do this again.
"They were saying, 'Tell us what you did with her?' and Kate was like,
'You must be insane to think we'd put ourselves through this'."
She told ITV News: "They tried to get Kate to confess to having
accidentally killed Madeleine by offering her a deal through her lawyer.
"It was, 'If you say you killed Madeleine by accident and hid her and then
disposed of the body, we can guarantee you a two-year jail sentence or even
less. You may even get off earlier because people feel sorry for you. It was an
accident'."
• Two men stand to benefit directly from the Portuguese police decision to
focus their inquiry on Kate and Gerry McCann.
One is Robert Murat, the British expat named as the only official suspect over
Madeleine McCann's disappearance ten days after she vanished.
The other is publicist Max Clifford, who was last night preparing to market
Murat's story to the world's media.
Murat, 33, a sometime estate agent who lives with his mother 100 yards from the
McCanns' holiday apartment, fell under suspicion after he spent long hours with
police and journalists investigating the Madeleine mystery.
He helped officers translate, and asked increasingly probing questions of
reporters.
His home has been searched repeatedly, but nothing appears to have been found
to connect him with the missing child.
From the start he has protested his innocence.
A spokesman for Max Clifford said the publicist was preparing to represent
Murat to the media if Portuguese police declare his "arguido" status
has been lifted.
She said it was not yet decided if he would be asking for money to tell his
story.
www.dailymail.co.uk/pages...=1770&ct=5
I know how
Kate feels - it happened to me when my daughter vanished
By
ANNE ATKINS
Last updated at 23:46pm on 8th September 2007
IMAGE 4
"You do realise, don't you," my husband Shaun said to me, "that
they're looking for the body?" There was a slight pause. "And we are
the Number One suspects."
For me, the latest developments in Praia de Luz bring back dreadful memories of
when our daughter went missing ten years ago.
Our ordeal did not last for nearly so long, nor was she at nearly so tender an
age as Madeleine.
But we, too, had to see our private agony turned into a public search; to stand
back and watch the police do their job.
And to know that if they were to do it properly, they had to think the
unthinkable - that we might have murdered (and hidden) our own child.
So I can begin to imagine the dreadful strain Mrs McCann must be going through.
First, there is the shock of realising the police think your child may not just
be lost.
When on the Sunday lunchtime I rang them to report her missing - we thought she
had been staying with friends - I apologised for being a fussy mother.
They were round in ten minutes to scour her room and within the hour there were
heat-seeking helicopters looking for the body.
We managed to keep relatively calm until it was dark. Then the forensic team
came around with the alsatians to search every inch of our large
That was when Shaun, whose father had been a policeman, told me what they were
looking for, and why.
After a couple of hours, they departed, almost without a word, leaving a
silent, burly PC to spend the night. We needed his quiet, friendly presence
because by then, we had given up all hope.
If the police thought our daughter was murdered, then she was dead, for sure.
The following morning dozens of photographers crowded into our sitting room. I
was trying to pull myself together to face them.
I can detect in Kate McCann the determination to present a brave front to the
cameras, not to let them see her howling in agony as her husband holds her in
his arms.
But the latest twist from
Not only were they compassionate, but they were consummate professionals.
Of course it was frightening to realise they accepted the possibility we had
killed her, but we knew this had to investigated immediately. Then they could
get on with the business of finding her.
Of course, they continued as professional as ever. When they got leads they
didn't tell us immediately, so as not to raise our hopes.
And when they found her, alive and safe near a cemetery in Hammersmith, just
two miles away, they quietly ensured our daughter was not coming home to a
problem.
Then they melted away. We sensed how thrilled they were. But they never, ever,
let their personal feelings interfere with their job.
They had well practised procedures and they followed them. And that was how
they found her.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/liv...n_page_id=1770
From The Sunday Times
September 9, 2007
Police video clue to
Madeleine mystery
Steve Swinford in Praia da Luz, Mark Macaskill and Jon Ungoed-Thomas
PORTUGUESE police tried to pressurise Kate McCann into admitting killing
her daughter Madeleine by repeatedly showing her video footage of sniffer dogs
allegedly finding the scent of a body in the family's hire car.
During 16 hours of interrogation she was shown the footage of the dogs
clambering over the Renault ScŽnic car in the hope that she would break down
and confess. She was yesterday said to be distraught and exhausted by the
ordeal.
The dogs' reaction was a key reason why the police suspect her of killing
Madeleine. Officers told Kate they had found her daughter's DNA in the car even
though it was hired three weeks after her disappearance.
Kate and her husband Gerry are said to be mortified that the investigation team
— with whom they have co-operated throughout — have apparently turned against
them. "We are being absolutely stitched up," Gerry told a friend.
"We are completely f*****. We should have seen this coming weeks ago and
gone back to
Police hoped to force a confession from Kate after she was formally declared a
suspect on Friday and subjected to further questioning.
Jon Corner, a friend of the family, said: "They kept coming back to the
hire car and kept showing Kate the video of sniffer dogs. They also told her
that Madeleine's DNA was found in the car."
Another friend said: "The suggestion being put to Kate was that if she had
somehow killed Madeleine in an accident, then used a hire car to dispose of the
body three weeks later, she should confess and the judge would look at it in a
lenient light and offer three to four years in jail. It's absolute
nonsense."
As it emerged that the family are considering approaching David Miliband, the
foreign secretary, Portuguese detectives last night faced questions about the
value of the evidence which they hoped would force Kate to break down. The
family claim it is ambiguous and flawed.
They were supported by British forensic scientists who have also been surprised
by aspects of the investigation. They said that the rental car — still in the
possession of the McCanns — would have been automatically impounded as a
central piece of evidence if it was a British police inquiry. The family point
out that Kate has carried Cuddle Cat, Madeleine's soft toy, since her
disappearance, which could explain the presence of her DNA in the rental car.
British forensic experts also said that footage of agitated dogs would be of
limited value in the law courts.
A Leicestershire police official is said to have told Gerry that the sniffer
dog alone was not sufficient to consider someone a suspect, but was usually
used as a basis for further intelligence gathering.
The Portuguese investigation team will face severe criticism from the McCanns'
family and friends if it stakes its case solely on its forensic work. "The
crime scene was completely desecrated after Madeleine's disappearance,"
said Philomena McCann, Gerry's sister.
"Literally hundreds of people went in that apartment after Madeleine was
abducted. It was pandemonium. It was at least two days before any sort of
fingerprinting was done."
The police are unlikely to change the focus of their investigation. Portuguese
newspapers were yesterday reporting that Kate was suspected of homicide,
negligence and "preventing the corpse from being found". According to
the reports, one police theory is that Kate accidentally gave Madeleine a fatal
dose of sedatives. It has been strenuously denied by representatives of the
McCanns that they gave any of their children sedatives. There was also
speculation that Kate could face charges within a few days. Despite the threat
of an impending prosecution, the McCanns are now anxious to return home. A
court could put restrictions on their movements and the couple have said they
will not leave without consulting the police.
"They really miss Madeleine and they really want everyone to concentrate
on the fact that she is still missing," said a friend. "They feel
that after the events of the past few days no one is carrying on with the
search." The McCanns have been liaising with the Foreign Office in the
hope that Miliband would be able to obtain more information on the state of the
police inquiry.
Miliband said yesterday: "Firstly we must remember above all else that
this is about a missing girl. Secondly, obviously we have been and will
continue to give extensive consular support to the family. And thirdly, in
respect of the independent judicial process, we must let that take its
course."
The declaration of the couple as suspects will raise questions about the future
care of the two-year-old twins if they are charged. It is understood that other
members of the family would act as guardians if the authorities moved to take
custody of the twins.
Kate and Gerry were interviewed by police on Thursday and Friday after
detectives are thought to have obtained the results of tests conducted by
the Forensic Science Service in
Hugh White, a Home Office pathologist, said he could not understand why the car
was held by the police for just two days. "In this country the car would
have been stripped down into tiny pieces and the forensics team would be
crawling all over it," he said. Other forensic scientists said the
information revealed so far was far from conclusive. Keith Borer, a retired
forensic scientist, said: "What they seem to have found makes good
questions for a police interview, but evidentially it seems pretty weak."
www.timesonline.co.uk/tol...414735.ece
McCanns Flying Home In Next Few Hours
Updated:
02:50, Sunday September 09, 2007
The parents of missing Madeleine McCann are to fly back to Britain from
Portugal in a few hours time.
Sky News Crime Correspondent Martin Brunt says: "The McCanns are reverting
to their original plan to fly home to Leicestershire on a flight at 09.30.
"That plan, of course, had been thrown into disarray by them being
declared suspects.
"They have been clarifying their position and they have been told they are
allowed to go.
"It appears a deal has been struck - the authorities are satisfied that
Kate and Gerry McCann will return to
The McCanns' spokesman confirmed the plans in a statement, saying: "Kate
and Gerry will be returning home to the
"It is emphasised that their return is with the full agreement of the
Portuguese authorities and police."
The McCanns have no bail conditions attached to their arguido, or formal
suspect, status and retain their passports.
Earlier, Madeleine's aunt said the couple had been worried that a return would
appear that they are running scared.
Philomena McCann, who spoke to her brother Gerry after he was questioned by
detectives, said: "(Gerry) doesn't want it to look as if they are running
away, because that is nonsense."
Police changed the couple's status from witnesses to suspects after questioning
them separately at Portimao police station.
Sources close to the family say detectives believe the two doctors may be
responsible for the four-year-old's death - a suggestion rubbished by the
McCanns' friends and family.
Meanwhile, a friend of the only other official suspect in the investigation,
Robert Murat, has said he expected to be formally cleared soon.
news.sky.com/skynews/arti...16,00.html
Madeleine
search: How did it come to this?
By Olga Craig
Last Updated: 1:38am BST 09/09/2007Page 1 of 3
Kate and Gerry McCann, admired around the world for their courageous
search for missing daughter Madeleine, have been named as suspects in the case
of her disappearance. Olga Craig tracks the couple's desperate four-month
ordeal
As Kate and Gerry McCann trudged, hand-in-hand with heads bowed, through the
narrow cobblestone streets of Praia da Luz towards the town's tiny, whitewashed
church of Our Lady of the Light, en route to 11am Mass on the morning of
Sunday, May 5, crowds of onlookers stood in silent sympathy.
Only two days before, the couple's eldest child, blonde, bewitching
three-year-old Madeleine, had vanished from their holiday apartment, seemingly
abducted from her bedroom while she slept, tucked between her twin siblings, in
the sleepy
Already, shockwaves were reverberating around the world.
Here before them, was the distraught, stumbling young mother whose name was now
synonymous with the searing heartache of maternal loss.
As the McCanns drew nearer to the church, the quiet murmurings of grief, of
sympathy and pity for a mother who clutched Cuddle Cat, her child's favourite
toy, to her chest and was so clearly clinging to the belief that within days
Madeleine would be found, swelled.
Spontaneously, the few supportive claps became a crescendo.
Holiday-makers and locals enveloped the couple, stroking Kate's face, clapping
Gerry's back, pressing flowers and green and yellow ribbons into their hands.
Their message was clear: we are with you, we will support you, we will comfort
you as we would our own.
Four months on, almost to the day, how astonishingly, almost unbelievably,
things have changed.
On the morning of September 7, again, shortly before 11am, Kate McCann once
more walked through the Portuguese crowds swarming the pavement, this time to
face an 11-hour grilling by police, who were waiting to ask her: Did you kill
your daughter?
This time there was no cheering support, no rousing reception.
Instead the low, slow sound of hissing, then jeers and the escalating angry
cat-calls of: "How could you? What mother could do this?"
Only one lone voice, that of an English holiday-maker, shouted: "We
believe you Kate."
It must have been scant comfort to Madeleine's mother, now painfully thin and
wan-faced, as she walked trance-like into the Portimao police headquarters.
Today Kate McCann, and Gerry, both 39, are no longer deemed, by Portuguese
police at least, the tragic victims of a heinous and heartless crime: they now
face the finger of vile suspicion as the chief suspects in the disappearance of
their daughter - of whom there has been not a single sighting since the evening
she vanished.
Page 2 of 3
That the McCanns, initially, evoked sympathy and compassion worldwide is
without doubt.
The great and good, from the Pope to the British Prime Minister, from David
Beckham to pop stars, have pledged their support, using their status and
celebrity to highlight the compelling and sorrowful story of Madeleine's
abduction, which has topped the news agenda for three months.
In the intervening time, the couple have been feted and applauded across the
world, saluted for their relentless FindMadeleine campaign - which has raised
more than £1 million - and the stoic courage they have shown as the lacklustre
Portuguese police inquiry, punctuated by bumbling inefficiency and the most
basic of flaws, lumbered slowly along.
Then, three weeks ago, the tide seemed to turn. When Robert Murat, the
British-born suspect, angrily suggested those "bloody McCanns" should
return home, he was not, this time, a lone voice.
The Portuguese media had already been revelling in lurid headlines suggesting
that the couple were "swingers" who indulged in wife-swapping, had
drunk 14 bottles of wine along with their seven friends on the night Madeleine
vanished, had not been nearly so vigilant about checking on their children on
the evening of May 3 as they claimed and were under intense scrutiny by police,
who now believed Madeleine was dead.
The idea that something was awry finally seemed to be taking root in the
public's consciousness.
Increasingly, the McCanns seemed isolated. Even though the Portuguese police
investigation was riddled with flaws, more and more people began to question
the family's version of events.
Gnawing, often unspoken, doubts festered.
When the Portuguese media insisted that its allegations were not based on
wildly imaginative speculation, but were the result of secret briefings by
police moles, they had largely been dismissed.
Now, however, the public grudgingly gave them more and more credence.
On Friday, we discovered why. Those veiled innuendoes and lurid allegations, it
became clear, were indeed based on the Portuguese police's suspicions.
Suspicions they had most likely leaked to their own country's media, possibly
in the hope of rattling the McCanns and encouraging them to change their story.
And those suspicions were based on scientific evidence, albeit evidence that
the Portuguese themselves had spectacularly missed or failed to seek out and
which was revealed only after they finally allowed British police, who possess
much more sophisticated equipment and methods, to become involved.
In the past two days, events have switched. Why, Portuguese police want to
know, did the McCanns hire a car five weeks after Madeleine's disappearance and
one day before they flew to
How did traces of Madeleine's blood come to be found on the window and under
the sofa of
Why were traces of Madeleine's bodily fluids discovered in the car?
Page 3 of 3
Why had sniffer dogs smelled the scent of a corpse on Kate McCann's jeans and
T-shirt and on Cuddle Cat, Madeleine's favourite toy which Mrs McCann twists
obsessively through her trembling fingers as her last tangible link with
Madeleine?
Did you sedate your daughter, accidentally overdose her and then panic and
dispose of the body, they want to know.
And while there can be no doubt that the majority of people believe the McCanns
to be entirely innocent, and that the allegations are, in the words of
Philomena McCann, Gerry's aunt, "ludicrous and utterly untrue", the
public, too, has pressing questions: Have the McCanns cynically manipulated a
gullible public that was all too willing to believe their heartbreaking story
of how their cherished child disappeared?
Was their carefully orchestrated and sophisticated campaign, that included
jetting across the world on fact-finding missions and high-profile press
events, merely a smoke screen for what could be one of the most audacious and
clever cover-ups?
In the early days of May no one could have imagined such a scenario.
Day after day, as the McCanns left their apartment at 9am to walk Sean and
Amelie to the Mark Warner creche, they appeared more and more pitiable.
They embraced media involvement, believing publicity was their best weapon.
"We are waging a war, a strategic campaign," Gerry told me in the
couple's first face-to-face interview with a British Sunday national newspaper.
That day, the first time I had spoken at length to the couple, there seemed no
reason to doubt their story of how they had put their three children to bed at
7pm and then dined at a tapas bar, checking at half-hour intervals.
Yes, I had niggling suspicions. It was true, I suggested gently, that while
they had dined within the safe confines of the Mark Warner resort, behind
security staffed gates, their children were left alone in a ground-floor
apartment seven to eight minutes away, on the main road.
And when I, apologetically, asked my two final questions, prefacing them
delicately with the explanation that I had, as a journalist, no option but to
ask, Kate became very edgy.
When I queried their decision to ignore the various baby-sitting services, Kate
mumbled something about not wanting "to leave them with strangers".
When I asked why they left the patio doors and windows unlocked, she stood up
and walked off. Understandably, they were distressing questions. Nevertheless,
she was unwilling to address them.
Kate McCann, whom I was convinced, without a doubt, was incapable of harming a
hair upon her child's head and was, truly, a distraught and heart-broken
mother, did come across as detached, a little cold.
Only through lengthy gentle coaxing would she talk of her emotions. But, I
reasoned, too much could be read into that.
Joanne Lees, initially suspected of the murder of her boyfriend Peter Falconio,
suffered vilification simply because she did not wear her heart on her sleeve.
She was, as was later proved, innocent.
When Kate was asked a difficult question she sat in silence, leaving the
response to Gerry.
He, more gregarious by nature, could be slightly arrogant. It was easily
explained by his natural desire to be doing something positive and his
professional training as a highly skilled cardiologist, accustomed to
controlling situations. Yet it was mildly disconcerting.
In those initial weeks, I also witnessed the Portuguese police's shambolic
inquiry.
I noted the four Alsatian sniffer dogs penned in cages in the sweltering sun
while their handlers scoured the seafront shops for souvenirs instead of
seeking evidence; I observed too their failure to close the border between
Portugal and Spain for 12 hours after Madeleine vanished and the paucity of
their apparent evidence against Robert Murat, who appeared to be guilty only of
having a strange manner and a nosy desire to be at the heart of the case.
Although Portuguese police insisted that there was no paedophile ring operating
in the country, their British counterparts revealed that 130 such criminals had
travelled to
Casa Liliano, the villa shared by Mr Murat and his mother, Jenny, about 100
yards from the McCann's apartment, was searched twice, its grounds dug up.
His computers were scoured and his links with the somewhat elusive Russian,
Sergey Malinka, and Malinka's mysterious on-off girlfriend Michaela, were
trawled through.
But while Mr Murat became the sole suspect, no charges have ever been brought
and he expects to be exonerated soon.
By July, while the McCanns were still swamped with unswerving support, the
first voices of dissent began to emerge.
he Leicester Mercury, the couple's local newspaper serving the Rothley village
where they lived, was forced to close its Madeleine website after a series of
"spiteful and defamatory" remarks were made about the McCanns.
Then came the real turning of the tide. Tired of being ignored by the McCanns,
the Portuguese media camped outside their villa and knocked constantly upon
their door. When the family left, the media circus followed, tracking the
couple obsessively.
In Praia da Luz, too, more and more people began to ask why the McCanns were
still there. It seemed heartless. And, yet, one could see the sentiment take
root and grow.
In a scathing letter to the
"The Director of Public Prosecutions should consider if there is a case to
answer," he thundered, querying the couple's decision to leave their
children alone.
Why, he asked, did the McCanns travel to several European countries but never
The all-too-sad truth was that the tide of goodwill was turning against the
McCanns.
Locals were angry that their police were being so heavily criticised by the British
press. British journalists also believed the Portuguese simply wanted a
scapegoat, preferably not Portuguese, upon whom they could pin the crime.
"People here are finding it all very tiresome," Sheena Rawcliff, the
managing director of the Resident, Praia da Luz's English-language magazine,
admitted to me.
"Of course our hearts go out to them. But people are asking the blunt
questions. Why leave them alone? Why remain here? The McCanns need closure, but
so, too, do the people of Praia da Luz. A backlash has begun and I believe it
could get ugly."
This weekend, Ms Rawcliffe has been proved correct.
Kate and Gerry McCann should have been preparing to board a flight back to
Instead, they will, once again, trudge to their local church, passing the
posters, now torn and dog-eared, of their cherished Madeleine. They have vowed
to remain in
But, however astonishing it may seem, there appears to be a possibility that
the couple whose anguish has touched the world may face charges of accidentally
killing their child and disposing of her body.
Few in
Never more so than now will the McCann's motto of "Hope, Strength and
Courage" be more important, or more vital, to their survival.
