175 MISSING MADELEINE MCCANN ARCHIVED NEWS ARTICLES FOR SEPTEMBER 2007

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 Europe.

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 Europe are a safe haven for sex offenders. They can roam around Europe with no checks.

"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 Algarve resort town of Praia da Luz where Madeleine disappeared on May 3 because they said they felt closer to their daughter.

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 UK shortly afterwards.

Throughout their ordeal, the McCanns have relied heavily on their Catholic faith. Yesterday they attended Sunday mass in Praia da Luz as usual.

In Britain, Mrs McCann's aunt Janet Kennedy revealed that the couple still find solace in a ball of green wool given to them shortly after Madeleine went missing.

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 village of Rothley in Leicestershire recreated the act, using green and yellow ribbons.

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 Algarve where I met the McCanns, and elsewhere.

As everyone is acutely aware, the reason we know so little about Madeleine’s disappearance is because she was abducted in Portugal, where the segredo de justiça law prevents the police from putting information about a criminal investigation in the public domain. Had Madeleine disappeared in Britain or the US, this would not have happened. Given that the Portuguese police admit that after four months they still have no idea where she is, or whether she is alive or dead, the first question has to be whether the lack of information is merely frustrating, and especially so for her parents, or whether it has impeded her safe recovery.

Neil Thompson has 30 years of police experience, latterly as a detective superintendent in charge of operations for the UK’s National Crime Squad. Now the director of security at red24, a private security company, he does not support the Portuguese tactic. “If a child is abducted for sexual exploitation or murder, no information is unhelpful,” he says bleakly. “In the UK you would release information to the media and the public that could help the situation, and keep back anything that might compromise the investigation, or frighten the perpetrator into harming the child. It’s a balancing act. Your priority is to get the victim back alive, arresting the perpetrator is lower down the scale. A no-information rule means that you’re working in the dark.

“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 UK police can get a newsflash out straight away to TV and radio so you’ve got thousands of eyes and ears right at the beginning and you tell the public what you want them to look for. If you do that 24 or 48 hours later it loses impact.”

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 apartment 5A at the Ocean Club where the McCanns were staying, then referred the case to the Policia Judiciaria in Portimao. Thus vital time was lost immediately after Madeleine’s disappearance – when it was imperative that the investigation should become active.

“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 apartment 5A you are struck by its exposed location. On the ground floor of a five-storey block, it is on a street corner and, like most of the Ocean Club apartments, not part of the gated section that houses the tapas bar and crèche. It would be easy to observe from different viewpoints, and perhaps to notice that this family had a regular pattern of behaviour in the evening, putting their children to bed, slipping across to the tapas bar and checking on them regularly.

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

Portugal

with their children said it was very family friendly, and it did feel like that,” says Kate. “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 her bed. But you never think, I shouldn’t put the children in the car.”

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 Glasgow; Kate the only child of a Liverpool joiner and a civil servant. They met as junior doctors in Glasgow 12 years ago, got together as they travelled in New Zealand and she trained as an anaesthetist before retraining as a GP because, as two hospital doctors, they rarely saw each other.

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 apartment 5A, and the Portuguese crews were threatening to move outside the McCanns’ rented villa and had to be pacified with an interview. The Ocean Club asked the McCanns to stop bringing the twins to the kids’ club because other guests had complained about the media presence, and a couple of chain-smoking security men appeared outside reception. Praia da Luz, once a sardine-fishing community, now a manufactured resort with a reputation for guaranteeing uneventful and sunny family holidays, was becoming ugly.

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 Stratford-upon-Avon, displayed an intriguing mixture of sympathy and fascination. He had just spotted Gerry in his Renault Scenic (which was more than I had at this stage; the McCanns are impossible to get near unless their campaign manager vets and approves you) and was happy to volunteer every known fact about the McCanns, and to speculate, in detail, on what might have happened to Madeleine.