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/...xml&page=1
How the
Portuguese media reported the story
By Alex Bellos
Last Updated: 1:38am BST 09/09/2007
IMAGE 5
The McCann case dominated the Portuguese media yesterday.
In the Diario de Noticias, sources linked to the case were quoted as saying
that the police suspected Kate McCann was "mentally unbalanced" and
that Gerry McCann had admitted giving a sedative to Madeleine.
"One of the lines of investigation is that the child was given too much
medication," it reported.
Showing more restraint, the main leader in the upmarket daily Publico warned
that the judicial process must be left to take its course.
However, it argued that the case had reached a point of no return. "The
Portuguese police are risking their credibility irreversibly.
"Either [the Portuguese police] have some trump cards up their sleeve to
make us understand and justify the hypothesis that everyone hopes is not true.
Or they are shooting in the dark and ruining their image."
Nicolau Santos, a columnist in Expresso, defended the local police.
"On the one side, the Portuguese media is putting pressure on the police
for results, to find the guilty, to discover the girl.
"Meanwhile the English media insinuate that the Portuguese police are
incompetent and haven't conducted the investigations in the best possible way.
In the middle of such pressure, the police don't react in the best way."
In the tabloid Correio da Manha, columnist Octavio Ribeiro took aim at the
British press.
He said the media had been overly enthusiastic in believing the McCanns' story
from the beginning.
"The behaviour of the English press in the Maddy case is the symptom of a
serious disease," he wrote.
"The way that the mass of British papers - and not just the tabloids -
militantly kept to a fixed idea of what had happened goes against the
principles of good journalism."
On a lighter note, in the Diario de Noticias Ferreira Fernandes wrote that
He wrote: "It is accusing someone, and then saying: 'Don't take it badly,
mate'. You can't get more Portuguese than that. The world arguida has conquered
the world. Now all that's left is to convince the judges."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.../nmcann409.xml
For pity's
sake, stop judging the McCanns
By
Jenny McCartney
Last Updated: 12:01am BST 09/09/2007
If any parent, myself included, were asked to imagine the worst kind of living
hell, it might well go something like this. First, their child disappears from
a holiday hotel room. A police investigation fails to provide any leads
whatsoever. Finally, they themselves are accused by police of killing their own
child and disposing of the body.
That is, of course, what has happened to Kate and then Gerry McCann, who have
been declared arguidos, or formal suspects, by the Portuguese police. Kate
McCann's face, glimpsed in pictures, looked particularly drawn. A friend
initially described her response to the development as "stunned and
disappointed". I imagine that the exhausted Mrs McCann has now become
almost numb to whatever freshly surreal barbs of horror life can throw at her:
the fiercest, deepest anguish possible surely came in May, with the
disappearance of her daughter.
The world has now become intensely familiar with images of Gerry and Kate
McCann, trapped in their unchanging distress like insects in amber. They
receive the coverage normally afforded to celebrities, yet the sole source of
their uneasy fame is the cruel fact that their daughter is missing.
After her disappearance, one friend of the McCanns reported having seen a
dark-haired man making off with a sleeping child in his arms, and there were
endless "sightings" of the little blonde girl. There have been pleas,
posters, prayers and a meeting with the Pope, and back from the unknown has
come the most dreaded sound of all: silence.
Early on, the McCanns decided to use the media as a megaphone to broadcast
their search for Madeleine to every shadowy corner of the world. But the mass
media is more than a simple instrument of broadcast: it is a half-tame tiger
that will permit people to ride for a while upon its back while it roars, but
may also turn and maul them.
In the case of the McCanns, the effect of the media has been double-edged. The
publicising of their plight generated an enormous wave of public sympathy,
albeit one with an undercurrent of prurient fascination.
Many people debated fiercely whether they themselves would ever leave their
small children alone in a hotel room while they dined nearby with friends, and
some openly attacked the McCanns for having done so. There were whispers of
disapproval, too, for aspects of their behaviour that were not judged "in
keeping" with their grim situation: some onlookers clucked disapprovingly
when Kate went jogging, or seemed too composed, or when Gerry lost his temper.
This type of criticism, particularly of Mrs McCann, has always infuriated me:
it is as though our society is perpetually eager to unmask a cold-hearted Lady
Macbeth lurking behind the gentler image of a mother, wife or girlfriend. There
are echoes of the much harsher press treatment meted out to Joanne Lees after
her boyfriend Peter Falconio was murdered in the outback by Bradley John
Murdoch in 2001. At the time there were widespread suggestions in the media
that Lees - who had managed to escape the attacker - was suspiciously composed,
and overt accusations that she had killed Falconio herself. It only later
emerged that Lees had been given Valium and, in any case, how precisely should
one behave after fleeing a psychopath who has shot one's boyfriend?
A similar question, I think, applies to the McCanns: how exactly should one
behave when one's child simply disappears? Pray to God, if you like, that none
of Kate McCann's critics are ever compelled to find out.
The media campaign has had another unpredictable effect. It has stirred up
national resentments, and inflamed the Portuguese newspapers to wild
accusations against the McCanns. The flailing Portuguese police, stung by
largely legitimate criticism of what has undoubtedly been a bungled
investigation, have evidently grown desperate for a swift resolution. The
unreliable whiff of the
Week by week, the public, first appalled, has gradually grown accustomed to
treating the McCanns' search as a kind of running drama. Yet drama craves
momentum, and last week brought a plot twist which has led a nation of armchair
Poirots avidly to debate times, places and possible motives.
I find myself incapable of believing that the McCanns had anything at all to do
with the disappearance of their daughter. We must, of course, await the outcome
of the investigation. But we would do well to remember that this is not in fact
a Grimm's fairy tale, a soap opera, or a murder mystery. It is the real life of
Kate and Gerry McCann, and it must now have become a place of agony beyond all
understanding. Pity them, if you have any compassion at all, and demonstrate
the minimum of grace: the ability to desist from judgment.
www.telegraph.co.uk/opini...do0905.xml
Maddy: The possibilities
Peter Kirkham, senior investigating officer on more than 20 murders, looks
at four possible scenarios surrounding Maddy's disappearance.
By former Scotland Yard Detective Chief Inspector Peter Kirkham 08/09/2007
THEORY ONE
Madeleine was killed, her body hidden before being moved in the boot of
the McCanns' silver Renault Scenic
DCI Kirkham: This is what police will have been quizzing Kate about. You
don't have some one in for 11 hours to check a few points. Portuguese police
apparently believe Madeleine was killed by accident. That fits with the
suggestion that her body could have been hidden for a while. If murder is
pre-meditated, the killer has worked out what to do with the body. If it
happens without planning, most people panic and either run, cover up how the
death happened or hide the body. Small bodies can easily disappear down holes
and even if you do not know the area you will not have to go far to find
somewhere to dump it. Later, if you think you are getting away with it, there
may be a temptation to return and dispose of the body before the search widens
or somebody stumbles across it.
THEORY TWO
Kate and Gerry are being framed by the Portuguese police for the death,
as several close relatives have claimed
DCI Kirkham: This is highly unlikely. Although Portuguese police made
early mistakes, it is big leap to accuse them of fit ting up the McCanns. The
crucial evidence is the DNA recovered by British police and tested in a British
laboratory. If Madeleine's body had been found it would be possible for
somebody to take her blood and plant traces to implicate somebody. But without
a body where is the supply of blood cells from Madeleine?
THEORY THREE
The samples found in the Renault Scenic are from cross-contamination or
accidental transfer, possibly from the McCanns' belongings
DCI Kirkham: This would be possible if the DNA samples were so small
they could be identified as coming from a particular cell - blood, hair or
sweat. A police officer could have picked up Madeleine's DNA on gloves during
one search and not changed them immediately after placing the sample in the
evidence bag. However there is a big "But" here. If the British
scientists found blood cells and enough of them to know it was significant, it
makes it very unlikely they are there by chance. Blood is very strong
circumstantial evidence especially with a DNA match when it's found where it
shouldn't be.
THEORY FOUR
Madeleine was abducted and her attacker used the same hire car which the
McCanns later hired
DCI Kirkham: This is the million-to-one defence which someone who has
all the evidence stacked against them would use. The Portuguese police should
be checking who had that Scenic before, tracing them and inter viewing to make
sure they had no explanation for having Madeleine's blood. If I was in charge
of this investigation I would do it, but only to double and triple-check the
case.
www.mirror.co.uk/news/top...-19753205/
McCanns
targeted by media
Martin
Fricker In Portimao 08/09/2007
The stress of coping with the disappearance of a child would be hard
enough for any parent - but Kate and Gerry McCann have also had to reckon with
the slurs of Portugal's media.
Despite the couple always insisting they were not involved in four-year-old
Madeleine's disappearance, local newspapers and TV stations have waged a
relentless, hurtful - and often bizarre - smear campaign against them.
Here, the Daily Mirror looks back at some of the accusations.
WIFE SWAPPING?
Retired detective Jose Barra da Costa told Portuguese TV Kate and Gerry
indulged in wife-swapping sessions with the friends they were holidaying with
in Praia da Luz.
The allegations were followed up in Portuguese newspapers - even though Mr
Costa had no evidence to back up his claims.
BUGGED CALLS & EMAILS?
National newspaper Diario de Noticias claimed police bugged the McCanns and
intercepted their emails and phone calls.
The article even said this had let police gather "decisive proof"
Madeleine was not kidnapped - but officers denied bugging them.
McCANNS INVOLVED?
Recently, Portuguese newspapers have made frequent claims that Madeleine died
due to negligence or was murdered.
Diario de Noticias even quoted an unnamed police source as saying: "Police
have known for a month that Madeleine McCann was killed that night at the
apartment." However, the article offered no explanation for the claim.
BLOOD IN APARTMENT?
Newspaper Jornal de Noticias claimed blood found in the apartment was
Madeleine's.
It said: "This evidence locates Madeleine's death inside the apartment,
but the investigators are still not certain it was murder, despite the fact
forensic experts have revealed somebody did try to erase the blood
traces."
The theory most favoured by detectives to explain Maddie's death - now taken as
almost certain - is that it involved an accident.
THE REAL FATHER?
Some reports sickeningly claimed Gerry was not Madeleine's real father - and
that he had deliberately altered details on her birth certificate to make it
appear he was.
However, the McCanns conceived Madeleine by IVF and were said to be
"furious" at the unsubstantiated slur.
MADELEINE SEDATED?
A number of newspapers have accused the McCanns - both doctors - of treating
their children with sedatives to make them sleep.
Newspaper Tal&Qual directly accused the McCanns of killing Madeleine with
an accidental overdose while sedating her, but only attributed its story to an
"anonymous source" close to the investigation.
It even went on to speculate about the sort of prison sentences someone might
get for the crimes of homicide by negligence and hiding a body. Gerry said:
"It's incredibly hurtful and untrue. There is just absolutely no evidence
pointing in that direction." The McCanns are now suing the paper.
A DRUNKEN PARTY?
Some papers reported as fact a series of unsubstantiated rumours that the
McCanns had left their children on their own so they could go and get blind
drunk with their pals.
HOME ALONE?
Papers quoted unnamed "locals" as saying the McCanns regularly left
the children crying alone while they went out drinking.
One report said they went to neighbouring town
But Kate and Gerry insist they ate at the Ocean Club tapas restaurant every night.
SECRET SURVEILLANCE?
Local tabloid 24 Horas said some of the McCanns' friends had been put under
secret surveillance in
It did not quote any source and police in
FRIEND A SUSPECT?
The McCanns' friend Dr Russell O'Brien was said to have
"mysteriously" disappeared for over an hour on the fateful night.
The Portuguese press hinted that he was somehow involved in the case, but it
emerged that Dr O'Brien left the tapas restaurant because his own child was
ill.
www.mirror.co.uk/news/top...-19753660/
Madeleine:
'Fatal flaw' over test that found DNA in parents' hire car
By
JASON LEWIS
Last updated at 01:22am on 9th September 2007
The alleged "smoking gun" evidence used to implicate Madeleine's
parents in her killing could be fatally flawed, experts said last night.
British forensic scientists identified Madeleine's DNA in a car hired by her
parents five weeks after her disappearance and this unexplained evidence has
been used to imply that the little girl or her body must have been moved by the
McCanns weeks after her alleged abduction.
But research papers written by the scientists involved in the case suggest that
there could easily be an innocent explanation for the minute traces found in
the car.
The Mail on Sunday understands that the DNA particles in the vehicle were
uncovered using an advanced technique pioneered by the UK Forensic Science
Services (FSS) laboratories in
The so-called "low copy number DNA" evidence allows for minuscule
biological samples to be analysed to detect very low quantities of DNA - even
as little as a single cell.
This sort of evidence has proved crucial in rape and murder cases, particularly
where the suspect has no other connection to his or her victim.
But a scientific paper on the technique written by six leading FSS scientists
reveals that while the tiny DNA samples can be positively identified, there is
no way of knowing how the particles are deposited.
The scientists warn that where this DNA is being used in a trial,
"specific caveats are written into court statements" and they point
out that it is not possible to make conclusions about how the tiny traces of
DNA are deposited.
They also warn that there is a danger that the DNA can be moved from one
individual to another and then on to an object.
Experiments showed this transfer could take place weeks or months and, in the
case of one item tested, a glove, two years later.
For the McCanns, this leaves open the possibility that Madeleine's DNA was
transferred by them or by an item impregnated with her cells, like an item of
clothing or her cuddly toy bunny, which Kate McCann has carried constantly
since her daughter's disappearance.
The revelation once again puts the spotlight on dangers of overreliance on
forensic evidence which has led to a string of miscarriages of justice in the
Recently there have been questions about the guilt of Barry George, serving
life for killing the TV presenter Jill Dando, because of doubts over the
forensic evidence in the case.
He has been given leave to appeal after a review of the case said "too
much significance" was placed on a single, tiny speck of shotgun residue -
invisible to the naked eye - found in George's coat, and that there is a
"real possibility" his conviction could be quashed.
The House of Commons called for more scepticism about scientific evidence in
court after paediatrician Sir Roy Meadows was discredited over evidence he gave
in a number of cases involving baby deaths.
His "Meadow's law" on cot deaths "that one in a family is a
tragedy, two is suspicious and three is murder" formed part of the case
against Angela Cannings, who was wrongly convicted of killing her two sons.
But perhaps the most high-profile case where forensic science has been called
into question is the conviction of six men for the
They spent 16 years in prison after being wrongly convicted of the murder of 21
people but were released after it was discovered that the forensic evidence
used to convict them, which suggested they had handled explosives, was
unreliable and gave a false positive result when people touched household items
such as playing cards.
www.dailymail.co.uk/pages...ICL=TOPART
If the
McCanns' hire car is vital evidence why are they still driving it?
By
DANIEL BOFFEY and IAN GALLAGHER
Last updated at 02:03am on 9th September 2007
The hire car at the centre of the case against Madeleine's parents is still
being driven around by the McCanns, raising questions over the professionalism
of the police investigation.
The four-seat silver Renault Scenic was dismantled, stripped and swabbed for
forensic analysis at the beginning of August but returned to the McCann family
just two-and-a-half days later to allow them to continue to run their campaign
to find their daughter.
Swabs from the car were sent to the
And since the car was handed back to the family, results from the laboratory
have indicated that a trace of Madeleine's blood had been left in the boot.
The trace has proved to be a key part of the police case against the McCanns,
with Kate being repeatedly asked to explain the forensic results during her 16
hours of questioning on Thursday and Friday.
The decision to not impound what is proving to be a pivotal piece of evidence
could even undermine the police case, according to experts.
Lord MacKenzie, a former head of the Superintendents' Association, expressed
astonishment over the Portuguese police's failure to protect their evidence.
"It is very strange," he said. "You would certainly expect in a
case of this importance for such a piece of evidence to be kept.
"There are cases where photos of the evidence would be acceptable where
the evidence really needs to be given back, but certainly not in a case of
murder or abduction.
"If you have some possible evidence, which obviously they thought they
might have, given that they sent the forensics to the
"And if the results are positive then it is pretty vital to have kept
it."
The revelation came as a friend of the McCanns raised further questions over
the credibility of the police's evidence against Kate.
The friend said the car, believed to have been rented from Eurocar at Faro
airport, had been hired on May 28 --25 days after Madeleine vanished.
And she revealed that "a variety of other named drivers" had access
to it over the 72 days before it was taken in to be swabbed on August 7.
The revelation suggests that any traces of blood in the car could not be directly
linked to Madeleine's parents.
The friend said: "The car was hired 25 days after Madeleine disappeared
and a variety of people, family included, used the car.
"Then police took the car in around 100 days after Madeleine disappeared
before giving it back to Kate and Gerry."
The family friend was also able to give an explanation for the timing of the
rental which it is believed had caused interest among detectives.
The car was hired the day before the McCanns travelled to
But the family friend explained that the car was always intended for use by a
number of people around the couple in Praia da Luz, especially while the
McCanns were away on their tour to gain publicity for the Find Maddie campaign.
Mrs McCann has vehemently denied that she was responsible for the trace of
blood, swearing at officers because she was so angry and saying: "There is
no way."
Kate's mother said any evidence against her daughter must have been
"planted".
Last week family spokesman Justine McGuinness described the allegations over
the hire car as "mad and ridiculous".
However she was unable to comment yesterday on who had picked up the car from
Faro and who, other than Gerry and Kate, had access to it.
www.dailymail.co.uk/pages...ge_id=1770
THE LOST HALF HOUR
THE LOST HALF HOUR
PORTUGUESE police are concentrating on what they claim is a missing half hour in accounts of the night Madeleine disappeared.
The McCanns told detectives they believed they arrived at the Tapas restaurant at 8.30pm.
But months into the investigation, Portuguese detectives now allege they did not turn up until almost 30 minutes later.
Friends' statements show there may be differences of opinion over what time Kate and Gerry arrived with some of the pals stating it was just before 9pm.
Police want to quiz the couple again over what they call the "missing half hour".
A police source said: "We believe the timetable of events that evening is crucial to the inquiry. We want to know how they could make such a mistake over the time they arrived."
Early on in the investigation the McCanns said they got to the restaurant at 8.30pm.
Based on arrival timings given by their dining companions, that would mean the tragic couple arrived first before their friends.
But police sources say statements given by those pals show the McCanns arrived just before 9pm-and that by then all of their friends were already there.
Checked
The statements claim that Russell O'Brien, Jane Tanner, Matthew and Rachel Oldfield were first to arrive at around 8.45pm.
At 8.55 David and Fiona Payne were said to have turned up with Fiona's mum, Diane Webster.
Some statements indicate that the McCanns turned up two or three minutes after the Paynes.
If these new timings are accurate police are questioning why Gerry would go back and check the children just 5 minutes later.
He is reported as saying he checked the apartment and all three children were sleeping at 9.05pm.
This was confirmed when on his way back he stopped to speak to Jeremy Wilkins, another guest at the resort he had met playing tennis earlier in the week.
At 9.10pm Jane Tanner said she crossed Gerry's path on her way to check her own children.
Around that time she says she saw a man carrying away a child she now believes was Madeleine.
She describes the man as aged 35, dark-haired. wearing beige trousers and black shoes. She said the girl, who appeared to be sleeping, was toddler age, bare-footed and wearing pink pyjamas like Madeleine's.
No one else out that night reported seeing this man.
Portuguese cops have piled on the agony for the McCanns by retracing their steps and naming them both as official suspects. They believe the couple may have been involved in the disappearance of three-year-old Madeleine. And they think one may be covering up for the other.
Officers are probing a "three-hour window of opportunity" on the theory that during this time Madeleine was killed in the apartment and her body hidden somewhere nearby.
It starts the last time the children were seen alive by anyone but their parents and ends when Kate and Gerry were seen in public.
The last time Madeleine was seen alive was by staff at the Ocean Club creche at 6pm.
The McCanns were then alone with their children for almost three hours at the most if they did arrive at the Tapas restaurant at 9pm.A police source said: "The couple are being monitored to see how they react to every new piece of information they receive.