“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 Britain. “I’ve spoken to a couple of them [police officers], but never to an extent where they told me a syringe had been found in the room or there was blood on the keys of the hire car. That kind of information seems to come from police constables. You get someone who tells something to their wife, they tell their hairdresser, who tells a journalist.

“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 East Midlands, they confirm, and the timing will depend on the police investigation, which is currently in a state of hiatus as the PolÍcia Judiciária waits for the results of British tests on samples taken from the apartment.

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 Europe. When I’m occupied and applied it helps, and work eventually will take some of that focus. The fund enables us to make decisions for us and for Madeleine, and not for financial necessity. It’s not paying for any of our accommodation here, but it has covered a lot of expenses for us, and trips, and it helps to provide support for people to come out to help us, flights and things.”

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. Portugal, like Spain and many other European countries, does not have a sex offenders’ register, and as for the UK, although a Child Rescue alert system was launched here last year, relying primarily on speedy contact with the media, it has yet to be tested. Neither does

Britain

have any reliable statistics on missing children, and this means that the scale of the problem is unknown.

Fortunately, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children has a system that works, and can be copied. It is based in Virginia, employs 300 people and its success relies on instant media alerts and distribution of fliers, and a high level of training for the professionals involved. Its agenda has always been to make its methods operate globally, and now it has Gerry and Kate McCann on its side. Their determination to be involved in this task is the first sign that something positive, tangible and enduring could come from what has so far been the bewildering and tragic story of Madeleine McCann.

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 Algarve.

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 UK.

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 Portugal, there was criticism of their decision to tell the twins about Madeleine.

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: 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, Portugal, where the McCanns were staying when Madeleine was kidnapped on May 3.

Forensic scientists in Birmingham, who carried out the tests, have been looking for evidence of the four-year-old's blood, saliva and hair.

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 UK spent the last month analysing evidence from the scene.

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 Portugal.

“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 Birmingham.

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 Algarve and Robert Murat, who is soon to be cleared of his status as the only named suspect or “arguido” in the case.

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 Leicester police. Information has been regularly fed back as to the progress and where the investigation is up to.

“Information is always being fed back which Leicester police then passes on to the Portuguese authorities. The Portuguese are leading on the investigation and they have to be the ones to act on any information.

“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 Praia da Luz

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 Portugal yesterday. They are understood to confirm police suspicions that Madeleine died in her parents’ holiday apartment.

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 Birmingham have examined various pieces of evidence collected by a team of British police officers working with specialist sniffer dogs.

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 Algarve resort.

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 Portugal but people should keep a very close eye on events over there in the next few days.”

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 Algarve to cancel all police leave and put staff on round-the-clock standby.

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 UK.

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 Birmingham is one of the most sophisticated centres of its kind anywhere in Europe and despite the fragile nature of the specimens, scientists continued to isolate the information needed.

Last night police on the Algarve were understood to be ready to arrest a suspect identified weeks ago. A source close to the investigation said: “It has seemed to many people that the police have been doing very little but this is because they are not allowed to discuss the investigation.

“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

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 Algarve when the child disappeared. These developments based on the results of the biological samples today are also notified by some English periodicals that point with respect to the accomplishment of detentions in next the 48 hours. The samples most important, of the sets of ten that had been sent for England, must have been the collected ones in the apartment of the McCann in the Beach of the Light, in particular in the soil and a closet in the house where later the family if installed and in the car that had rented after the girl having disappeared. These samples had been collected after the English pisteiros dogs having signalled biological vestiges of blood and corpse odour in clothes of Kate McCann.

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 Birmingham have spent the past month analysing samples taken from the McCanns' holiday apartment in the Algarve resort of Praia da Luz.

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 Portugal, although the official line remains that tests are "ongoing".

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 Portugal yesterday. They are understood to confirm police suspicions that Madeleine died in her parents’ holiday apartment.

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 Birmingham have examined various pieces of evidence collected by a team of British police officers working with specialist sniffer dogs.

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 Algarve resort.

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 Portugal but people should keep a very close eye on events over there in the next few days.”

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 Algarve to cancel all police leave and put staff on round-the-clock standby.