"The pressure has slowly been mounting on the McCanns over the last month as new information has been fed into the inquiry." Sources say the couple have been kept under surveillance following the discovery by a dog of the smell of death in their apartment on August 1.
Police now claim they have detected blood in a Renault Scenic car hired by the McCanns 24 days after Maddie's disappearance.
During questioning, GP Kate was asked why she had washed Madeleine's favourite toy "Cuddle Cat". Cops believe she has was trying to hide forensic evidence of her daughter's death.
Washed
The police claim the smell of a corpse was found on Kate's T-shirt, jeans and on Cuddle Cat.
Kate says she washed the toy on August 5-four days after police dogs picked up "the scent of death".
She insists she washed the toy simply because it was covered in dirt and sun tan lotion.
Portuguese police are relying heavily on a Cracker-style profiler who has been studying the McCanns' behaviour. The profiler has reportedly claimed that he suspects that the couple, from Rothley, Leics, could be "distracting" themselves from the horror of what they might have done by getting involved in the massive media campaign.
Doubts have also been cast over the lack of emotion and the controlled composure of the couple since their daughter disappeared.
The profiler has told cops that this matches that of a couple who are united and focused in a bid to cover up a tragedy.
But former Chief Inspector Albert Kirby, who led the hunt to trap the killers of toddler James Bulger, said: "There is very little time for the McCanns to have murdered their daughter and disposed of her body.
"And they would have had to carry her body a short distance away and concealed it without anyone spotting them. The body would have also had to remain concealed and unfound for a long time despite the police search.
"The Portuguese police must believe that one of them managed to conceal the body
in a flat or a bush."
http://www.newsoftheworld.co.uk/0909_maddie2.shtml
9 September 2007
TOP SCOTS COP SLAMS
PORTUGUESE POLICE
HUNT FOR MADELEINE
A VETERAN Scots detective has claimed naming the McCanns as suspects is a
desperate move by the Portuguese to force the couple to leave the country.
Joe Jackson was head of the Strathclyde Police Serious Crime Squad and
investigated more than 150 murders.
He believes the decision to finger Kate and Gerry was taken at top level to
protect
The Portuguese police suspect Kate killed Madeleine by accident on May 3 and
has tried to cover up the death by claiming she was abducted.
But
"This is a ploy to make them leave the country because of the effect the
case is having on the tourist trade and the general image of
"The Portuguese want the McCanns to go home, so they can treat it as an
unsolved missing child case and bring an end to the matter.
"The decision to offer Mrs McCann a deal to admit to causing the death of
the child will have been taken at a very senior level. There is no way that
this would have been cooked up by the officers who interviewed her.
"The fact that Madeleine's DNA has been found in the hired car 25 days
after she went missing means nothing.
The DNA could easily have been transferred to the car from items of clothing
belonging to Madeleine that had been placed in the car by her parents.
"You have to ask the question: 'How could someone hide a body for 25
days?' It's just not possible with the eyes of the world upon you. Bodies are
notoriously difficult to hide and nearly always turn up in one form or
another."
"In the first few hours it appears the local plods were running things and
didn't really know what to do.
"The kind of lengthy interview Mrs McCann was subjected to should have
been carried out on the first day, not four months later.
"If this has been a random abduction by a stranger this would be a problem
for even the best police force."
www.sundaymail.co.uk/news..._page.html
Caution over
Maddie forensics
By
ONLINE REPORTER
September 09, 2007
FORENSIC evidence received by Portuguese police from scientists in the
But experts in the science warned today that any evidence needed to be treated
with caution until the full facts of the case were known.
The samples of DNA now at the centre of the investigation - and the subject of
questions put to the McCanns - were taken from two sources, according to
reports.
One is thought to be the
If DNA with a close match to Madeleine was found in both locations, then it
would have raised serious questions.
But Alan Baker, a forensic scientist who has given expert evidence on the
subject in court cases, said several important factors needed to be considered
first.
He said the type of sample - whether actually blood or just a smear - was vital
in interpreting any potential match.
“If they have found a hair follicle or a trace of blood at the scene then the
implications could be immense but if it is only a smear then there are all
sorts of issues involved”, he said.
“If they have just found traces of DNA in the vehicle or the flat then that
offers up all sorts of explanations, and you have to look at how it could have
got there.”
He said the science of matching DNA profiles was also made very difficult by
the fact that members of the same family were involved.
If the match was less than perfect, as some newspaper reports have suggested,
then it becomes more likely that any DNA is not Madeleine’s, but maybe belongs
to her siblings or parents.
“The interesting thing about this is that in most crime scenes, the individuals
in question are not related so the DNA is completely different,” Mr Baker said.
“But in this case you have got members of the McCann family involved and they
would have shared DNA with their offspring.”
He also pointed out that any cross-contamination of DNA had to be taken on
board as a possible explanation if it was Madeleine’s profile in the car or
flat.
Mr Baker also urged caution over how the samples were actually obtained.
He said he was confident that any DNA testing by
He said: “FSS are world leaders in this sort of work and they would not have
put their name to anything that they are not happy with.
“But the sample is only as good as the person that took it so if you have
sloppy police work then you have all sorts of issues to do with that.
“If the crime scene was in
www.thesun.co.uk/article/...08,00.html
McCanns fly home after police grilling
From The Sunday Times September 9, 2007
McCanns fly home after police grilling
Steve Swinford in Praia da Luz, Mark Macaskill and Jon Ungoed-Thomas
KATE and Gerry McCann are flying home today after deciding to quit Portugal
following hours of police questioning and being named as suspects over the
disappearance of their daughter Madeleine.
Friends said they have been told they are under no travel restrictions and the
couple have given assurances they will return for further questioning if asked.
Their decision late yesterday to return to their Leicestershire home came after
Portuguese police tried to pressure Kate McCann into admitting killing Madeleine
by repeatedly showing her video footage of sniffer dogs allegedly finding the
scent of a body in the family’s hire car. They will fly into East Midlands
airport this lunchtime.
“They are leaving with the full agreement of the Portuguese authorities and
police,” said a family spokesman.
During 16 hours of interrogation Kate was shown the footage of the dogs
clambering over the Renault Scénic car in the hope that she would break down and
confess. She was yesterday said to be distraught and exhausted by the ordeal.
The dogs’ reaction was a key reason why the police suspect her of killing
Madeleine. Officers told Kate they had found her daughter’s DNA in the car even
though it was hired three weeks after her disappearance.
Kate and her husband are said to be mortified that the investigation team — with
whom they have co-operated throughout — have apparently turned against them. “We
are being absolutely stitched up,” Gerry told a friend. “We are completely
f*****. We should have seen this coming weeks ago and gone back to Britain.”
Police hoped to force a confession from Kate after she was formally declared a
suspect on Friday and subjected to further questioning. Jon Corner, a friend of
the family, said: “They kept coming back to the hire car and kept showing Kate
the video of sniffer dogs. They also told her that Madeleine’s DNA was found in
the car.”
Another friend said: “The suggestion being put to Kate was that if she had
somehow killed Madeleine in an accident, then used a hire car to dispose of the
body three weeks later, she should confess and the judge would look at it in a
lenient light and offer three to four years in jail. It’s absolute nonsense.”
As it emerged that the family are considering approaching David Miliband, the
foreign secretary, Portuguese detectives last night faced questions about the
value of the evidence they hoped would force Kate to break down. The family
claim it is ambiguous and flawed.
They were supported by British forensic scientists who have been surprised by
aspects of the investigation.
The family point out Kate has carried Cuddle Cat, Madeleine’s soft toy, since
her disappearance, which could explain the presence of her DNA in the rental
car. Initial reports that the DNA source was blood have not been confirmed.
Sources from the Forensic Science Service Laboratory in Birmingham, which
analysed swabs taken from the hire car, are reported to have dismissed as
“simply wrong” speculation that blood was found.
They added that the DNA samples were so degraded only an incomplete match with
Madeleine’s DNA could be made.
Portuguese investigators will face severe criticism from the McCanns if their
case depends solely on forensic work. “The crime scene was completely desecrated
after Madeleine’s disappearance,” said Philomena McCann, Gerry’s sister.
“Literally hundreds of people were in that apartment after Madeleine was
abducted.”
Police are however, unlikely to change their focus. Local newspapers yesterday
reported Kate was suspected of homicide, negligence and “preventing the corpse
from being found”.
Madeleine: one fact, many lies, endless grief
It’s now 124 days since Madeleine McCann disappeared. Penny Wark charts a story
that became global, lurid and often invented
According to the reports, one police theory is that Kate accidentally gave
Madeleine a fatal dose of sedatives. It has been denied by the McCanns that they
gave any of their children sedatives.
There was also speculation that Kate could face charges within a few days.
Despite the threat of an impending prosecution, the McCanns are now anxious to
return home, but a court could put restrictions on their movements.
“In a system that you don’t know and don’t really trust it’s incredibly
frightening,” Gerry McCann says in a newspaper today. “We thought we were in our
worst nightmare but now it just keeps getting worse and worse.
“Our lawyer said the weight of it is that, under the Portuguese legal system,
they’ve got enough to move forward against us. We never had to say it until now
. . . but we did not kill our daughter,” he told the News of the World.
The couple are considering bringing lawyers from the UK to assist their
Portuguese adviser, though they are frustrated that they will not be allowed to
use any of the £800,000 in the Madeleine Fund to pay their legal bills.
“It seems like a disaster that we’ve got this huge donated fund and now we’re
not allowed to use it for legal costs because we’re under suspicion,” he said.
The McCanns have been liaising with the Foreign Office in the hope that Miliband
would be able to obtain more information on the state of the police inquiry.
Miliband said yesterday: “Firstly we must remember above all else that this is
about a missing girl. Secondly, obviously we have been and will continue to give
extensive consular support to the family. And thirdly, in respect of the
independent judicial process, we must let that take its course.”
Hugh White, a Home Office pathologist, said he could not understand why the car
was held by the police for just two days. “In this country the car would have
been stripped down into tiny pieces and the forensics team would be crawling all
over it,” he said. Keith Borer, a retired forensic scientist, said: “What they
seem to have found makes good questions for a police interview, but evidentially
it seems pretty weak.”
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/crime/article2414735.ece
9 September 2007
BRIT POLICE WATCH
AND LISTEN NEXT DOOR
Exclusive by Andrew Gregory
British detectives secretly listened in as Portuguese police grilled Kate
McCann over daughter Maddie's disappearance, The People can today reveal.
They hid in a room next to the interview suite at the police station to watch
the mother's every response to her gruelling interrogation.
It is understood the Brit officers even fed the local cops with questions
through tiny earpieces - and used body-language experts to monitor Kate's
reactions.
The People has discovered that Kate and husband Gerry were made official
suspects after:
Local cops set up surveillance teams to monitor their movements 24 hours a day
for three weeks.
Kate was hauled back in for a tough second interview after they claimed she had
dramatically CHANGED her version of events.
The body-language experts compiled a secret report which is thought to suggest
her demeanour indicates she has something to HIDE.
Emails and computer data are thought to have been closely examined.
The dramatic twists in the case of four-year-old Maddie come after Portuguese
investigators received guidance from
A dossier of covert electronic and physical evidence coupled with forensic
reports led to the McCanns both being labelled suspects.
A source close to the inquiry revealed: "Following the request by the
Portuguese to the British police to get involved the pace of the investigation
has massively increased.
"Many of the failures made by local cops have been highlighted by the
Brits and they are now working hard to find out what exactly happened to
Madeleine."
The source explained: "It is common practice for those closest to a
missing person to be watched closely and the McCanns are now no different.
"They, like all suspects, are being closely monitored as no stone is left
unturned."
But GP Kate and cardiologist Gerry, both 39, fear they are being FRAMED over
the disappearance and possible death of Madeleine - missing for 129 days.
Police launched their round-the-clock surveillance operation last month.
The couple were taken in for further questioning last week after it was claimed
that forensic experts had found traces of Madeleine's blood in the boot of a
Renault Scenic car hired 25 days AFTER she went missing.
Detectives suspected Kate might have accidentally killed her daughter in the
family's holiday flat in Praia da Luz and hid the body - which was later moved
in the car.
Kate was grilled by Portuguese police for 11 HOURSon Thursday and for FIVE MORE
HOURS on Friday.
It is understood she was forced to return for the second day of questioning at
the police station in Portimao after cops claimed she changed her story -
making them suspect she was being untruthful.
The British cops are also thought to have arranged for Kate's demeanour to be
constantly monitored for any tell-tale signs during the long sessions of questioning.
The People can also reveal that body language experts from
The specialists scrutinised every interview - live and recorded - given by the
couple since May 3.
Asecret dossier of the findings has been handed to detectives leading the
investigation.
It is believed the report concludes that Kate's body language and facial
expressions in interviews show she has something to hide. Our source said:
"Technology and policing methods have advanced so much in the last
fewyears that officers can nowcall on all sorts of techniques in their
investigations.
"Reading suspects' body language and their facial expressions is one such
device. Both Kate and Gerry would have been looked at and their actions
analysed."
But the source stressed: "It must be made clear that their movements could
indicate they have not done anything untoward rather than helping to prove they
have." Since Madeleine disappeared the anguish of her parents - who also
have two-year-old twins - has been laid bare for the world to see.
At the first press conference, after the tot had been missing for only a few
hours, the couple were visibly shook up and stressed.
Gerry did all the talking. Kate stood with her head bowed, clutching her
husband's arm and saying nothing.
Since then, the confidence of the parents has grown. They put their careers on
hold as they organised a massive and slick publicity campaign and even met the
Pope. The McCanns rarely faltered as they gave interviews to media from around
the world.
But as the Maddie investigation enters a dramatic new phase, the couple have
now dropped plans to return home to Rothley, Leics.
Pals say they will stay in
A spokesman for the Portuguese police refused to comment last night on British
involvement in the case.
But a source said: "We will continue to work with the British until we
reach a satisfactory outcome."
www.people.co.uk/news/new..._page.html
Kate and
Gerry McCann face year-long wait
By
Caroline Gammell, Gordon Rayner and Nick Britten
Last Updated: 1:54am BST 10/09/2007
Kate and Gerry McCann may have to wait a year to discover whether they will be
charged or cleared over the disappearance of their daughter Madeleine, they
have been warned.
As they made an emotional return to their home in Rothley, Leicestershire, 130
days after the four-year-old went missing, Portuguese police made it clear the
investigation was not over "by any means".
The couple now fear the "cloud of suspicion" which hangs over their
heads after they were named as formal suspects in the case will divert
attention away from the search for Madeleine and leave them increasingly
isolated in their attempts to find her.
They are also said to be "terrified" that their two-year-old twins,
Sean and Amelie, could be taken into care if they are charged with any crime.
The McCanns had always clung to the belief that they would eventually return
home with Madeleine, but instead Mr McCann faced the cameras at
Struggling to maintain his composure, Mr McCann, 39, said: "Portuguese law
prohibits us from commenting on the police investigation. Despite there being
so much we wish to say we are unable to do so except to say this: we have
played no part in the disappearance of our lovely daughter Madeleine."
The McCanns were both named as "arguidos", or formal suspects, on
Friday after two days of police interviews during which Mrs McCann was offered
a "deal" of a suspended prison sentence if she admitted to
"accidentally" killing her daughter and told police where the body
was.
The move is reported to have followed the discovery of traces of blood in a
hire car used by the McCanns, but serious doubts have been raised about the
value of the evidence, leading to speculation that Portuguese police are
unlikely to bring charges unless more evidence comes to light.
In an interview which Mrs McCann gave hours before being declared a suspect,
which was published on Sunday, she said: "They want me to lie - I'm being
framed.
"They are basically saying, if I confess Madeleine had an accident, and
that I panicked and hid the body in a bag for a month then got rid of it in a
hire car, I'd get a two or three years' suspended sentence.
"I was even told: 'Think about it - Gerry would even be able to work
again.' It is ridiculous."
A spokesman for the couple said they were willing to return to
Explaining the decision to return home, Mr McCann said: "After very
careful thought, we want the twins to live an ordinary life in their home
country.
"While it is heartbreaking to return to the
The couple had decided late on Saturday night to book themselves on to an
EasyJet flight from Faro to
Your View: Has this put you off visiting
Full coverage: The search for Madeleine McCann
They drove home to Rothley, where Madeleine's bedroom remains exactly as it was
the day she excitedly left for the family holiday on April 28.
Although Mr McCann made a brief return to the house weeks after Madeleine's
disappearance, it was the first time his 39-year-old wife had gone home.
A family friend said they had been reluctant to return home, as they are
increasingly concerned that the investigation will grind to a halt without
their continued presence in
"The worst thing would be for the case to run down while this horrendous
cloud of suspicion hangs over their heads," the friend said.
"There is a real concern that the Portuguese police now put this
investigation in a dusty filing cabinet, never to be opened again."
Chief Insp Olegario Sousa, the police spokesman for the McCann case, insisted
the investigation was "not over by any means".
He added: "The investigation will only end when we think the case file is
complete and we hand our findings to the public prosecutor who then decides
whether to drop the case or bring charges."
Sources close to the case said the process could take up to a year.
The McCanns had more bad news when they were told a request for the case to be
reviewed by British police had been turned down.
Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary, said she was satisfied with the way
Portuguese police have conducted the investigation.
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/...ddy110.xml
MADELEINE:
'WE CAN PROVE PARENTS DID IT'
Monday September 10,2007
By Padraic Flanagan in Praia da Luz and Martin Evans in Rothley
THE parents of Madeleine McCann flew back to Britain yesterday as Portuguese
police said: “We have enough evidence to convict you.”
They made their confidence clear as Kate and Gerry McCann dramatically returned
home with two-year-old twins Sean and Amelie.
The couple left the
A source close to the Policia Judiciaria said they were expecting the results
from the latest batch of tests to clinch their case against the couple.
But he added: “Even if it doesn’t, we have enough already to go on.” The source
said detectives decided to focus their investigation on the McCanns, rather
than an unknown abductor, many weeks ago and were planning to name them as
suspects as long as a month ago.
He added that the results of tests on samples given to the Forensic Science
Service in Birmingham revealed the experts were 78.95 per cent sure that blood
found in the McCanns’ hire care was Madeleine’s.
Amid the drama, a family friend revealed that the McCanns went straight to
Madeleine’s bedroom to pray when they finally reached home.
Detectives’ firm belief that they have a sound case with which to bring a
prosecution led some to question why the McCanns were allowed to return home
despite being official suspects.
But, under Portuguese law, the police now have 18 months in which to decide
whether to charge them and the McCanns have given a written undertaking to
return to
Concern has also been raised that the PJ were apparently happy to allow the
McCanns to continue using the hire car in which Madeleine’s blood was allegedly
found despite British sources saying it should be treated as evidence.
Last night it emerged that the McCanns have chosen not to return the silver car
to the hire firm. They are understood to be continuing to rent it so that they
can have their own forensic tests carried out.
The move underlines the family’s determination to fight the case being built
against them.
Moments after disembarking from an aircraft at
He added: “While we are returning to the
“As parents, we cannot give up on our daughter until we know what has happened.
We have to keep doing everything we can to find her.”
But police in
The McCanns fear they will both be charged with the death of their daughter
after they were named as “arguidos” – official suspects – following two days of
police questioning at the end of last week.
The sensational twist in the case – it is now 130 days since Madeleine vanished
– came after police received the results of forensic tests.
During Kate McCann’s day-long interview with police last Thursday she was shown
a video taken by officers of sniffer dogs signalling the scent of a corpse on
her clothes.
“She showed no reaction to this,” said the source. “But she broke down when
officers told her the blood was from her daughter’s dead body.”
Once new evidence has been received, the police source said the McCanns could
be ordered to go before the court of examining magistrate Jose Cunha de
Magalhaes e Meneses. The police source said Policia Judiciaria chiefs were
compiling the latest case notes but they were incomplete because Kate and Gerry
refused to answer a total of 40 questions put to them by senior detectives.
Guilhermino Encarnacao, one of the chief detectives who carried out the
interviews with Kate and Gerry, said yesterday: “The theory of the death of
Madeleine is gaining progressively more and more consistency.
“The investigation continues with all the means we have for searching for the
body.”
He went on: “A new cycle in the investigation will now start, with many leads
that the body of the little girl could be here or there. But the Policia
Judiciaria will only act on credible leads.”
Fresh details also emerged about the interrogation faced by Kate, who is
reported to have explained that blood found in Madeleine’s bedroom could have
come from a nosebleed.
When the officer told the part-time GP that the sample showed the child was
already dead, Kate was reported to have replied “That’s impossible” before
becoming agitated.
The police source said detectives then tried to take further advantage of
Kate’s upset state by
confronting her with evidence from the car.
The source said Kate then refused to answer any more questions, saying it was
“absurd” to consider her a suspect.
When Gerry was questioned, the source added, he became angry at being accused
of hiding the body and answered “very few questions.”
www.dailyexpress.co.uk/posts/view/18738
I hang my
head in shame at what my trade has made of the McCann story
The
media piles pressure on police to give answers, but suspects must live with an
irremovable stain of suspicion
Max Hastings
Monday September 10, 2007
The Guardian
Yesterday, just in case everybody else knew something that I did not, I rang an
editor friend and asked for the word on the street about Madeleine McCann. He
answered that no one has the slightest idea where the truth lies - despite the
Portuguese police naming Kate and Gerry McCann as formal suspects in the
investigation of her death. The case possesses everything headline writers
could dream of: a pretty child victim; photogenic middle-class parents who are
also doctors; apparently bungling foreigners. Amid a miasma of allegation and
sensation, coverage is remorseless, speculation infinite.
The story provokes in some of us the sort of guilt that our ancestors must have
felt on finding themselves unable to avert their eyes from a public execution.
We shudder at the circus, sure of its repugnance but uncertain whom to blame.
Crime in which children are victims causes police, media and public alike to
take leave of their senses.
It has become the only truly heinous crime. Few people feel much hatred towards
fraudsters, bank robbers, or even most killers. But no prisoner convicted of a
crime against children is safe in jail. The trials of such people provoke
gatherings of vengeful housewives who make the tricoteuses, the women who
knitted beneath the guillotine, seem sisters of mercy.
In the case of Madeleine McCann, the public would like the guilty party to turn
out to be a Portuguese with a long history of offences against children, who
could reasonably be branded as a sex fiend - like the Spanish waiter who in
1996 killed the British schoolgirl Caroline Dickinson in
These remarks may sound ugly, but so is what is happening in
Child victims often induce police officers to act rashly, because they are
under such pressure to produce a result. This is as true in
In the latter case, in a small East Anglian community, it was only days before
Ian Huntley and Maxine Carr were arrested. In a city, identifying a killer is
often much harder. Last year's search in
Such people surely deserve stronger protection under the law, as do the McCanns
and Robert Murat, the British man formally named as a suspect earlier in the
Madeleine inquiry. In his case, relations at home found themselves being
quizzed by reporters eager to discover whether he had any history of sex
crimes. Most of those arrested during the Rhys Jones investigation - and
subsequently released - have been spared publicity only because they are
minors.
It is widely suggested that the Portuguese police conducting the Madeleine
inquiry have been incompetent. But British officers are just as capable of
promoting false allegations when the heat is on them to make an arrest. During
the search for Jill Dando's killer, I remember having a private conversation
with two senior policemen. They told me a pack of nonsense, which I am
confident that they themselves believed. Both said that they thought it most
likely that Dando's assailant was somebody with whom she was already
acquainted: "Her personal life was much more complicated than anybody
realises, you know."
Their purpose, of course, was to convince the media that they were not sitting
down on the job, that they were making progress towards an arrest. This is the
usual motivation for police leaks, though cash handouts from reporters to
junior officers also play a part. Either way, a duty of discretion is breached.
Arthur Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers and such like got one big
thing right in their fiction: detection as practised by professionals is often
sadly inadequate. But in real life amateur sleuths can't fill the breach, so if
police can't find murderers, nobody does.
A high proportion of homicides are domestic crimes, in which the guilty party
is obvious. If these cases are stripped out of statistics, a dismaying number
of murderers escape justice. When an arrest can be achieved only through what
Hercule Poirot would call the use of the little grey cells, outcomes are
elusive. I once heard a criminal barrister - today a senior judge - mock police
procedures: "Their idea of detection is to decide which of the local firms
to fit up for a given job!" He was not being entirely facetious.
The police, in their turn, have plenty to say about the cynicism of media and
public. There is a readily recognised scale of popular sentiment about murder,
at the bottom of which come gangland killings, especially black on black. If
one drug dealer kills another, to most people it is a matter of indifference.
Prostitutes receive only slightly more sympathy, because they are widely
supposed to have brought their fates upon themselves. If enough of them die,
however, as in
Popular sentiment focuses overwhelmingly upon the deaths of so-called innocent
parties, above all children. Figures suggest that
But in this, as in all matters relating to crime, perception is unrelated to
reality. Media coverage gives credence to a belief that European society is
plagued by monsters stalking the young. When a child dies, every police officer
knows that his or her force's reputation is at stake in identifying a plausible
murderer.
These crimes sell a great many papers, which neither
But it seems reasonable to recoil from the situation that now exists. Unless an
outsider is caught and convicted of Madeleine's death, the reputations of the
McCann family are irreparably damaged. Before charges or any trial, an
irremovable stain of suspicion has been cast by police, and broadcast by the
media. Even if the McCanns are indicted tomorrow, the principles of natural
justice have been flouted in the most shameful fashion.
www.guardian.co.uk/commen...99,00.html
From The Sunday Times
September 9, 2007
Victims of the
rumour mill?
After a dramatic twist, are the Portuguese police close to solving the most
extraordinary disappearance of recent years?
David James Smith, Steven Swinford and Richard Woods
As Gerry McCann emerged from Porti-mao police station at midnight on Friday, he
stared unblinkingly into the distance while his lawyer read out a statement.
The consultant cardiologist, said the lawyer, had just joined his wife as a
prime suspect in the death of his daughter, Madeleine, who went missing four
months ago.
Beneath his unflinching exterior, Gerry was in a state of turmoil and fury. “We
are being absolutely stitched up by the Portuguese police,” he had told a
friend after his wife Kate had earlier been named a suspect after hours of
interrogation. “We are completely f*****, we should have seen this coming weeks
ago and gone back to
Barely six days earlier the McCanns had been preparing to do just that: to end
their vigil in
Detectives had warned their lawyer that the McCanns might be made arguidos -
suspects - in the investigation, but had emphasised that it would be a purely
“technical” move. The status would give the McCanns greater rights in
interviews.
The couple were going to need them. Kate was the first to be summoned and on
Thursday was questioned for 11 hours. Drained and exhausted she left the police
station at 12.55am, only to be back for a further five hours of questioning on
Friday, before which she was named an arguida (the feminine form).
The archaic procedures made her grilling all the more arduous. Instead of
taping the interviews, an officer took hand-written notes in Portuguese of
Kate’s comments, which were then translated back into English at regular
intervals for her approval.
The police have said nothing publicly about the evidence they are reported to
have. But according to friends of the McCanns who spoke to them after their
interviews, the police told Kate they had found “bodily fluids” in a Renault
Scenic car hired by the McCanns.
The police implied the forensic traces had come from Madeleine - yet the
McCanns had only hired the car 25 days after their daughter disappeared. The
implication was clear: Madeleine had died and the McCanns had later used the
car to dispose of her body.
The police added that a sniffer dog brought in from
The police declared that the elements were enough to make them believe that
Madeleine was dead and to make Kate a suspect. They even offered her a deal: if
she confessed to killing her daughter accidentally, she would receive a
“lenient sentence” of just “two to three years”.
After all the weeks of grief and pressure, it might have been too much for some
to bear. Kate, although worried sick, stayed strong. “How dare you,” she told
the police. “How dare you use blackmail to get me to confess to something I
didn’t do.” Gerry returned distressed and tired. His sister Philomena McCann, who
spoke to him after his interrogation, said: “He’s adamant that he’s done
nothing wrong. Every question he was asked, he answered. Gerry didn’t seem
particularly worried. He’s more concerned that the investigation seems to have
moved away from finding Madeleine alive.”
She added: “Kate and Gerry have not been charged. They are free to leave
This weekend their fate hangs in the balance. A source at
A senior British police source said he was astonished by the decision to accuse
Kate of killing her daughter just on the basis of the forensic tests. “It
sounds over the top. What we do is to get an independent review of the forensic
evidence and bring someone in from the outside. You independently review what
is going on and you certainly don’t make an arrest off the top of one specific
piece of evidence,” he said.
On the other hand, a Portuguese newspaper yesterday claimed that Kate is
accused of homicide, negligence and “preventing the corpse from being found”.
Reports also claimed that police sources said Kate is mentally unstable,
displayed “aggression” and has been using her right to remain silent.
The Portuguese authorities are considering whether to suspend the McCanns’
passports - and the police may yet lay charges.
To appreciate the McCanns’ extraordinary predicament, you have to go back to
the night in question, Thursday, May 3, and in particular the three hours
between when Madeleine was last seen by a nonfamily member and when she was
reported missing. What happened in this period is regarded by police as the key
to solving the mystery.
AFTER a series of interviews in Praia da Luz in recent weeks, The Sunday Times
has established new details of what happened that night and how the police
inquiry took its dramatic twist this weekend.
The McCanns had travelled to the Ocean Club resort in Praia da Luz with a group
of friends, predominantly doctors like them. Altogether, four families,
comprising nine adults and eight children, set out.
At the Ocean Club all four families had apartments in Waterside Gardens Block
5, which overlooked one of two pool and restaurant areas on the resort. It was
not a gated site and Gerry’s and Kate’s ground floor apartment, 5a, was on a
street corner. The group occupied two of the neighbouring apartments, 5b and
5d, and another on the floor above.
On the first night, Saturday, April 28, the adults and children all ate
together at the Ocean Club’s other location, some 10 minutes away, the Millennium
Restaurant and Terrace. But the next night, and for all the nights thereafter,
all four families settled the children in their apartments and then walked down
to the nearby Tapas restaurant with its open air tables offering a clear line
of sight to the apartments, about 50 metres away.
You could see the rear of the apartments where french windows opened out of the
lounge and kitchen area. In the McCanns’ apartment there was a master bedroom
next to the lounge, a bathroom and, furthest away from the Tapas restaurant, at
the front, next to the front door, the second bedroom where the three children
were put to sleep every night.
Each evening the group followed a pattern of giving the children tea together
and then playing with them for an hour before putting them to bed. The
children, worn out, were soon asleep.
For the adults, the evenings were fun, although not excessive, despite some of
the more excitable reporting. The Portuguese magazine Sol, for example, claimed
14 bottles of wine were consumed on the night of May 3 - adding the supposedly
persuasive details of eight bottles of red and six of white. In fact, according
to Gerry, the group had drunk only four bottles; another two stood barely
touched on the table.
Each set of parents took responsibility for checking on their own children, so
there was fairly constant traffic up and down from the table, the parents often
crossing paths. Gerry and Kate took turns to check every half hour.
On the evening of May 3, the last moment when Madeleine was definitely seen
alive by anybody other than the McCanns was at about 7pm as the group
put their children to bed.
As the adults dined, Gerry went to check on Madeleine and the twins Sean and
Amelie at just after 9pm, perhaps at 9.05pm. He says all the children were
safely asleep.
As he was returning to the table he encountered Jeremy Wilkins, an English
fellow holidaymaker whom Gerry had befriended at the resort’s tennis courts.
They chatted for a few minutes in the street outside the McCanns’ apartment.
One of the party, Russell O’Brien, was away from the table for much of the
evening, caring for his sick child. At about 9.15pm Jane Tanner, his
girlfriend, went to their apartment to see how things were. As she did so she
passed, right on the street corner by the McCanns’ apartment, a man carrying a
child wrapped in a blanket.
The man was crossing the road, walking away from the apartment complex. At the
time Tanner thought nothing of it; it seemed a perfectly normal spectacle in a
family resort.
At 9.30pm Kate was due to check on her children, but another of the
party, believed to be Matt Oldfield, was getting up from the table to make his
own check. Oldfield said he would look in on the McCanns’ children, according
to a source close to the McCanns.
When Oldfield reached the corner apartment he entered through the closed but
unlocked french windows and checked on the sleeping children. Afterwards, with
the terrible agony of hindsight, he could clearly recall seeing the twins lying
there, but could not say for sure that he had seen Madeleine. But that was
afterwards. The evening went on.
O’Brien rejoined the table shortly before 10pm. Not long afterwards Kate
got up to make the next check on her three children. The walk must have taken
her less than a minute. Madeleine was not in her bed.
Left behind was Cuddle Cat, Madeleine’s comfort toy. She was never separated
from it, especially at night.
According to Kate, the bedroom window was open and the shutter up, yet they had
been closed and down when Gerry checked at 9pm. Kate searched the apartment and
the area immediately outside.
She ran down the hill and into the restaurant, where Gerry recalls her shouting
or screaming either “Madeleine has gone. Somebody has taken her” or “Madeleine
has gone. Someone has taken her”. Other reports suggest she shouted, “They've
taken her.”
Gerry thought “that can’t be right, that can’t be right”. He went running up to
the apartment with Kate and checked everywhere she had already looked, and made
a quick run around the apartment block.
They decided straight away to call the police but had no idea what the
emergency numbers were and, anyway, could not speak Portuguese.
They asked one of their friends in the group to go down to the main reception,
which is manned 24 hours, and call the police. The call was made at 10.14pm
or 10.15pm, according to the McCanns.
Two officers from the GNR local police arrived at 11.10pm, nearly an
hour after the call. They could not speak English and a member of the Ocean Club
staff had to translate.
The immediate assumption was that Madeleine must have wandered off, but Gerry
and Kate were adamant that this could not have happened. Besides there were,
apparently, obvious signs that an intruder had been there. What they were,
however, is not clear. Apart from the open window and shutter, neither the
McCanns nor the police have confirmed any other evidence of a break-in.
At midnight the local police called the Policia Judiciaria, the PJ, who
investigate serious crimes. The PJ arrived at 1am, according to the
McCanns. There was substantial searching involving tourists and locals for some
hours. Kate remained in the apartment hoping for news, while Gerry went out and
looked.
By 3.30am the police had packed it in for the night. The searching was
pretty much over. Gerry and Kate were frustrated and desperate. Gerry went out
at about 4am with David Payne, another of their group, hoping to find
something.
Later, at about 6am, the McCanns went out alone and walked around the scrubland
on the outskirts of the village, holding hands and calling Madeleine’s name.
There was nobody else around and they felt utterly alone.
FROM the beginning the McCanns felt that they must keep faith with the
Portuguese detectives who were investigating their daughter’s disappearance.
Others around them were ready to criticise but, in public at least, the McCanns
expressed their support.
They were also advised not to betray any emotion when making public appeals for
help, which accounts for the even face which Gerry has presented to the media.
Jim Gamble, chief executive of the Child Exploitation and Online Protection
Centre, told them that if the abductor was watching he or she might take
pleasure in the McCanns’ distress.
Behind the scenes, however, tensions festered on both sides. It was not always
easy for the McCanns or their friends to maintain the veneer of confidence in
the police. One forensics officer spent a long time in the McCanns’ apartment
collecting exhibits, but wore the same gloves the whole time. The gloves
should have been replaced regularly to avoid cross-contamination.
The Portuguese police were unused to the intense media interest and the
McCanns’ highly successful and in some ways controversial strategy of keeping
Madeleine’s story and image in the public eye in the hope that someone would
recognise her. The PJ, steeped in a culture of secrecy dating back to
There were further complications, too. The McCanns knew, as few others did,
that the PJ had adopted a local expat called Robert Murat, who spoke English
and Portuguese, as an official translator.
Murat lived in a villa with his mother just across the road from the Ocean Club
and only a few hundred yards from the McCanns’ apartment - in the very
direction that Tanner had seen a man with a child wrapped in a blanket. Yet he
was given a position of trust by the police: when Murat told the police that
some members of the press already suspected him, the PJ told him not to worry.
He should keep away from the press, the PJ said, and help them as a translator.
He began informally translating for the PJ on Monday, May 7, and on the
Wednesday signed an agreement as an official interpreter. He translated the
interview of the McCanns’ holiday companion Rachel Oldfield, among others.
On the night of Saturday, May 12, he left the PJ offices in Portimao and
realised that he was being followed by an unmarked police car as he drove home.
On Sunday he tried in vain to find out from the PJ why they had changed their
minds about him. He has still never been told why he became a suspect but the
next day, at 7am, the police raided his house and took him off for questioning.
How could he be trusted one day and suspected the next? It made little sense,
least of all to Murat. Police investigations into his movements and associates
produced little of interest. Excavations at his mother’s villa turned up no
sign of a body. The police investigation appeared to be going nowhere.
From the beginning the McCanns had been warned by the PJ that they could not
speak about the details of the investigation or the circumstances of
Madeleine’s disappearance. The “secrecy of justice” laws prevented anybody
involved, including all police officers and witnesses, from talking about it to
the press or anyone else. Both Gerry and Kate were meticulous in observing this
rule.
The McCanns lived - and continue to live - on hope. They knew their daughter
could have been abused and killed but, in the absence of certainty, they could
have hope. When a German journalist asked in June whether they had had anything
to do with Madeleine’s disappearance, it seemed an insulting aberration. The
McCanns maintained their composure.
For many weeks even the identities of the McCanns’ holiday companions remained
secret - nobody except the police knew who they were. Suddenly the friends
began receiving telephone calls in
Those first invasive telephone calls were the opening round of the campaign of
speculation and suspicion that seems to have culminated in the extraordinary
events of the last few days. Sol ran a series of articles that cast doubt on
the behaviour and probity of the McCanns and their friends.
The articles were a mixture of straight facts from the police files and random
inaccuracies, such as the 14 bottles of wine. Where Sol led, the rest of the
Portuguese media followed - except they did not seem to be so well connected to
the police and their information was even wilder.
The internet became rife with rumour and gossip. The holiday group were
“swingers”, apparently, and had lied and contradicted themselves in their statements
to the police. The McCanns had accidentally killed Madeleine and conspired with
one or more of their friends to dispose of her body.
The most powerful rumour was that they had used their medical knowledge to
sedate their children – presumably so they could go “swinging”.
There was no evidence to support any of the claims. The McCanns insisted they
had given their children nothing more potent than Calpol, which is a painkiller
and has no sedative effect. It is also paracetamol based so an overdose would
take days to have an effect, with the child likely first to show signs of
jaundice.
The febrile atmosphere persisted. In mid-August the Portuguese papers,
apparently following a line from Sol, began to point suspicion at O’Brien, the
friend who had been absent from the dinner for most of that evening.
In some cases the Portuguese stories became the next day’s British stories and
the Portuguese journalists, seeing this apparent corroboration of their own
work, would then report the stories again with an additional layer of
speculation. In this way O’Brien went from innocent holidaymaker to prime
suspect facing imminent arrest in less than a week.
He had driven Madeleine’s body to the coast to be disposed of, went the
terrible fantasy. One morning the media descended on his
Was it possible, in some bizarre circle of fate, that the PJ had started to
believe the exaggerations of the local press and decided that Gerry and Kate
were not so innocent after all? In early August a Portuguese newspaper reported
that sniffer dogs brought in by British police had found traces of blood on a
wall in the McCanns’ apartment. It claimed that detectives believed that
Madeleine had been killed accidentally. The blood traces are now thought to be
those of a man, not of Madeleine (although the police have issued no
confirmation either way).
After weeks of the McCanns’ publicity drive there was a drought of hard
evidence and a flood of speculation about every suspected new twist.
The lawyer for Murat upped the ante by criticising the McCanns’ “strange”
behaviour in leaving Madeleine alone. Then the police acknowledged for the
first time that she could be dead.
The ugly mood culminated in a Portuguese newspaper claiming outright that the
McCanns had killed their daughter with an overdose of a sedative. Stunned, the
McCanns, who had already decided to start winding down their media campaign,
said they would sue for libel.