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 UK.

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 Birmingham is one of the most sophisticated centres of its kind anywhere in Europe and despite the fragile nature of the specimens, scientists continued to isolate the information needed.

Last night police on the Algarve were understood to be ready to arrest a suspect identified weeks ago. A source close to the investigation said: “It has seemed to many people that the police have been doing very little but this is because they are not allowed to discuss the investigation.

“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 Portugal.

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 Portugal an ordinary family of five.

"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 Portugal. Her husband Gerry will also be interviewed by police again.

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 Dublin.

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 Birmingham spent a month analysing the traces, which were found during a review of the case by British forensic experts.

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 Portugal and, in the McCanns' case, every sentence has to be translated and written down in full, so the process can take several hours.

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, Portugal
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 Britain.

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 Algarve from Lisbon yesterday so he could sit in on Mrs McCann's interview and will be present when Mr McCann is questioned today.

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 - Portugal's CID - in the city of Portimao. She eventually emerged at just before one o'clock this morning.

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, Portugal
Updated: 14:03, Friday September 07, 2007

The rumour mill has been churning in the

Algarve

for many weeks - but with the latest developments, the gossip has reached fever pitch.

Secrecy laws in Portugal keep police from revealing most details of an investigation.

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 Algarve as if it's fact.

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 Algarve," she said.

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 Portimao, Portugal.

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 Glenfield Hospital, Leicester - added: "In the hospital there is a sense of disbelief.

"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 Glasgow , he said: "We just want to see exactly what the Portuguese Police are saying.

"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 Portugal and the campaign against them.

"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 Portugal to fly to Rome. They did not need it to reach the airport as they were driven there by an aide. Yesterday the McCanns' spokesman said there was no significance in the date. The couple had arranged to hire a car and that was the day it had come through.

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 Portimao, 30 miles from Praia da Luz, with the narrow cobbled pavement hopelessly inadequate for more than 200 photographers, camera crews and reporters - plus dozens of curious members of the public - who gathered to watch her arrive for her second day of questioning.

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 Algarve over the summer with their twins, were on the verge of leaving

Portugal

to return to Rothley, Leicestershire, this weekend.

As arguidos, they could be taken before a judge for restrictions to be placed on their movements, they could be banned from leaving

Portugal

and even placed under house arrest.

Bewildered members of the McCanns' family in Britain exploded in fury, condemned the police investigation as a complete farce and called detectives "imbeciles".

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 - Portugal's CID - at 12.10am after undergoing nearly eight hours of questioning.

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 Birmingham received in recent days have apparently boosted this hypothesis.

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

Portugal

to declare themselves arguidos in order to receive this protection.

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 Birmingham are thought to have indicated the blood may be Madeleine's.

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 Britain. Whether Portuguese police will allow them to leave is unclear, though their passports are not believed to have been seized up until now.

Mitchell said Kate and Gerry McCann had previously intended to leave southern Portugal, where they have stayed since their daughter vanished from a hotel room during a family vacation, on Sunday night.

"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 England, were considering hiring lawyers in Britain where they would also have support from family and friends.

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 Britain but would remain in Portugal for the time being. The couple had made no comment Saturday

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 Britain.

The McCanns have strenuously professed their innocence.

Kate McCann underwent two straight days of interrogation at a police station in southern Portugal on Thursday and Friday. Her husband was questioned separately afterward.

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 Portugal.

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 Vatican. Celebrities including J.K. Rowling and David Beckham made public appeals that helped the family raise more than 1 million pounds (euro1.5 million; US$2 million).

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 Portugal's Algarve on 3 May.

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 Portugal despite wanting to return home with their two-year-old twins Sean and Amelie.

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 church of Nossa Senhora da Luz on Saturday night because of the amount of media interest.

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 Portugal's strict laws of judicial secrecy.

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 England who had gone on holiday with them. Three of them are also doctors and one is a top medical research fellow.

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 Portugal.

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 Portimao, 30 miles from Praia da Luz, with the narrow cobbled pavement hopelessly inadequate for more than 200 photographers, camera crews and reporters - plus dozens of curious members of the public - who gathered to watch her arrive for her second day of questioning.

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 Algarve over the summer with their twins, were on the verge of leaving

Portugal

to return to Rothley, Leicestershire, this weekend.

As arguidos, they could be taken before a judge for restrictions to be placed on their movements, they could be banned from leaving

Portugal

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 London vicarage. They examined the swimming pool and had the dogs sniff round the church.

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 Portugal has also brought home, dramatically, how lucky we were to have British police looking for our daughter.

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 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 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 Britain. It is understood that Kate faced questions over whether she had given her daughter sedatives, why Madeleine's DNA was found on her clothing and in the rental car and why sniffer dogs found the scent of a body on her clothes and in the rental car.

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 Portugal if required," he said.

The McCanns' spokesman confirmed the plans in a statement, saying: "Kate and Gerry will be returning home to the UK this morning as originally planned. They will depart from Faro Airport.

"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 Algarve coastal resort.

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 Rome for an audience with the Pope?

How did traces of Madeleine's blood come to be found on the window and under the sofa of apartment 5a in the Mark Warner Ocean Club resort in which the couple had stayed along with their two-year-old twins, Sean and Amelie, and Madeleine?

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 Portugal in the past two years.

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 Algarve's English language newspaper, the Portugal News, Martyn Smith, a British solicitor living in Praia da Luz, asked a series of scorching questions.

"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

Britain

. "It may be for fear of prosecution," he said.

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 England this morning with their two remaining children.

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 Portugal until they clear their names.

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 Britain will believe that they could have been involved: perhaps because that possibility, with all its implications, is too horrendous to contemplate.

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 Portugal's latest contribution to world culture was the word arguida. He explained the word by saying it was a typical fudge.

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 Salem witch-hunt is entering the process: the McCanns have now been ensnared in the curious Portuguese legal no-man's-land of the "arguido" - and what of that other, continuing "arguido", Robert Murat, whose life has effectively been destroyed by the accusation?

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 Lagos - a 15-minute drive away - without the children one night.

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 England.

It did not quote any source and police in Portugal and the UK dismissed the story as total nonsense.

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 Birmingham.

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 UK and disquiet about the safety of convictions in other high-profile cases.

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 Birmingham pub bombings in 1974.

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 Birmingham forensic laboratory after British sniffer dogs detected a scent in the boot during the brief time that it was in police possession.

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

, then you would keep the car.

"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 Rome to be blessed by the Pope, at a time when they would not personally need a vehicle.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 Portugal's image. And he slammed the handling of the investigation.

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 Jackson, 67, said: "Inmy opinion the police have no evidence against the McCanns. If they had, they would have charged them by now.

"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

Portugal

.

"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."

Jackson added: "The first 48 hours in any case like this is paramount. It took the police at least two days to realise the significance of what had happened and put experienced detectives in charge.

"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 UK appears to be behind the recent dramatic twists in the Madeleine McCann investigation.

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 Algarve apartment from where the four-year old vanished, and the other is believed to be a hire car used by the McCanns 25 days after her disappearance.

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 Britain’s Forensic Science Service (FSS) would have been reliable, but added they had no control over how any samples were collected.

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 Britain then I would be 100 per cent confident in the integrity of those samples but if they were taken by poorly-trained people then there are all sorts of issues.”

www.thesun.co.uk/article/...08,00.html

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.”

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 Britain's FBI, the Serious and Organised Crime Agency.

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 Bramshill Police College in Basingstoke, Hants, put together a report on the McCanns' behaviour after studying hours of TV footage.

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 Portugal to clear their names.

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 East Midlands airport as part of a family of four, forced to deny he and his wife were to blame for their daughter's disappearance.

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 Portugal to answer further questions "at any time" and that they had "nothing to hide".

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 UK without Madeleine, it does not mean we are giving up our search for her. As parents, we cannot give up on our daughter until we know what has happened."