Last week the results of forensic tests conducted in
The car has remained in
Could Gerry or Kate, or both of them, have killed their daughter and later
disposed of her remains using the car? The scenario has to be considered - if
only because there have been previous cases of apparently grief-stricken
parents turning out to be killers.
A forensic psychologist suggests it is unlikely that the McCanns could have
kept up their united front for four months in the face of such attention if
they were guilty.
“It is very difficult for two people to lie over a death, however that death
occurred, whether it was accidental or deliberate,” said Mike Berry, senior
lecturer in forensic psychology at
A friend of the McCanns makes a more practical point: “Where would they have
hidden the body for three weeks in front of the world’s press?”
In the meantime it is day 129, Madeleine is still missing and, as her parents
keep reminding anyone who will listen, there is someone out there who knows.
www.timesonline.co.uk/tol...414796.ece
Prosecutor
to study evidence before deciding couple's future
·
Parents may be called back for questioning, say police
· Forensic expert cautions over interpretation of DNA
Giles Tremlett and Brendan de Beer in Praia da Luz
Monday September 10, 2007
The Guardian
Detectives investigating the disappearance of Madeleine McCann are expected to
consult local prosecutors today, and warned that they may ask her parents, Kate
and Gerry McCann, to return for further questioning at any time.
Portuguese police sources said that investigations were "still
ongoing" and any decision on what to do next rested with the local
prosecutor, Joao Cunha de Magalhaes. Further test results due from the Forensic
Science Service in
"Their [the McCanns'] departure obviously complicates things and can delay
the investigation as we will not have as much contact with them as
before," said Portuguese investigator Olegario de Sousa. But he admitted
that the couple had every right to return home as they had not been charged
with any wrongdoing.
"The investigation will only end when we think the case file is complete
and we hand our findings to the public prosecutor, who then decides whether to
drop the case or bring charges."
Chief Inspector de Sousa said the police could keep the McCanns as formal
suspects, or arguidos, for a year without charging them, but under Portuguese
law they would not necessarily have to attend a hearing if evidence was
presented before a court. Any future attempt to impose bail conditions on the
McCanns, including residency in
Even if the McCanns were charged with either manslaughter or concealing
Madeleine's body, they might be able to live freely in
Nelson Lourenco, a well-known Portuguese criminal lawyer, explained that
defendants were not remanded in custody if they faced jail terms of less than
three years, or if their alleged crime had not been committed intentionally.
"As the crime of concealing a body has a maximum sentence of two years'
imprisonment, while manslaughter excludes any criminal intent, the couple, even
if they were to be charged with these crimes, would not need to return to
In the coming days, detectives are likely to focus on the forensic evidence
that appears to have been gleaned from a car hired by the couple more than
three weeks after Madeleine disappeared, and from the apartment in the Mark
Warner complex where they stayed on May 3.
Portuguese police have given no indication about the strength of the forensic
material which encouraged them to make the parents formal suspects. But Alan
Baker, a scientist who has given expert trial evidence on the subject, said the
police would have important factors to assess before being able to draw
conclusions.
He told the Press Association that the type of sample - whether actually blood
or just a smear - was vital in interpreting any potential match. "If they
have found a hair follicle or a trace of blood at the scene then the
implications could be immense, but if it is only a smear then there are all
sorts of issues involved. When you get trace DNA it is incredibly difficult to
interpret and that is the key point."
He said the science of matching DNA profiles was also made very difficult by
the fact that members of the same family were involved. If the match was less
than perfect, as some reports have suggested, then it became more likely that
any DNA may belong to her siblings or parents.
He also pointed out that any cross-contamination of DNA had to be taken on
board as a possible explanation if it was Madeleine's profile in the car or
flat. For instance, anything the girl had touched in the days before she went
missing - perhaps her toys - might have helped to transfer her DNA, he said.
Mr Baker also urged caution over how the samples were obtained. "The
sample is only as good as the person that took it."
The McCanns' lawyer, Carlos Pinto de Abreu, told the Guardian claims by
relatives that police had offered Mrs McCann a plea bargain if she admitted to
accidentally killing her child were wrong. The claims were the result of
"a misunderstanding" while she was being questioned.
Mr and Mrs McCann are receiving further legal advice from the
The statements
Gerry McCann,
Today, Kate, Sean, Amelie and I have returned home as we planned a while ago.
We are returning to
Whilst it is heartbreaking to return to the
Kate and I wish to thank once again all those who have supported us over the
past days, weeks and months. But we would also like to ask for our privacy to
be respected now that we have returned home.
Our return is with the full agreement of the Portuguese authorities and police.
Portuguese law prohibits us from commenting further on the police
investigation. Despite there being so much we wish to say we are unable to do
so except to say this. We have played no part in the disappearance of our
lovely daughter Madeleine.
Police spokesman Olegario Sousa
The investigation will only end when we think the case file is complete and we
hand our findings to the public prosecutor, who then decides whether to drop
the case or bring charges.
www.guardian.co.uk/crime/...40,00.html
From The Times
September 10, 2007
Puzzles and
mysteries at the very heart of the investigation
The McCanns ‘refused to answer 40 key questions’ during a police interview
after being made official suspects, it was reported yesterday. Here our
correspondent looks at some of the crucial riddles of the past four months
David Brown in
What happened in the four hours before Madeleine was reported missing?
Kate and Gerry McCann claim that while they dined at a restaurant with friends
regular checks were made on Madeleine and their two-year-old twins, Sean and
Amelie, at their nearby holiday apartment. Mr McCann told police he saw his
daughter asleep at about 9pm. A friend, Matthew Oldfield, entered the apartment
at about 9.30pm but did not look in the bedroom Madeleine and the twins were
sharing.
It is not known if anyone apart from Mr and Mrs McCann saw Madeleine alive
between 6pm and 10pm, when she was reported missing by her mother. The timing
is crucial but would be only circumstantial evidence in any prosecution.
Although a small child could be killed quickly it would take time to hide a
body so that it was not discovered in the biggest search in Portuguese history.
Why did Kate McCann cry out “They’ve taken her?” when she discovered
Madeleine missing?
Portuguese police are reported to find it suspicious that Mrs McCann
immediately believed that more than one person had taken her daughter. This
could suggest that she knew who had taken Madeleine, perhaps people who thought
they were helping Mrs McCann by removing her daughter’s body.
Alternatively, it could be an off-the-cuff remark by an hysterical mother or
perhaps was misheard or misunderstood in the confusion of the night.
What were the movements of the McCann’s friends on the night Madeleine
disappeared?
The McCann family had stayed at the Ocean Club resort with three other British
couples and their five children, and a single woman. Russell O’Brien, a doctor
from
His wife, Jane Tanner, was the only witness to report a man carrying away child
from the McCann’s apartments. There is confusion about when members of the
party arrived at the tapas restaurant and left to check on their own sleeping
children.
How much alcohol did the McCanns and their friends drink on the evening
Madeleine disappeared?
Kate and Gerry McCann and their friends are reported to have told detectives
they shared four bottles of wine, with another two barely touched before
Madeleine was discovered missing.
However, it is claimed detectives have recovered a bill showing they downed
eight bottles of red wine and six white during the afternoon and evening.
Why was Madeleine’s bedroom window and shutter open?
Kate and Gerry McCann told police that the window shutter in Madeleine’s
bedroom, which could not been seen from the restaurant, had been forced open.
Police tests showed the heavy metal shutter had not been forced up from the
outside, so must have been pulled open from inside the room. Assuming that the
abductor entered through the apartment’s unlocked patio windows, why would he
or she not leave by the same way or the use the front door?
Or was the window opened to make it appear as if an intruder had used it to
enter the bedroom?
Why did Madeleine’s sister and brother sleep through her “abduction”?
Sean and Amelie were heavy sleepers who were not disturbed by their sister’s
abduction, claim their parents. However, they also slept through their mother’s
hysterical response to Madeleine’s disappearance and the presence of dozens of
people who joined the search before being carried out by a female police
officer. Kate and Gerry McCann have strenuously denied sedating their daughter.
Why were the McCanns allowed to leave
The Portuguese authorities allowed the McCanns to return to the
Portugese law states that after someone is declared a suspect, police have
eight months to conclude the investigation into that individual. If they
require further time officers can apply to the courts for a four-month extension.
If the McCanns refused to comply with a request to return to the
All parties have strenuously denied any wrongdoing.
www.timesonline.co.uk/tol...418919.ece
'These cops
framed my wife'
By
OLIVER HARVEY
Chief Feature Writer
September 08, 2007
Leandro Silva said his wife had been set up and he believed police would do the same thing to four-year-old Madeleine’s mother.
He said: “I am worried Kate will be framed for a crime she did not commit, the way it happened to my wife.”
Leandro also demanded that one of the detectives leading the Maddie investigation should be dropped from the case.
Detective Goncalo Amaral has been accused of being involved with beating Leandro’s wife, Leonor Cipriano, during her interrogation over the death of her daughter, Joana, nine.
Fears for Kate ... Leonor's husband Leandro
Speaking exclusively to The Sun, Leandro said: “Goncalo Amaral shouldn’t still be investigating the McCann case.
“I believe he will be proved to be a bad policeman and a bad operator.
“I don’t believe Kate and Gerry have anything to do with Madeleine’s disappearance.
“I just don’t believe they would do such a thing. After losing Joana I know the pain they are going through. It’s terrible.”
In news that shocked the world Kate McCann was yesterday declared an “arguida” ? Portuguese for suspect ? in the hunt for Maddie.
And the story of little Joana Cipriano has some chilling echoes of the British child’s disappearance.
Joana vanished on September 12, 2004, just seven miles from the spot where Madeleine went missing on May 3.
The innocent, brown-eyed youngster, her chestnut hair cut into a boyish crop, set off from home in the village of Figueira to collect groceries.
But she never returned. Like Maddie, it was as if Joana had disappeared off the face of the Earth.
Kate ... appealed to the public like Leonor
According to a neighbour of the girl, Joana was mature for her age.
She explained: “Instead of playing with other children she spent her time taking care of her two little brothers.”
Another neighbour described her as the “Cinderella” of the household, seen at all times of the day and night running errands for her family.
Her mother made public appeals for her daughter’s safe return, claiming she had been kidnapped.
But authorities started to suspect the disappearance.
Local shopkeeper Nídia Rochato remembered that Leonor neither cried nor seemed unduly concerned.
When asked about this, Leonor is said to have told Nídia she believed her daughter was still alive.
Like Maddie’s case, the investigation into Joana’s disappearance got off to a bad start.
Local Republican National Guard failed to seal off the house where she was last seen.
In November 2005 Leonor, 34, was found guilty, along with her brother Joao, of Joana’s murder and is now serving 16 years.
Leandro, Joana’s stepfather, said: “Leonor never did anything yet she was arrested.
“I am fearful the same thing will happen to Kate McCann. Whenever I watch the news it reminds me of Joana. It is hard.
Bruised ... Leonor alleges police beat her
“I just pray Madeleine appears. With Joana the police did a bad job. They didn’t spend enough time looking for the child.”
A photograph of Leanor's face ? black and blue with bruises ? was published in Portuguese newspapers.
The mum accused police of beating her during an interrogation that took place without her lawyer present or with the knowledge of the public prosecutor.
Goncalo Amaral, head of the regional Judicial Police, is one of five officers accused over the beating.
The portly, balding senior cop in his 40s has also been heading the Maddie McCann investigation.
Portugal’s Ministerio Publico said in June it had charged three police officers with torture, a fourth with omission of evidence and a fifth with falsification of documents.
It did not reveal who had been charged with which offence.
Police sources in Portugal deny Mr Amaral has done anything wrong.
Despite the allegations, the detective has not been removed from the McCann case.
They say he is a dedicated and professional officer. Police sources said Mr Amaral was “very angry” about the allegations and was considering taking action against the Ministerio Publico.
A source said: “He is very professional and has had a lot of success in solving cases. He is very upset because reporters never speak of these successes.”
Amaral ... leading the search for Maddie
Madeleine’s family reacted with disbelief to the claims against Mr Amaral.
The missing girl’s aunt Philomena said: “Just about every country in the world is watching this. What do you think the Portuguese government would do?
“Would they have some kind of rogue policeman there? I doubt it. I find it highly unlikely. No way would they have him on such a high- profile case.”
Madeleine’s parents, Kate and Gerry, were informed of the charges by the a Foreign Office on June 10.
A spokesman for the family said: “They do not remember meeting Goncalo Amaral face to face but naturally they were concerned to hear of the charges.”
Supporters of Mr Amaral claim Leonor didn’t report her daughter missing for two days.
Prosecutors at her trial claimed Leonor and her brother were found by Joana having sex when she returned with the groceries.
They said the pair were afraid Joana would tell what she saw and claim the pair beat the child in order to frighten but killed her in the process.
Leonor waits behind bars for news on the case against the officers accused of beating her.
Only time will tell if anyone will ever be prosecuted over Maddie’s disappearance.
o.harvey@the-sun.co.uk
www.thesun.co.uk/article/...09,00.html
'Police
Match Madeleine DNA To Hire Car'
Updated:
20:26, Monday September 10, 2007
Portuguese police say they have found firm DNA evidence that the body of
Madeleine McCann was in the boot of the family's hire car five weeks after she
went missing, sources have told Sky News.
Sky crime correspondent Martin Brunt, speaking from Portimao, said police were
"adamant" they had found the most "damning" evidence yet
implicating either one or both of the McCanns in their daughter's death.
The evidence came in blood samples returned from the Forensic Science Service
in
"Police say it is the most damning evidence that has been returned by the
tests," Brunt said.
"It shows, as far as they are concerned, the presence of Madeleine's body
in the car five weeks after she disappeared."
He continued: "The evidence suggests very strongly that it was not that
her DNA had been transferred from clothing or from a cuddly toy.
"The allegation is that the DNA shows a full match of 99%. According to
police, it shows the presence of Madeleine's body in the boot of the family's
hire car five weeks after she disappeared."
He said the sample of blood sent to the Forensic Science Service in
Two were partial matches that came from the car and the windowsill of the
family's holiday apartment.
The third was the full match from the boot of the car.
Meanwhile, papers outlining any evidence against Gerry and Kate McCann will be
passed to the Public Prosecutor in
With the couple back in their home in Rothley, Leicestershire, the prosecutor
will consider whether to lay any charges.
He will be considering the circumstances surrounding Madeleine's disappearance
on May 3, Portuguese police spokesman Olegario Sousa added.
Brunt said the prosecutor had a number of options and may call for more
evidence or advise on the investigation.
Family spokesman Brian Kennedy, who is Madeleine's great uncle, said of the
family: "They are holding up extremely well."
The Portimao-based prosecutor, Jose Cunha de Magalhaes e Meneses, will look at
the DNA evidence as well as the statements given by the McCanns to see if there
is a case against the couple.
Chief Inspector Sousa said Portuguese police decided to pass the file on to the
prosecutor despite not having all the results from forensic tests being carried
out in
The samples were taken from the McCanns' holiday apartment and hire car.
The McCanns have been told they could be called back to
Under Portuguese law the couple could keep their arguido - suspect - status for
up to eight months, although the prosecutor could decide to extend that to a
year.
Portuguese detectives appear to be working on the theory that Mrs McCann killed
her daughter by accident and covered up the death by claiming she was abducted.
According to reports in
news.sky.com/skynews/arti...59,00.html
MADELEINE'S
BODY 'WAS IN HIRE CAR'
Tuesday September 11,2007
By Padraic Flanagan in Praia da Luz
POWERFUL new evidence was put forward last night to suggest Madeleine
McCann’s body was placed in a car hired by her parents 25 days after she
vanished.
Police sources revealed they had obtained a full DNA profile match with the
four-year-old from a previously undisclosed sample.
They said the presence of the full profile was the strongest evidence so far
that Madeleine had been in the car. They also disclosed it was one of three DNA
profiles matching Madeleine’s – two full and one partial – recovered by
forensic investigators.
It followed earlier revelations that scientists had found Madeleine’s DNA
“underneath the upholstery” in the family’s hire car.
Detectives believe they have now collected enough evidence for Mrs McCann to be
charged with homicide by failing to prevent Madeleine’s death – the equivalent
of manslaughter in British law.
It is thought likely that, along with her husband Gerry, she would also face a
charge of concealing Madeleine’s body.
The dramatic shift in the focus of the investigation came after officers
discovered “biological fluids” with an 80 per cent match to Madeleine’s DNA
“underneath the upholstery in the boot” of the McCanns’ hired Renault Scenic.
According to police sources, the sample had deteriorated too badly to make a
100 per cent match possible.
But the find makes police believe it significantly strengthens their case
against the couple.
A full DNA profile was obtained from a sample – possibly blood – found on a
window sill in the Ocean World apartment where the family had been staying.
The second partial profile was obtained from the boot of the car.
Then police sources last night dramatically revealed for the first time the
second full DNA profile match found in the car.
It was this latest evidence that detectives presented to the parents, both 39,
during last week’s questioning.
In particular, they demanded to know why Madeleine’s blood was in the holiday
flat and how traces of her DNA got into the car more than three weeks after she
vanished.
The police file of evidence, which is thought to make a very strong case for
the prosecution of Kate McCann, was expected to be placed in the hands of the
public prosecutor in Portimao later today.
The file includes lengthy interviews with both part-time GP Kate McCann and
Gerry after they were made official suspects in the case last week.
It also features a large amount of forensic evidence gathered in the McCanns’
apartment, hire car and surrounding area.
Other details are reported to include evidence gathered from surveillance by
Portuguese and British police.
Portimao’s district attorney, Jose Cunha de Magalhaes e Meneses, who acts as
the public prosecutor, will have to decide what, if any, charges will be
brought against the parents.
The couple can remain as official suspects for up to eight months before police
have to go before a judge and ask for an extension.
Chief Inspector Olegario Sousa, the spokesman for the Portuguese police
investigation team, said: “At the moment the inquiry is being prepared to be
handed to the prosecutor in charge of the case.
“He will analyse it and after this he will make his decision.”
Police chiefs decided to pass the file on to the prosecutor despite not having
the full results from all the tests being carried out by the Forensic Science
Service in
Mr Sousa added: “The information is that we have received part of the forensic
results, so we are waiting for the rest.”
Despite some surprise that the police are prepared to forward their file before
all the results are in, a source close to the investigation said all FSS
results of substance had already been handed on to Leicester police and the
Portuguese authorities.
“The bulk of the evidence has been sent on. In a case such as this, the evidence
is assessed, rather like a batting order, on what is most important.
“We have reached the tail end now. But all the evidence is constantly being
reviewed.”
The McCanns’ Portuguese lawyer, Carlos Pinto de Abreu, has said he has no idea
how long it will take for the case to be concluded.
The McCanns are thought to have been told they could have to wait months before
learning whether they are to be charged or cleared.
If charged, the couple could be remanded in “preventative custody” by a judge
while they await trial.
After leaving their rented villa in Praia da Luz on Sunday, the McCanns said
they would be happy to return at any time to
But their decision to consult a British expert in extradition law has prompted
speculation that they may fight an extradition order.
Michael Caplan, QC, has previously represented Chilean dictator General
Pinochet in his battle to avoid extradition on charges of torture and human
rights abuses.
But since the introduction of a European Arrest Warrant in 2004, it will be
much harder for the McCanns to challenge any extradition request from a
European neighbour.
Portuguese investigators are now thought to be focusing on the theory that Kate
McCann killed her daughter by accident and covered up the death by claiming she
had been abducted.
Her husband’s alleged involvement is less clear, but police sources say
detectives believe he was an accessory to the killing and helped to hide
Madeleine's body.
Reports yesterday suggested Madeleine was accidentally killed by an overdose of
a sedative, by accidentally drinking medication or after being slapped, pushed
or shaken.
Mrs McCann is the key suspect, it is reported, because British tourists claimed
she was the parent who put Madeleine to bed while her husband relaxed by the
pool or had a game of tennis.
Police are preparing to make a fresh sweep of searches in Praia da Luz,
including the rented villa where the McCanns stayed after Madeleine
disappeared, and an area south of the Ocean Club resort where the youngster
disappeared 131 days ago.