The couple had decided late on Saturday night to book themselves on to an EasyJet flight from Faro to East Midlands airport, which landed shortly after noon.

Your View: Has this put you off visiting Portugal?
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 Portugal.

"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 Algarve just two days after they were named as official suspects in the disappearance of their elder daughter. Detectives now expect to receive further forensic evidence gathered from the McCanns’ ground-floor apartment at the Ocean Club complex today or tomorrow.

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 Portugal if required.

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 East Midlands Airport, Gerry McCann, his voice breaking with emotion, said he and Kate “played no part in Madeleine’s disappearance”.

He added: “While we are returning to the UK, it does not mean we are giving up our search for Madeleine.

“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 Portugal are now convinced Madeleine, who was three when she vanished on May 3, is dead and that her parents, both 39-year-old doctors, were involved in her death.

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 France. If instead the McCanns are charged and convicted, anger will be all the more bitter, because people will feel that for months they have been deluded into wasting sympathy on them.

These remarks may sound ugly, but so is what is happening in Portugal. The McCanns now live in the shadow of declared police suspicion. If they are innocent, this is appalling. If there is evidence against them, natural justice cries out for them to be charged rather than merely denounced.

Child victims often induce police officers to act rashly, because they are under such pressure to produce a result. This is as true in Britain as it is in Portugal, as the officers probing the shooting of Rhys Jones might acknowledge - likewise those who investigated the 2002 Soham killings of Jessica Chapman and Holly Wells.

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 Ipswich for the killer of five women became protracted. A succession of suspects were questioned, with identities blazoned across the front pages. Even when a man was eventually charged, it is hard to imagine that the lives of the earlier detainees have been, or ever will be, quite the same. Nobody will easily forget that they were deemed capable of being multiple murderers.

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 Ipswich, serial murder generates a frisson of its own.

Popular sentiment focuses overwhelmingly upon the deaths of so-called innocent parties, above all children. Figures suggest that Britain, and indeed Portugal, are remarkably safe places for the young to grow up in. The chances of a child meeting a violent death are no greater than they were in the era of Victorian values.

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 Iraq nor Darfur will do. Some colleagues would accuse me of an absurd squeamishness, because I hang my head in shame at what our trade, as well as the Portuguese police, has made of the McCann story. They would say the world has been ever thus, since the days of Jack the Ripper.

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 Britain.”

Barely six days earlier the McCanns had been preparing to do just that: to end their vigil in Portugal and return home to Rothley in Leicestershire. They had informed the police who had reacted calmly enough.

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 South Yorkshire police to help with the inquiry had detected the “scent of a corpse”. During questioning they repeatedly played footage of sniffer dogs becoming animated around the Renault Scenic. They are also said to have found Madeleine’s DNA on items of clothing bought by Kate after her daughter’s disappearance.

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 Portugal, which is what I would want them to do - because I am sick of seeing them persecuted in this shameful manner.”

This weekend their fate hangs in the balance. A source at Britain’s Forensic Science Service said that the whole edifice of suspicion against the McCanns may rest on sand. Forensic samples, he cautioned, may have been too small or too contaminated to prove anything.

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 Portugal’s dictatorship, which ended in 1974, resented the media attention and having to give a press conference.

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 England from a Portuguese journalist. It was a woman from Sol magazine who knew the names, addresses and telephone numbers of all the friends. It appeared that she could have obtained that information only from the police. Had the PJ, whose competence was being questioned by the British media, been stung into some sort of riposte?

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 Exeter home in the belief that he was about to be arrested. Not only was he not about to be arrested, the whole thing was an invention– based, it appears, on leaks to Sol from the PJ.

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 Britain were passed to the Portuguese police. Newspapers reported that Madeleine’s “blood” had been found in the McCanns’ hire car - rented 25 days after Madeleine had vanished. But it is not clear whether it was blood or some other substance, how much was found, where it was found - or indeed how it was found.

The car has remained in Portugal - bizarrely, it was returned to the McCanns after it was examined and they are still using it - and the tests were done in England.