Philomena McCann, Madeleine’s aunt, said it was “unbelievable” that Kate and
Gerry McCann had been named as “arguidos”, or formal suspects, in her
disappearance.
“The way the Portuguese have turned this investigation round, and they are no
longer looking for a live child, they are assuming on spurious evidence that
Madeleine is now dead, well, we don’t agree with that in any shape or form,”
she said.
“We want the investigation changed round to look for Madeleine alive, as we
reckon she is.”
Ms McCann said the couple would be “absolutely” co-operating with the
Portuguese police and were prepared to return to undergo further questioning.
She also accused the police of “clutching at straws” to clear up the case.
“Kate and Gerry have been a thorn in their sides for a long time,” she said.
“What better than to cast them as the villains? No one believes the Portuguese
police.”
The family’s decision to return to
Gerry McCann said: “We want the twins, as much as is reasonably possible, to
live an ordinary life in their home country, and we want to consider the events
of the last few days which have been so deeply disturbing.”
It is very unlikely the couple will bring the twins back to
www.dailyexpress.co.uk/posts/view/18829
Social
workers scrutinise McCann twins as evidence dossier given to prosecutor
ALASTAIR
JAMIESON
SOCIAL services and police in
Authorities in Leicestershire were discussing how to respond to the
four-year-old's disappearance and the naming of Kate and Gerry McCann as formal
suspects in the case.
The couple, both doctors, have two other children, twins Sean and Amelie, aged
two. Officials are understood to be considering whether they must intervene to
protect the twins.
Police in the
The prosecutor has three main options: he could bring charges; rule that no
action should be taken; or send the papers back to police with a request for
more evidence.
It was reported last night that Portuguese police had found firm DNA evidence
that Madeleine's body was in the boot of the family's hire car five weeks after
she went missing. The family say this is impossible, as they did not rent the
vehicle until 25 days after she disappeared.
It was claimed that the evidence came in blood samples returned from the
Forensic Science Service in
Portuguese detectives appear to be working on the theory that Mrs McCann killed
her daughter by accident and covered up the death by faking an abduction. The
results of forensic tests in recent weeks have apparently boosted this
hypothesis.
Mr McCann's alleged role is not clear, but sources said police believe he was
an accessory. According to reports in
The couple are seeking advice from two of
It is 130 days since Madeleine went missing from her bed in a holiday apartment
in Praia da Luz, while her parents dined at a nearby restaurant.
Madeleine's aunt, Philomena McCann, said it was "unbelievable" that
Kate and Gerry McCann had been named as arguidos, or formal suspects, in her
disappearance.
"The way the Portuguese have turned this investigation round - they are no
longer looking for a live child, they are assuming, on spurious evidence,
Madeleine is dead ... well, we don't agree with that," she said.
The Local Government Association explained that in
Asked if it was likely that children in such cases were taken into care or
placed on the "in need" or "at risk" register, the LGA said
it depended on the circumstances.
Leicestershire County Council refused to comment on yesterday's meeting.
news.scotsman.com/index.c...1450012007
Maddy
McCann: Confusion over last hours
Reports
by Gordon Rayner, Chief Reporter
Last Updated: 2:15am BST 11/09/2007
IMAGE 10
The final picture, 2.29pm, May 3: Madeleine [right] enjoys the sunshine with
her father Gerry and younger sister Ameli
The night of Madeleine McCann's disappearance, May 3, has been subject to
claim, counter-claim, conjecture and scurrilous rumour.
Today The Daily Telegraph pieces together the known facts about the fateful
night, as reported by the McCanns themselves and key witnesses.
2:29pm The last picture of Madeleine was taken at the swimming pool at
the Ocean Club resort in Praia da Luz, where the McCanns and the three other
families with whom they were staying played together.
7:00pm Madeleine and the other children were put to bed. Reports of when
she was last seen before this vary, with some accounts putting it as early as
6pm. This would be crucial as the police might put forward a theory that the
McCanns killed Madeleine and hid her body before they went for dinner.
8:30pm Around this time, witnesses agree, the McCanns arrived at the
tapas bar near their apartment, meaning there was a "window of opportunity"
of up to 2hrs 40 mins for them to kill Madeleine and hide her body - a scenario
dismissed as "ludicrous" by their family.
The couple then settled down to dinner and take part in a quiz organised by the
Ocean Club's aerobics teacher, Najova Chekaya.
The McCanns say checks were made on their children every half-hour, sometimes
by other members of the party, comprising Dr Russell O'Brien and Jane Tanner,
from Exeter, Dr Matthew and Rachael Oldfield, from London, and David and Fiona
Payne, from Leicester, together with Mrs Payne's mother Dianne Webster.
Yet Mrs Webster has reportedly told police that each couple was responsible for
checking their own children.
9:05pm Gerry McCann left the table to check on his children, who were
all sleeping soundly, he says. Returning, he bumped into another British
tourist, Jeremy Wilkins, with whom he had played tennis.
They chatted for several minutes, as Mr Wilkins has confirmed.
9:15pm Jane Tanner told police that at this time she went to check on
her daughter, who was ill, and recalled seeing Mr McCann talking to Mr Wilkins.
As she went into the apartment, she saw a man aged around 35 carrying a little
girl wrapped in a blanket.
She thought nothing of it but is now convinced this was the kidnapper. The
child's pyjamas matched the description of those Madeleine was wearing. Mr
Wilkins apparently saw no such man, and does not remember seeing Miss Tanner.
He has told police: "It was a very narrow path and I think it would have
been almost impossible for anyone to walk by without me noticing."
9:30pm Dr Matthew Oldfield left the table and offered to check the
McCann children. In his first police statement he said he merely listened at
the door of
Gerry McCann invited Miss Chekaya to join the party at 9.30. Her account
apparently contradicts Mr Oldfield, as she claims that no one left or returned
to the table in the half-hour she was there.
10:00pm Kate McCann left the table at this time. One tapas bar worker
has even claimed that only one person left the table during the evening, a tall
man thought to be Dr O'Brien.
There are also conflicting accounts of how much the party drank. One Portuguese
newspaper claimed the nine friends downed 14 bottles of wine. The McCanns
insist they drank three or four.
Kate McCann ran back to the restaurant at 10pm, saying Madeleine was missing.
10:14pm Police were called after the friends made an initial search.
Detectives are said to be intrigued by one witness report which quoted Kate
McCann shouting out: "They've taken her, they've taken her!"
They believe her immediate assertion that Madeleine had been snatched - and the
implication that it was by more than one person - is suspicious.
But other accounts have claimed Mrs McCann in fact said: "Madeleine has
gone. Somebody has taken her."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.../wmaddy311.xml
40 questions
they both 'refused to answer'
By
Ryan Parry And Lucy Thornton 10/09/2007
Gerry and Kate McCann refused to answer 40 questions when interrogated by
detectives about Madeleine's disappearance, Portuguese media claimed yesterday.
Kate was said to have become "nervous" when told experts had
discovered blood matching Madeleine's DNA profile.
Several Portuguese papers quoted unnamed police sources as saying Kate became
"angry and upset" during her two days of questioning and said police
were unhappy at the couple's refusal to reply.
When confronted about the discovery of blood in Madeleine's bedroom, it was
claimed Kate gave "evasive replies" before stating "it could be
from a wound or a nose".
They wrote: "Kate was informed the blood was Madeleine's - as a
corpse. She insisted this was impossible and became nervous."
One paper claims the police "took advantage of the moment of weakness to
confront her with the blood stains found in the car hired 25 days after Maddy's
disappearance. Kate became upset and stated that she would not answer any
more."
It was at this stage that officers said she had to answer their questions
unless she asked to become "a suspect" in the case.
Under Portuguese law a "suspect" has the right to remain silent - but
if they are a witness every question has to be answered.
It is claimed Kate said it was "absurd" to be named a suspect but
after a dinner break and a phone call to Gerry, she agreed.
"When she came back the climate had gone cold," the Diario De
Noticias newspaper said. Another paper wrote of the second session of
questioning: "She again got irritated with the questions."
One paper wrote: "Investigators told her accidents happen and when
they do they are very lenient. There were more questions about the blood in the
car and at the stage Kate stopped answering anything at all."
Re-interviewed on Friday, she again refused to answer questions about the
blood.
Gerry was interviewed straight after Kate in an even "harder"
interrogation.
Inspectors asked him if he had hidden the body. Maddy's father answered almost
nothing and was described as "very angry".
Sources claim "the greatest suspicion has fallen upon Maddy's
mother".
"Officers said her replies left a lot to be desired," it was claimed.
Overall the detectives concluded they they did not have a "great
response" during the interviews because of "the couple's silence
during 40 questions".
It was also reported two British sniffer dogs, one trained to react to the
smell of a corpse and the other to traces of blood, showed
"excitement" at the same spot in the apartment.
www.mirror.co.uk/news/top...-19762031/
Prosecutor
To Decide On McCann Charges
Updated: 02:34, Tuesday September 11, 2007
Files containing "damning" evidence against the parents of Madeleine
McCann will be given to the public prosecutor later, according to Sky sources.
Sky sources say that scientists have found a full DNA match to Madeleine in the
boot of a car hired by Kate and Gerry McCann after their daughter went missing.
Mr and Mrs McCann are at home in Rothley, Leicestershire, after police named
them as suspects in their daughter's disappearance on May 3 in the
"Police say it is the most damning evidence that has been returned by the
tests," Sky's Crime Correspondent Martin Brunt said.
Police spokesman Olegario de Sousa said it was "agreed with the
prosecutor" that the file would be handed over early today.
A spokeswoman for the prosecutor in
However Alipio Ribeiro, head of the investigative Policia Judiciaria (PJ),
suggested the forensic tests had not been conclusive.
He told Portuguese state broadcaster RTP: "We can't say with certainty
whether it was the blood of person 'A' or person 'B'."
The report is expected to include interviews with the McCanns and details of
forensic evidence from various sites in the Praia da Luz resort where Madeleine
vanished while on holiday.
"The prosecutor will then have to decide whether he has enough evidence to
charge the McCanns or whether the police need to carry out more inquiries or
gather more evidence," De Sousa said.
He would not discuss details of the evidence, in accordance with
Family spokesman Brian Kennedy, who is Madeleine's great uncle, said of the
family: "They are holding up extremely well."
news.sky.com/skynews/arti...21,00.html
McCanns
Sure Of Each Other's Innocence
Updated:
10:52, Tuesday September 11, 2007
The father of missing Madeleine McCann has said he is "100%
confident" his wife had nothing to do with his daughter's disappearance.
Gerry McCann used his blog on the official Find Madeleine website to speak of the
"unending nightmare" of the past week.
In an emotionally-charged blog entry, he wrote: "We always hoped that we
would not have to return without Madeleine and could never have imagined the
possibility that we would do so as suspects in our own daughter's
disappearance.
"The pain and turmoil we have experienced in this last week is totally
beyond description.
"Kate and I are totally 100% confident in each other's innocence, and our
family and friends have rallied round unflinchingly to support us."
Since setting up the findmadeleine.com website, Mr McCann has regularly used
his blog to hit back at criticism of the couple.
He wrote that he could not comment on any details of the investigation, police
interviews or the evidence that detectives put to them.
"Despite the anguish and extreme distress this has caused all of our
family, long term no-one will be able to doubt how intensely Kate and I have
been scrutinised," he wrote.
"We have absolute confidence that, when all of the facts are presented together,
we will be able to demonstrate that we played absolutely no part in Madeleine's
abduction.
"Our primary concern has always been the search for Madeleine and this
aspect, that our daughter is still missing, must remain a priority for the
investigation."
On a positive note, the couple's twins Sean and Amelie have "settled
straight back in" to life in
Mr McCann continued: "We have had numerous visitors with friends and those
in official capacities.
"We have appointed solicitors to advise us and assist our Portuguese
lawyer in preparing our defence against any possible charges.
"The sooner this is done, the sooner we can concentrate fully on trying to
find Madeleine, which is the most important thing through this unending
nightmare."
news.sky.com/skynews/arti...55,00.html
McCann
Evidence Passed To Prosecutors
Updated:
14:18, Tuesday September 11, 2007
Portuguese prosecutors have received all of the files of evidence on the
McCanns from police investigating Madeleine's disappearance, Sky sources have
said.
The prosecutors are now expected to review reports of three samples of
Madeleine's DNA found by detectives before they decide whether to charge the
McCanns with an offence.
Sky sources say that scientists have found a full DNA match to Madeleine in the
boot of a car hired by Kate and Gerry McCann after their daughter went missing.
"Police say it is the most damning evidence that has been returned by the
tests," Sky's Crime Correspondent Martin Brunt said.
As prosecutors analyse the evidence, Mr and Mrs McCann are enduring the tense
wait for news at their home in Rothley, Leicestershire.
Both have been named by police as suspects in their daughter's disappearance on
May 3 in the
Police spokesman Olegario de Sousa said it was "agreed with the
prosecutor" that the file of evidence on the MCcanns would be handed over
early today.
A spokeswoman for the prosecutor in
However Alipio Ribeiro, head of the investigative Policia Judiciaria, suggested
the forensic tests had not been conclusive.
He told Portuguese state broadcaster RTP: "We can't say with certainty whether
it was the blood of person A or person B."
The report is expected to include interviews with the McCanns and details of
forensic evidence from various sites in the Praia da Luz resort where Madeleine
vanished on a family holiday.
"The prosecutor will then have to decide whether he has enough evidence to
charge the McCanns or whether the police need to carry out more inquiries or
gather more evidence," Mr De Sousa said.
He would not discuss details of the evidence, in accordance with
Family spokesman Brian Kennedy, who is Madeleine's great uncle, said of the
family: "They are holding up extremely well."
news.sky.com/skynews/arti...21,00.html
Villagers
Join McCanns In Wait For News
By
Ursula Errington
Rothley, Leicestershire
Updated: 12:37, Tuesday September 11, 2007
With Portuguese prosecutors now poring over the files on the McCann case it is
a tense wait in the family's Leicestershire village to see what decision will
be made.
The McCanns are riding it out at home and as far as we know they haven't
ventured out since their return to the
But the pressure on them is growing with police sources saying that forensic
tests on material from the boot of McCanns' hire care indicate Madeleine's
presence.
Also the Portuguese police and press seem to be painting a picture of Kate
McCann as violent and aggressive towards her children at times.
And the Portuguese media suggest the inquiry is concentrating on whether
sedatives were used on the four year old.
Now the McCanns are home, leaks from the Portuguese police seem to have
increased in frequency and importance.
There are many more questions than answers in a case that has bound a community
in
In their home town the local newspaper's front page declares that the village
has given its backing to the McCanns, although many villagers are now reluctant
to talk to the lingering press pack some have echoed that view.
One woman who had just dropped off her grandchild at school said she found the
Portuguese media view of Kate McCann distasteful.
"You are not guilty until you are found guilty. You have got to keep an
open mind," she said.
Others going about their business in the village are simply confused.
As he waits for a bus, Donald says he believes all the twists and turns in this
story are due to Portuguese officials covering up. "I think there has been
a lot of poor investigation, " he says.
"And now the Portuguese authorities are trying to get out of that
situation. It seems now the main point has nothing to do with Madeleine
anymore. It's all about smearing her parents who are professional people.
Others are not so unwavering in their support.
Baffled by the complexity of the case, one early morning shopper in Rothley who
didn't want to be named said: "It's all a bit mysterious - it doesn't seem
to add up.
"A lot of people are saying the same thing but the pieces of the jigsaw
don't seem to fit. We are a bit confused really."
The portrayal of the McCanns in newspapers 1,000 miles away appears to be
creating a split camp in the village on their doorstep.
But all of them are united in wanting to know what has happened to Madeleine so
they can move on.
news.sky.com/skynews/arti...05,00.html
McCanns face
charges as police present case
By
Caroline Gammell in Praia da Luz and Gordon Rayner
Last Updated: 11:48pm BST 11/09/2007
IMAGE 11
Paper shows support for McCanns in their home town
Police in Portugal are said to be confident that charges would soon be brought
against Kate and Gerry McCann after a 1,000-page dossier of evidence was handed
to a judge.
Detectives believe they have enough material to justify charging one or both
parents with the "accidental" killing of their four-year-old daughter
Madeleine and presented their findings to a public prosecutor in Portimao.
In the latest twist, the prosecutor almost immediately passed the file to an
"instructional judge" to seek approval for any further action to be
taken. This could include charges being brought, or may simply be a request for
further searches or more interviews.
Legal experts said the judge is likely to make his decision within 10 days.
A source close to the inquiry said: "The police are confident they have
shown the McCanns have a case to answer and they believe charges will now
follow."
The McCann family remained defiant, with Gerry's sister Philomena saying that
if the couple are charged "it will give them the chance to clear their
name".
In other developments
Police prepared to dig up recently-laid roads in the resort town of
• A "substantial amount" of Madeleine's hair was said to have been
found in the boot of the McCanns' hire car.
• Sources claimed that forensic evidence pointed to Madeleine's body being
hidden in the car's spare wheel well.
• Gerry McCann said his and his wife's suffering was "beyond
description".
The public prosecutor, Jose Cunha de Magalhaes e Meneses, may already have
decided if the McCanns have a case to answer.
A Portuguese lawyer, Artur Rego, said the speed with which Mr Meneses had
passed the 10-volume dossier to the judge made it unlikely that he had recommended
charges at this stage.
But, he said, the prosecutor may have prepared the case in advance and was
waiting for the final papers before making his recommendations."
It appears increasingly likely that any case is likely to hinge on forensic
evidence allegedly found in a Renault Scenic hired by the McCanns 25 days after
Madeleine's disappearance.
It was claimed that a large quantity of Madeleine's hair was found under the
boot liner, next to the spare wheel, leading police to believe that her body may
have been hidden there.
The amount of hair was said to be sufficient to convince police that it could
only have got there directly from Madeleine's body, rather than by
"secondary transfer" from her clothes or Cuddle Cat toy.
Bodily fluids said to have been found in the car showed signs of decomposition,
it is alleged, leading police to believe that Madeleine is dead.
There were also reports that toxicology tests on the samples in the car may
have led to the suspicion that Madeleine was drugged and speculation that she
may have been accidentally given an overdose of a sedative.
As official suspects, the McCanns are prevented by Portuguese law from speaking
out in their own defence but have dismissed as "ludicrous" the
suggestion that they could be to blame for Madeleine's disappearance.
IMAGE 12
Extensive roadworks near the McCanns' holiday apartment could be dug up in
search for body
Their supporters have pointed out that they had neither the motive nor the
opportunity to kill Madeleine or hide her body. They say that the police
hypothesis that they hid her body for 25 days before transporting it in the car
under the noses of the world's media is plainly impossible.
Portuguese police are understood to have eliminated as suspects every other
driver who hired the Renault between May 3 and May 28, when the McCanns rented
it from Budget.
Writing on his internet blog on the Find Madeleine campaign's website, Gerry
McCann said: "The pain and turmoil we have experienced in this last week
is totally beyond description. Kate and I are totally 100 per cent confident in
each other's innocence and our family and friends have rallied round
unflinchingly to support us."
Police in Praia da Luz said they had been put on standby to dig up roadworks
filled in shortly after Madeleine went missing as part of a fresh search for a
body.
Several roads within a short walk of the McCanns' Ocean Club apartment had been
dug up at the time of their holiday. When Madeleine vanished there was
speculation that she could have wandered off and fallen into a hole, or that an
abductor could have disposed of her body in the roadworks.
The McCanns spent the day at home in Rothley, Leics, choosing not to attend a
service at their local Catholic church in which prayers were said for
Madeleine.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.../nmaddy112.xml
MADELEINE:
MASS OF HAIR IN CAR BOOT
Wednesday September 12,2007
By Padraic Flanagan in Praia da Luz
A MASS of Madeleine McCann’s hair found in the boot of her parents’ hire car
could only have come from the little girl’s body, police confirmed yesterday.
In a sensational development, Portuguese police said the “surprising amount” of
hair was found in the spare wheel storage well under the boot floor of the
Renault Scenic hired by Kate and Gerry McCann 25 days after Madeleine disappeared.
The dramatic disclosure heaps more pressure on the parents who yesterday
continued to deny they had any involvement in their daughter’s disappearance.
At the same time, a public prosecutor in
The McCanns could face charges within days. Prosecutors yesterday handed over
10 volumes of evidence amassed by the police, including damning DNA evidence.
The judge could order more search warrants or change the status of the McCanns
as official suspects, known as “arguidos” in
It had been thought the prosecutor would take longer to study the huge number
of files. The judge, Silvia Bidarra, has 10 days to make a decision on the
files’ contents.
The latest twist in the case was the first time Portuguese police sources
indicated the nature and the scale of the samples from which they collected DNA
profiles of Madeleine.
It was these findings – obtained by forensic experts in a British laboratory –
which led the police inquiry to focus on the parents.
The Portuguese police source said: “Some of the samples of DNA were taken from
hair which match Madeleine’s DNA.
“There was so much hair it could not be from DNA transference but from the body
being in the boot.”
The source added that a second DNA sample obtained from the McCanns’ Renault
Scenic had not come from blood but bodily fluid – suggesting the presence of a
decomposing corpse.
Police admitted they expected some traces of Madeleine’s DNA in the family’s
hire car because it had been used to carry some of her belongings.
But the amount of hair came as a surprise, the source said, showing that it
could not have been transferred from a blanket or clothes but must have come
directly from her body.
Last night
It is thought the move reflects the seriousness the Portuguese authorities are
giving to the investigation.
Yesterday’s sudden developments came hours after Gerry McCann – in his first
words since arriving home in Rothley, Leicestershire – spoke of the “unending
nightmare” he and wife Kate were enduring.
In an emotional entry on his website blog, Gerry wrote: “We always hoped that
we would not have to return without Madeleine and could never have imagined the
possibility that we would do so as suspects in our own daughter’s
disappearance.
“The pain and turmoil we have experienced in this last week is totally beyond
description. Kate and I are totally 100 per cent confident in each other’s
innocence, and our family and friends have rallied round unflinchingly to
support us.
“We have absolute confidence that, when all of the facts are presented
together, we will be able to demonstrate that we played absolutely no part in
Madeleine’s abduction.”
But Mr Cunha de Magalhaes e Meneses concluded the evidence against them was
strong enough to apply for a prosecution.
The case, which has been complicated by a vicious campaign of slurs, lies and
contradictions, means the McCanns could face an agonising wait before learning
whether they are to be charged.
Judge Bidarra, an instructional judge who rules on whether to bring charges in
cases under investigation, has 10 days to consider whether to charge one or
both parents, placing them under house arrest in the Algarve, ordering further
interrogations and further searches.
Legal experts in
Policia Judiciaria officers decided to submit the file to the public prosecutor
despite awaiting more results from the Forensic Science Service in
The samples were collected by British and Portuguese investigators but a source
close to the inquiry said most of the important results had already been handed
to Leicestershire police and forwarded to their counterparts on the
“The bulk of the evidence has been sent on. The evidence is assessed on what is
most important,” the source said. “We have reached the tail end now.”
www.dailyexpress.co.uk/posts/view/18945
Judge Asked
For Emergency Order
Updated: 00:34, Wednesday September 12, 2007
The public prosecutor in
It is not known what or where the object is but the prosecutor has asked the
judge to issue an order allowing him to have it within 24 hours.
Sky News crime correspondent Martin Brunt said: "The prosecution has asked
the judge for an emergency order to give them permission to go and seize it.
"We do not know where or what it is, whether it is in this country or
whether it is something perhaps the McCann family are refusing to hand
over."
Earlier, the prosecutor decided that a dossier outlining the case against missing
Madeleine McCann's parents should go before a judge.
Police handed their files to the Algarve-based prosecutor, Jose Cunha de
Magalhaes e Meneses, for him to decide whether to bring charges against Kate
and Gerry McCann.
Speaking outside the prosecutor's office in Portimao, Luisa Duarte said Mr
Cunha de Magalhaes e Meneses had received the papers and decided they should go
before an instructional judge.
The development could mean the couple may find out in the next 10 days whether
they will be charged with their daughter's death.
Alternatively, it may be that the prosecutor is asking for stricter bail
conditions, another round of questioning of the McCanns or fresh searches.
But the file, which was only handed to the prosecutor by police on Tuesday, was
not expected to be passed on so quickly.
"That's a pretty dramatic development because it shows the prosecutor is
moving quickly," said Brunt.
"The prosecutor has already decided there is enough evidence for the file
to go to the judge and it will now be up to the judge to see whether there is
enough evidence to file charges.
"In the next 10 days the McCanns could find out if they are to be brought
back here to be charged with Madeleine's death."
"The investigation ... is not over, and further detective work is
required," Attorney-General Fernando Pinto Monteiro said in a written
statement.
It is also reported that he has appointed a second public prosecutor to oversee
the investigation.
Meanwhile, bodily fluids - not blood - matching Madeleine McCann's DNA have
been found in the car hired by her parents, according to sources.
The sample was taken from the boot, where the spare tyre is kept.
It had an 88% match with the missing four-year-old's DNA, sources said.
Police searching the car also found so much of Madeleine's hair that it could
not have been transferred from a blanket or clothes.
It must have come directly from her body, sources said.
The information came from senior sources in the investigation who briefed
Portuguese journalists.
It follows last night's revelation by Sky News that detectives had found DNA
evidence that Madeleine's body had been in the boot of the car hire by Mr and
Mrs McCann five weeks after their daughter's disappearance.
Brunt said: "The Portuguese press reports have been reasonably accurate in
reflecting what's going on in the thoughts, and the direction, of detectives.
"It sounds like what we reported last night is being born out."
Mr and Mrs McCann are enduring the tense wait for news at their home in
Rothley, Leicestershire.
Both have been named by police as suspects in their daughter's disappearance on
May 3 in the
Family spokesman Brian Kennedy, who is Madeleine's great uncle, said of the
family: "They are holding up extremely well."
news.sky.com/skynews/arti...html?f=rss
Verdict on
£1m McCann fund
September
12, 2007
GERRY
and Kate McCann will discover tonight if they can use the £1million donated by
the public to find her to pay for their defence.
The couple risk a public backlash if the board controlling Madeleine’s fund
hands over the cash to shell out for a £500-an-hour legal team.
But without it the couple could face financial ruin — funding a court battle
which could rumble on for years.
The fund directors were due to meet in
The McCanns earn around £120,000 a year between them as doctors but have been
on unpaid leave while staying on in Praia da Luz.
Legal experts believe there is little to stop the couple — because the fund is
a private business and not a charity.
It was knocked back by the Charity Commission which ruled its aims were not
broad enough.
Instead Madeleine’s Fund: Leaving No Stone Unturned Ltd was set up as a
company.
It means the McCanns, both 39, only have to get the consent of four of the
firm’s six directors — who are all close pals.
Two directors are relatives and cannot vote. One director who will vote is
former GMTV presenter Esther McVey, 39 — a pal of Kate’s since they went to
sixth form college together.
Last night she said: “At the moment none of the fund has been used to pay for
the defence case.
“But we are convening a meeting of the board of directors to decide if the
money can be used for this purpose.
“When the fund was set up one of its stated aims was to provide financial
support for Madeleine’s family as they searched for her.
“But we are uncertain if the use of the money to pay for lawyers in these
unexpected circumstances would be in the spirit of that aim. We will be taking
advice from a barrister who will attend the board meeting.
“We are aware of our responsibility to ensure how the money donated by members
of the public is used.”
Esther — who runs a Liverpool-based PR firm — said Gerry’s brother John McCann,
48, and Madeleine’s great uncle Brian Kennedy, 68, would not be able to vote as
family members.
The other directors are Doug Skehan, 54, a clinical director of cardiology who
works alongside Gerry at
She refused to say if anyone who had donated cash had asked for it back. But
messages posted on websites revealed some donors do want their cash returned.
And some called for the fund to be frozen.
www.thesun.co.uk/article/...67,00.html
Granny says
police are 'clawing at straws'
Wednesday
September 12 2007
The grandmother of missing Madeleine McCann rubbished claims yesterday that DNA
evidence found in a car hired by Madeleine's parents after she had disappeared
proved that the four-year-old's body had been in the car.
Co Donegal native, Eileen McCann insisted that Portuguese police had
"nothing substantial" to link her son, Gerry and daughter-in-law,
Kate to their child's disappearance and were "clawing at straws".
"The thing is that little Amelie is wearing Madeleine's sandals and she is
in and out of the car. Cuddly toys are in it. Madeleine's toys are in it.
Madeleine's tops are in it that Amelie is wearing. It's nonsense," she
said.
Speaking on the Shaun Doherty Show on Highland Radio yesterday after returning
to her
"My son and Kate would never even slap their child, never mind do anything
to harm her," she said.
After Kate was taken in for questioning last Thursday, she said that Gerry was
in a dreadful state.
"I had to be strong for him and say 'if your Dad was here, what would he
be saying to you? He would be saying be strong, we are fighting this because
you are innocent'," she said.
The 67-year-old added that Gerry was worried that Kate was going to be charged
and she revealed that she was under strict orders to take the twins home on a
plane if the parents were both going to be charged.
But she said that they were now home legally with the permission of the police
and the Government and would go back if they were needed.
"They are running away from nobody because they are innocent," she
said.
She said that social workers had already spoken to Gerry about the twins.
"They have been to Gerry and they are very satisfied and said they were
happy the children are fine, so that is just a normal process that happens if
you are a formal suspect," she said.
Eileen McCann stressed that they were still receiving a huge amount of public
support.She added that she believed her granddaughter was drugged and abducted.
"If she was taken when she was sleeping by somebody she did not know she
would have screamed the place down.
"I really believe they gave her a drug. There is no way they carried her
out of there without her wakening," she said.
www.independent.ie/world-...76814.html
Madeleine:
a grimly compelling story that will end badly for us all
We're
divided and now confused by the McCann investigation - and in real danger of
losing our common decency
Jonathan Freedland
Wednesday September 12, 2007
The Guardian
Visit the Sky News website and you'll see in the menu of topics the single word
Madeleine, sandwiched between UK News and World News. The story is now so big
that it commands its own category, on a par with Politics or Business. There
is, of course, no need to supply a last name or any other details: Madeleine
refers to what is surely becoming the biggest human interest story of the
decade. It's not just the hour-by-hour updates on television news or the
you-the-jury phone-ins on the radio. A more reliable indicator is the chatter
heard in offices, at bus stops or in queues at the shops. Thanks to the
astonishing twist of recent days, the British collective conversation is not
focused on the war in
Even before last week, the case had gripped. The apparently random abduction
and murder of children always does, whether it's Holly Wells and Jessica
Chapman, Sarah Payne or the victims of Ian Brady and Myra Hindley. We fear
these crimes like no other; they touch fears with deep roots in the cultural
soil. The child snatcher is a creature from myth, whether the oldest Gaelic
folktales or Little Red Riding Hood and Hansel and Gretel. Modern storytelling
is hardly immune: my own generation once cowered in terror from Chitty Chitty
Bang Bang's Child Catcher. So when the news first broke in May that a sleeping
child had vanished from her bed in a Portuguese holiday resort, all the
familiar fears were stirred.
But last week brought a dizzying twist, one that has left the watching public
badly confused. The notion of a predatory stranger seizing Madeleine McCann was
terrifying but uncomplicated: we knew how we were supposed to feel. The naming
by Portuguese police of the little girl's parents as formal suspects has
obliged us to contemplate not an ancient fear but a grave taboo: infanticide.
Of course, the grim reality is that cases of parents slaying their young are
all too common. The boyfriend battering his lover's child to death has become a
grisly staple of the news bulletin, usually consigned to halfway down the
running order. The middle-class temptation in such cases is to comfort
themselves with the thought that these families are dysfunctional, that they
are nothing like them. The branding of the McCanns as suspects allows for no
such lazy response. Their campaign enjoyed such widespread press backing in
part because they are the very model of a middle-class, professional couple:
both are doctors, still society's most trusted group. Indeed, since May, the
sight of a distraught Kate McCann clutching Madeleine's toy Cuddle Cat had
become the very image of parental love. Even to conceive of them as the
suspected killers of the daughter whose loss they have been grieving is to experience
cognitive dissonance.
Which is why people don't know how to react. Suddenly we have to hold two
entirely contradictory thoughts in our head at the same time. For the McCanns
have now either suffered the cruellest fate imaginable - not only to have
innocently lost their beloved daughter but also to have been publicly accused
of a wicked crime - or they are guilty of the most elaborate and heinous
confidence trick in history, deceitfully winning the trust and sympathy of the
world's media, a British prime minister, the wife of the American president and
even the Pope, to say nothing of international public opinion. One of those
statements, both of them extraordinary, describes the truth. As a senior
tabloid journalist put it to me yesterday: "They're either the victims of
a horrible smear which they will never fully escape or they are cold, psychotic
killers" responsible for the death of their own child.
His own newspaper now covers this story with both possibilities in mind. Note
the headlines in the Sun and the Mirror, carefully surrounded by caveats and
qualifiers, just in case the other scenario proves to be true.
This is not how stories like this usually play out. Ordinarily, the popular
papers, in particular, have a hunch about the culprit (and very often their
hunches are right). Not this time, however. The press pack following the McCann
case is apparently split into two camps, for and against the couple, with some
reporters refusing to speak to those on the other side. One tabloid editor is changing
his mind on where guilt lies "on an hourly basis".
It's easy to see why. Yesterday it was reported that the Portuguese police had
found not just the odd DNA trace in the boot of the McCanns' hire car - rented
weeks after Madeleine's disappearance - but substantial amounts of the child's
hair and even bodily fluids. Suddenly, an entire narrative assembles itself,
built from leaked nuggets and speculative fragments, which runs as follows. The
McCanns had sedated their children so that they could have an undisturbed
dinner with friends (hence the failure of the two younger McCann children to
awake even during the loud chaos of the night of May 3). They returned to find
Madeleine dead. Fearing their twins would be taken from them if they confessed
the truth, they hid Madeleine's body, then hid it again in the spare wheel
compartment of their rented car until finally burying it somewhere else.
(Where? The anti-McCann view even has an answer to this question. Portuguese
police are reported to be planning to search the Our Lady of the Light church
in Praia da Luz, where the McCanns prayed regularly and to which they were
given the keys, so they might visit day or night. Detectives are said to be set
on digging up an area around the church - including one cobbled street where
roadworks were under way when Madeleine disappeared.)
It hangs together well enough until you start asking questions. How could
two people under constant media scrutiny possibly have carried out and hidden
their daughter's body without being seen? If they really had concealed a corpse
in their car, wouldn't the smell have been obvious? How could two people
unfamiliar with the local landscape have found an eventual hiding place that
would still, months later, remain undiscovered? Is it plausible to imagine
that, in the moments after suffering the trauma of a dead child, two people
could have constructed such an elaborate cover-up plan, executed it coolly and
remained steady ever since? Could anybody maintain this front, a global lie,
for so long without cracking?
Arguments like that are going on everywhere, in pubs or the train to work, as
well as in newsrooms around the world. The McCanns must hate it but they cannot
be surprised by it. For wholly understandable reasons, they chose to make the
loss of their daughter public property, to recruit the media to their cause. So
now we are like folk gathered in the village square, offering our
two-pennyworth on the mysterious events that have befallen one benighted
family.
How will this story end? That's what makes it so grimly compelling: none of us
knows. Until we do, basic justice demands that we presume the McCanns are
wholly innocent. Common decency demands the same. For if they are eventually
found guilty, there will be plenty of time for condemnation. But if they are
innocent, to presume otherwise is to commit a second crime against people who
have already suffered enough.
www.guardian.co.uk/commen...13,00.html
How Damaging Is the Forensic Evidence
Against Kate McCann?
Tuesday, September 11, 2007
This is a rush transcript from "On the Record ," September 10, 2007. This
copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
VAN SUSTEREN: According to the British media, Portuguese police say
Kate McCann failed
to prevent her daughter Madeleine's death, and they now claim proof. This proof,
according to reports, includes forensic evidence found at the Portuguese
apartment where the McCanns were staying with Madeleine. It also includes the
car the family rented nearly a month after they reported the toddler missing.
Forensic pathologist Dr. Michael Baden joins us.
DR. MICHAEL BADEN, FORENSIC PATHOLOGIST: Hi, Greta.
VAN SUSTEREN: Good evening, Dr. Baden. Dr. Baden, I must admit I find the
reports perplexing in this story, and I'm not sure what to believe and what not
to believe and how to be fair to the McCanns and fair to Madeleine and everybody
else involved.
BADEN: Well, I think what's happening is we may be going down the road of
three recent notorious cases. The worst of them,
Jon Benet Ramsey.
They call up (ph) a kidnapping. The police come, and they don't protect the
scene. They muck up the scene. They never solve it properly. This was — this —
the Portuguese police should have sealed and protected the scene. They didn't.
Natalee Holloway, where the concern was more, in my opinion, tourism than
finding the possibility that a local could have killed a tourist. And many
people in Aruba still think that Natalie Holloway ran away and is alive or that
the family had something to do.
And the Duke players, where the prosecution claimed they had more evidence than
they really had.
And I think — remember, 25 days, the body is severely decomposing. Where do they
keep a decomposing body that has a terrible odor within a few days? Have they
put it in the back of a car? If there was DNA from the body in the back of the
car, it would have soaked into the rug. They couldn't get rid of it. Instead,
apparently, the McCanns had hired the car to take away a lot of their clothing
elsewhere, including the baby's, Madeleine's, clothing and toys, which have DNA
on it.
VAN SUSTEREN: So you'd have a transference, which (INAUDIBLE)
BADEN: A transference of hair, of skin cells into the back of the car. I
don't believe they could have blood, red blood still in a 25-day-old body.
VAN SUSTEREN: All right. Let me ask two questions because, I mean, I find
this whole DNA transference thing as the most likely thing, but I don't know.
It's early in the investigation.
BADEN: Right.
VAN SUSTEREN: In the event that they found her blood this late, could
they tell whether or not there was any drug in the blood? If you find some
dried-up blood, you know, three months or four months later...
BADEN: It's possible. It's amazing what they can do now. Toxicology has
advanced tremendously. And even with drops of blood — you know, large drops of
blood — they can find whether or not there are drugs in that blood. It's
unlikely because after 25 days, the blood would have all turned greenish and
wouldn't be recognized as blood.
VAN SUSTEREN: All right. One other sort of unusual situation here. These
are in vitro babies...
BADEN: That's right.
VAN SUSTEREN: ... the two babies that they — and I guess that we don't
know if they truly are both the biological parents of these — of Madeleine. So
any blood that was found, would that have a DNA twist to it in terms of trying
to determine...
BADEN: That would. When they say it matches Madeleine, how do they know
what Madeleine's DNA is? They haven't found Madeleine. They don't know what her
DNA is. And the parents would know whether or not it was his sperm and her egg,
but...
VAN SUSTEREN: So there's another whole 'nother twist to it...
BADEN: That's another...
VAN SUSTEREN: ... that needs to be investigated.
BADEN: Another issue, yes.
VAN SUSTEREN: All right. Well, we just got to stick to the facts and see
what we can figure out. Thank you, Dr. Baden.
BADEN: Thank you, Greta.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,296421,00.html
Affleck
May Axe Movie over McCann Case
By
WENN | Tuesday, September 11, 2007
IMAGE 13
HOLLYWOOD - Ben Affleck's new movie Gone, Baby, Gone may be
pulled from British screens following the case of missing British tot Madeleine
McCann.
The actor's directorial debut is due for release in November, but now may not
be released in
Affleck admits the film bears striking similarities to the case and is
preparing to take the appropriate steps to prevent the film being shown to
He says, "We are acutely aware of the situation. We have a greater concern
for that than the release of our film, which is just a commercial matter,
whereas this is a matter of life or death.
"I'm not up to date on the details and it is not something that has taken
off in the
"We don't want to release the movie if it is going to touch a nerve or
inflame anybody's sensitivities."
Four-year-old Madeleine went missing during a family vacation in
www.hollywood.com/news/Af...se/4797009
Don't judge McCanns: Lindy Chamberlain
Wednesday Sep 12 15:07 AEST
By ninemsn staff
Lindy Chamberlain-Creighton has offered a grim warning to the parents of missing
four-year-old Madeleine McCann, saying the police and public are likely to
invent a conviction if answers to the case are not found soon.
In an exclusive interview with A Current Affair tonight, Ms
Chamberlain-Creighton said she was glad not to be in the same shoes as Kate and
Gerry McCann.
She also appealed to the public "not to run ahead" and judge the couple.
RELATED LINKS
PHOTOS: Lindy's battle
VIDEO: Maddie's aunt speaks
Tests 'point to body in McCanns' boot'
"The public want answers, and if they haven't got them they are going to invent
them. And the police are under pressure and have been trained to find answers,"
Ms Chamberlain tellsACA.
"I certainly wouldn't want to go through it again and be in their shoes. There's
nothing you can do, but I think as the public, we want to be careful not to run
ahead."
Portugese police reportedly believe Kate McCann killed her daughter accidentally
and later disposed of the body with her husband's help.
The McCanns have strenuously denied any involvement in their daughter's
disappearance.
Ms Chamberlain-Creighton said the McCann case reminded her of her ordeal in the
media and courts during the 1980s, after her daughter Azaria was taken by a
dingo.
Azaria's body was never found. Ms Chamberlain-Creighton was convicted of her
murder in 1982, but was exonerated six years later.
"It's certainly looking like its having far more echoes of mine than I would
wish on anybody," she said.
"Answers are going to come from somewhere or another — whether it is the right
answer is a very worrying problem."
"We've had a number of months now where we have had no answers. It's time we did
because we want to solve this episode and you can be guaranteed that there is
nobody who wants those answers more than [Madeleine's] parents do."
Ms Chamberlain-Creighton's own conviction was overturned after new evidence
showed "blood" found in the family's car after Azaria disappeared, could
actually have been motor oil.
But she has warned Madeleine's parents that there is no easy way to handle the
pressure of being under public and police scrutiny.
"There is no textbook to say, 'this is how you handle it, this is what happens
next, this is the way you can go through it'. It doesn't happen."
"All you you can hope for is that you learn to swim, and you don't get too many
deadly gulps of water while you are doing it."
Ms Chamberlain-Creighton said the media could turn out to be the McCann's only
ally.
"If (Madeline) is not dead already, then their only friend is the media keeping
up the pressure on whoever has got her, so that they're too afraid to do
anything and hopefully, she will be found," she said.
| ARTICLE LINK CODE |
McCanns
Won't Spend Madeleine Cash
Updated: 14:25, Wednesday September 12, 2007
Kate and Gerry McCann have said they will not use money from the Find Madeleine
campaign to fund their legal defence.
The news came as trustees of the fund - which has raised more than £1m - were
about to hold a special meeting to discuss whether the money could be used to
pay the couple's legal bills.
The cash was pledged to help find the missing four-year-old, and there are
legal questions over whether it can be used to help the parents.
But a Sky News source close to the family stressed: "They will not seek to
use the money to fund their legal bills."
He spoke out shortly before the McCanns left their home in Rothley,
Leicestershire, for a short trip to a nearby park.
Gerry McCann drove the family's turquoise Volkswagen people carrier while his
wife sat in the middle seat in the back, in between the twins.
The couple are facing mounting costs after being named suspects in relation to
Madeleine's disappearance in
They have appointed top lawyers in case they are charged by Portuguese police.
Esther McVey, a director of the Madeleine Fund, said the trustees meeting was
going ahead despite the couple's statement.
The fund's website said one of the objectives of the fund is to "provide
support, including financial assistance, to Madeleine's family".
"What we are discussing is what does 'support' mean," Ms McVey
explained. "This is the only thing on the agenda and this is a special
meeting."
Julian Young, a criminal lawyer, told Sky News Online he did not think the
McCanns could use the fund to pay their legal bills.
He said: "The money collected on behalf of the McCanns was to assist them
in finding their daughter and not for the provision of personal legal advice.
"The people who gave money did so to help find a child, not to sort out
their legal problems."
news.sky.com/skynews/arti...62,00.html
Speculation
Over Dossier's Contents
By
Alex Watts
Updated: 11:03, Wednesday September 12, 2007
There is mounting speculation about the contents - and strength - of the police
dossier against Kate and Gerry McCann.
A Portuguese judge has started to examine the files into the disappearance of
their four-year-old daughter Madeleine.
He has ten days to read the 4,000-page dossier and review the evidence complied
by the Policia Judiciaria -
Legal experts said the judge has the power to order the couple back to
Intense attention has focused on what exactly police found in the hire car rented
by Madeleine's parents 25 days after she went missing.
Detectives denied reports that forensic tests on a sample taken from the
vehicle, a silver Renault Scenic, had revealed a "100% match" with
the missing girl's DNA.
Police spokesman Chief Inspector Olegario Sousa said: "That's not true.
Even specialists have said there is no 100% in anything."
But senior sources linked to the investigation told Portuguese journalists they
discovered "bodily fluids" - not blood - with an 88% match to
Madeleine's genetic profile in the car's boot.
Police also found so much of the girl's hair in the car that it could not have
been transferred from a blanket or clothes, and must have come directly from
her body, one of the sources said.
Portuguese newspaper reports described the amount found as "clumps"
of hair.
Other reports say the hire car - which is thought to have cost the McCanns a
total of 8,000 euros to rent during their stay in Portugal - has now been
seized by police.
Mr and Mrs McCann were declared "arguidos", or formal suspects, in
the case during police questioning in Portimao last Friday.
At present they are only subject to the minimum TIR - "term of identity
and residence" - restrictions.
These are automatically applied to an arguido under Portuguese law, and require
them to give police their address and notify officers if they are away from
home for more than five days.
This is why the McCanns were able to return to Rothley, Leicestershire, with
their two-year-old twins, Sean and Amelie, on Sunday.
news.sky.com/skynews/arti...15,00.html
Police Bid
To Seize Kate McCann's Diary
Updated:
14:23, Wednesday September 12, 2007
Prosecutors in the Madeleine McCann investigation have made an emergency
application to seize her mother's private diary, say Sky News sources.
The judge in the case, Pedro Miguel dos Anjos Frias, has less than 24 hours to
decide whether to grant the order.
Police sources believe Kate McCann's diary may hold clues to her daughter's
disappearance.
The McCanns' spokesman David Hughes refused to comment on the development as he
left the family house in Rothley, Leicestershire.
He faced the media circus waiting outside the couple's £600,000 four-bedroom
home shortly after the family returned from a trip to a nearby park
When asked how the McCanns were, he replied: "They had a nice day out for
a while. They seem fine."
He confirmed that the couple would return to
Earlier, it was reported the police wanted to confiscate Madeleine's toys,
including her favourite Cuddle Cat.
Mr McCann's sister, Philomena McCann, said the possibility that police might
seize the toy was a "disgrace".
"It would be extremely distressing for Kate because she has seen it as a
symbol of her daughter since she went missing," she added.
She went on: "Why on earth do they ask for the toys now? Why didn't they
think of this before?"
The judge is also sifting through a 4,000-page police dossier as Madeleine's
parents face an agonising wait to learn if they will be charged over her
disappearance.
He has 10 days to consider the contents - said to be stored in 10 lever arch
files.
But a friend of the McCanns, who was quoting legal sources, believes it could
take the judge weeks to go through the papers.
"Our understanding is there's no filtering process whatsoever - everything
is in there," he said. "The judge has had the kitchen sink thrown at
him."
It is not known if prosecutor Jose Cunha de Magalhaes e Meneses is recommending
charging Kate and Gerry McCann over their daughter's disappearance.
Lawyers in
Officers are planning new searches in Praia da Luz, where Madeleine went
missing, including digging around the village
Police spokesman Chief Inspector Olegario Sousa refused to confirm or deny the
reports.
It is known Kate and Gerry McCann, both 39-year-old doctors, were given a key
to the church so they could go and pray for their daughter any time they
wanted.
There is no sign yet of any searches being carried out at the church, which still
has yellow and green Madeleine ribbons on the pews and altar.
Sky News Online's Kate Sullivan, who flew back from
"But around the back there's a fenced-off building site area. The ground's
been dug up and workmen are laying foundations."
Mr and Mrs McCann were declared "arguidos", or formal suspects, in
the case during police questioning in Portimao last Friday.
They flew out of the country to their home in Rothley, Leicestershire, two days
later.
news.sky.com/skynews/arti...85,00.html
McCanns
may order own DNA tests on car
Parents
have not received details of police evidence 'Find Madeleine' fund will not pay
for legal defence
Giles Tremlett, Brendan de Beer in Praia da Luz and Esther Addley
Thursday September 13, 2007
The Guardian
The parents of Madeleine McCann are considering commissioning their own
independent forensic testing of the vehicle in which the Portuguese police
allege that traces of their missing daughter's body were found, it was reported
yesterday.
A Portuguese magistrate is currently studying a dossier of evidence against
Kate and Gerry McCann, which includes details of their daughter's DNA allegedly
found in their hired Renault Scenic car. The evidence is said to relate to two
samples found in the car, one of blood, the other of unspecified bodily fluids,
and to a further quantity of hair allegedly discovered in the car's boot.
But the BBC last night quoted a source close to Mr and Mrs McCann who said they
were considering carrying out their own tests on the vehicle, which was being
kept in a "safe place to avoid any possibility of evidence being planted".
Local police are investigating a theory that the couple killed their daughter
on May 3, perhaps by accident, and used the vehicle to transport her body at a
later time. The Renault was not hired until 25 days after Madeleine disappeared
from the family's holiday apartment in Praia da Luz, southern
Despite having been named as official suspects in the investigation, the couple
have not been given details of the evidence around which the police are
building their case. In further unconfirmed reports yesterday it was claimed
that the Portuguese investigating magistrate, Pedro Anjos Frias, who was given
the 4,000-page dossier on Tuesday, may demand that they hand over some of their
possessions for further investigation, including Mrs McCann's diary and the
Cuddle Cat toy she has carried since Madeleine's disappearance.
In a separate development yesterday, the McCanns said that they would not seek
to use money raised as part of the campaign fund to find Madeleine to pay for
their defence. "They have decided not to seek to use those funds for their
legal support," a spokesman, David Hughes, said. "Gerry and Kate's
view is that if they take money from the fund it might be that 90% of people
who made donations aren't bothered about it. But if 10% of people are bothered
about it, they don't want to upset them."
The fund's trustees later said that they had decided not to permit the money to
be used for lawyers' fees, despite expert advice that it would have been legal.
There was speculation in Portugal's Jornal de Noticias newspaper yesterday that
Judge Anjos was considering asking British police to question the friends of
the McCanns who were on holiday with them when Madeleine vanished from their
apartment in the Praia da Luz resort, presumably to check their statements
against answers given to police by the McCanns in interviews last Thursday and
Friday.
Under Portuguese law Judge Anjos has until the end of next week to decide
whether to take further action in the investigation, which might include
ordering further searches or reviewing the couple's bail conditions.
www.guardian.co.uk/crime/...ss&feed=11
McCann's
insist Maddie taken
From
JULIE MOULT
in
September 13, 2007
GERRY
and Kate McCann have insisted since Day One that their daughter Maddie was
snatched from their holiday villa.
They had been dining with seven pals that night and say they regularly checked
on her and twins Sean and Amelie.
The couple — legally bound to secrecy — have not spoken of the account they
gave cops.
But The Sun can reveal details of precisely what they and others say happened.
The couple collected Maddie and the two-year-old twins from the resort creche
at 6pm.
Friends saw her alive and well at 6.40pm — the last time Maddie was seen
by anyone other than the family.
Kate put the three children to bed around 7.30pm while Gerry played
tennis. She put the twins in cots either side of Maddie’s bed.
The couple then washed and got dressed before meeting pals at the tapas
restaurant at 8.30pm — just 120 metres or a 52-second walk away.
Five pals arrive by 8.55pm. Gerry checked on the kids at 9.05pm and said
they were fine. Five minutes later Jane Tanner, 36, arrived late to dinner,
explaining one of her children had been sick.
She later told police she saw a man walking away from the McCanns’ apartment
with a small child over his shoulder under a blanket — but thought it was his
kid.
A pal said: “She’s convinced she witnessed Madeleine’s abduction and is
grief-stricken she didn’t raise the alarm.”
At 9.25pm, Gerry returned to the restaurant table.
Five minutes later, Matthew Oldfield leaves to check on his own children and
the McCanns’.
At 10pm, Kate went to the apartment and discovered her daughter had
gone. She says the bedroom window on to the road was pushed completely open,
the pull-down shutter was up and Madeleine was missing.
A pal called police from the resort reception at 10.14pm, but it was not until 11.10pm
that two officers arrived.
According to a leaked report, a bedroom door that Gerry had expected to be shut
may have been open when he got to the room. This and witness statements led
police to consider that a kidnapper or killer may have been hiding in the
apartment even as Gerry checked her.
Pal Rachael Oldfield, who was there that night, said: “If somebody was watching
our movements it would be possible.” Three other pals also insist they saw
Robert Murat — still a suspect — outside the apartment, peeking in through a
window the night Maddie vanished. He denies it.
Kate and Gerry say most of the evidence police have against them can be
explained.
Sniffer dogs brought over by British police detected a smell of death on GP
Kate’s blouse and jeans. But she had been present at the deaths of six patients
shortly before flying to
Maddie’s blood was also found near a window and under a sofa in the apartment.
But a mobile phone video shows her tripping as she excitedly boards the holiday
flight and cuts her knee. It could have come from that. The tiny samples could
even be from a mosquito bite.
The family also insist that traces of Maddie’s blood, hair and fibres found in
the car itself could have come off their own clothes in a process called
“secondary transfer”.
And they claim bungling police ruined evidence by not taping off the apartment
until 10am the following morning, waiting 48 hours to take fingerprints and
doing some so shoddily they had to be re-done.
The apartment was even re-rented before British police carried out forensic
tests three months later.
www.thesun.co.uk/article/...76,00.html
Cops want
Maddie's Cuddle Cat
From
JULIE MOULT
in Praia da Luz
September 13, 2007
DETECTIVES were last night plotting to seize Madeleine McCann’s precious
Cuddle Cat toy from her mum.
The Portuguese cops believe forensic tests on the pink animal can yield vital
clues to the fate of the four-year-old.
They also asked a judge yesterday to let them take mum Kate’s DIARIES, dad
Gerry’s LAPTOP computer — plus LETTERS and other personal items.
Last night an aunt raged: “It’s mental cruelty.” GP Kate, 39, has carried
Cuddle Cat almost constantly since little Maddie vanished from the family’s
It was believed that the soft toy had already been forensically examined — but
Maddie’s aunt Philomena, 43, revealed it had not. She blasted: “Everything with
the Portuguese police is an afterthought. It’s a disgrace — to Kate that cat is
a constant reminder of Madeleine.”
Cops — who suspect Maddie is dead and that Kate and Gerry, 39, were involved —
asked the judge to use emergency powers for the seizures. His ruling is due
today.
www.thesun.co.uk/article/...63,00.html
Portuguese
police to reexamine car in missing Madeleine case
2007-09-13 10:59:22
LISBON, Sept. 12 (Xinhua) -- Portuguese police will reexamine the car that was
rented by the parents of missing four-year-old Madeleine McCann, amid
suspicions that her parents may have killed the child, Portugal's press said on
Wednesday.
The police will repeat their analysis of the McCanns' personal effects and search
again for Madeleine's body, focusing on the area close to the Playa de la Luz
Church where the parents, both observant Catholics, prayed daily for their
daughter. The church is a target because the McCanns had been given a key so
they could come and go at will.
Kate and Gerry McCann, a couple from the British town of Rothley, were on
holiday in Portugal on May 3 when they reported their daughter missing, saying
she had disappeared from the hotel room she shared with younger twin brothers
while the parents were having a meal just meters away in a tapas bar.
Until last week, police had only named one suspect, Robert Murat, a British man
who lived near the hotel from which Madeleine disappeared. He was not charged,
and he said he was innocent.
The police named the parents as suspects on Friday, citing traces of blood,
hair and saliva found in the boot of the car the couple had rented. Tabloid
newspapers in
Jose Cunha de Magalhaes Menezes, a Portuguese government-prosecuting judge,
received the file on the couple on Tuesday. He has not yet decided whether to
proceed against them.
news.xinhuanet.com/englis...716068.htm
From The Times
September 13, 2007
Moral superiority:
the ugly new stick to beat Kate McCann
Sandra Parsons
The other day, while looking at baby clothes in Gap for a present, I saw a
mother slap her little boy, very hard, on his thigh. He was about four and had
been pulling at her skirt and whingeing; normal behaviour, in my book, for a
small child in a clothes shop. He was distraught when she slapped him and wept,
going redder and redder, while she told him, at some length, how naughty he
was.
I was so shocked that I felt my legs go slightly weak. I considered saying
something (what would Dr Tanya Byron do in a similar situation, I wonder?) but
contented myself in the end with a hard stare. They stayed in the shop another
five minutes or so by which time the boy had stopped crying. His grandmother
was also there and had not intervened; on the other hand, she fussed over him
kindly afterwards and as they left I found myself thinking that after all he
probably was much loved – it’s just that I, personally, would never do that to
a child.
It’s in that last little bit that danger lies. I felt morally superior to that
woman: she hits her child and is therefore bad; I don’t hit my child and am
therefore good.
And this set me thinking. Am I a better mother than she is? Well, I can’t
possibly know. More to the point, why should it matter to me? Shouldn’t it be
enough for me to know that I am doing my very best and am continually striving
to do better?
How ugly this moral superiority is, and how many of us, especially parents,
seek it. For some it becomes almost a way of life, the only way they can gain
validation, somehow. Its apotheosis is the pushy mother, the woman who stops at
nothing in her bid to make her child the best – for if her child is the best
child, it follows that she must be the best mother.
We have witnessed it almost from the start with the story of Madeleine McCann.
It was there in the beginning, as in: they left their children alone in the
apartment while they went out to eat, I would never have done that; and we’re
seeing it big time now as the tide turns against them.
All sorts of incidents are being cited to damn Kate McCann: she shouted at
them, she was violent, she must have sedated them because how else could they
have slept through and she used to be an anaesthetist so she’d know all about
sedation, wouldn’t she . . .
But how quickly we forget. Just as I struggled in Gap to remember exactly what
sorts of clothes are best for a six month old baby, so we forget, it seems,
what it is like to have toddlers. They scream and have tantrums, a lot. I can
remember thinking, when my son was about two, that the neighbours must be
thinking I was murdering him, when in fact I was simply insisting that he get
dressed. Small children also sleep through almost anything – again, I can
remember it taking 10 minutes to wake my daughter and her cousin, then aged 5,
just before midnight on New Year’s Eve at the millennium (we wanted them to
witness it; they remember it and still talk about it now). The house was
literally reverberating with party music and was full of people shouting at the
tops of their voices, but they had slept blissfully through.
None of this means the McCanns are innocent, just as it does not mean they are
guilty. What’s unpleasant is the moral superiority people now appear to be
revelling in: the neighbours say they shouted at their child and now she is
dead (and they are probably murderers); the neighbours never complained about
me shouting and my child is still alive (and I am not a murderer).
It is as if by thinking like this we feel we somehow gain an extra bit of
control over our lives; if only we can find enough evidence to prove in our minds
that we are better than other people, then we will be protected from anything
bad happening to us and those we love.
But how wrong we are. As I write, 15-year-old Rosemary Edwards is still
missing, after more than a week. Her parents had told her off and threatened to
stop her horse riding because she had lied to them about how she lost a
part-time job. Her father said good night to her at 10.30pm; the following
morning, at 7.40am, they discovered she was missing, leaving behind her money,
mobile phone, clothes and MP3 player.
Were they wrong to tell her off for lying? Of course not. Can we feel morally
superior to them in any way? No, we cannot. Most of us spend our lives trying