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 Manchester Metropolitan University. “I cannot see two parents lying and lying consistently.”

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 Birmingham may also influence how the investigation unfolds.

"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 Portugal, would have to be approved by a local magistrate.

Even if the McCanns were charged with either manslaughter or concealing Madeleine's body, they might be able to live freely in Britain until a trial started.

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 Portugal in the foreseeable future," he said.

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 London law firm Kingsley Napley, the family said in a statement last night. One of their advisers is Michael Caplan QC, who defended Augusto Pinochet. But the couple said they would not use money raised to help the search for Madeleine to pay their legal bills, the BBC reported.

The statements

Gerry McCann, Nottingham airport

Today, Kate, Sean, Amelie and I have returned home as we planned a while ago. We are returning to Britain after very careful thought. We want the twins as much as is reasonably possible to live an ordinary life in their home country and want to consider the events of the last few days which have been so deeply disturbing.

Whilst it is heartbreaking to return to the UK without Madeleine, it does not mean we are giving up our search for her. As parents we cannot give up on our daughter until we know what has happened. We have to keep doing everything that we can to find her.

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 Praia da Luz

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 Exeter, left the restaurant for half an hour to look after his own daughter, returning shortly before Madeleine was reported missing.

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 Portugal if they are suspects?

The Portuguese authorities allowed the McCanns to return to the UK after they agreed to reside only at their home in Rothley and to return for further questioning if necessary.

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 Algarve for interview, Portuguese police could issue a European Arrest Warrant under which extradition can be carried out within six weeks.

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

THE husband of a Portuguese woman jailed for the murder of her child spoke last night of his fears for Kate McCann.

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.

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.

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.

“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.”

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

'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 Birmingham.

"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 Birmingham carried three matches of Madeleine's DNA.

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 Portugal, probably on Tuesday.

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 Birmingham.

The samples were taken from the McCanns' holiday apartment and hire car.

The McCanns have been told they could be called back to Portugal "at any time".

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 Portugal, police are to make new searches as part of the investigation.

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 Birmingham.

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 Portugal if requested by the police.

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 Britain was in large part based on their desire to maintain a sense of normality for their two youngest children, two-year-old twins Sean and Amelie.

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 Portugal with them if police need them for further interviews, said a family friend.

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 Britain yesterday met to discuss the future of Madeleine McCann's family as detectives in Portugal moved closer to bringing charges against her parents.

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 Algarve last night confirmed that they were handing their file on Madeleine to the public prosecutor, Jose Cunha de Magalhaes e Meneses. He will decide whether the evidence is strong enough to bring charges. This could mean months of agonising waiting for the McCanns, who returned home to Rothley, Leicestershire, on Sunday.

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 Birmingham. Reports suggested that the DNA samples found were a full match and could not have been transferred from clothes or a toy. Police would not confirm these details last night.

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 Portugal, the police plan to make further searches.

The couple are seeking advice from two of Britain's most experienced lawyers, Michael Caplan, QC, and Angus McBride, from the London firm Kingsley Napley. Mr Caplan acted for Chile's former dictator, General Augusto Pinochet, when Spain tried to extradite him in 1999.

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 England, if an individual is named as a suspect overseas, local social services have a duty to consider whether action has to be taken to ensure other children's welfare.

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 apartment 5a but later said he had gone in and noticed that the room seemed lighter than the others, as if the shutters had been opened. He cannot be certain whether Madeleine was there.

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 Algarve.

"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 Lisbon said a statement would be issued later regarding the investigation.

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 Portugal's secrecy laws in criminal investigations.

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 Britain, he said.

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 Algarve.

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 Lisbon said a statement would be issued later regarding the investigation.

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 Portugal's secrecy laws in criminal investigations.

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 UK from Portugal on Sunday.

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 Portugal with the village of Rothley in Leicestershire in a mutual stance of support.

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 Praia da Luz to search for Madeleine's body.

• 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 Portugal decided police have found sufficient evidence to pass a file to a judge.

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 Portugal.

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 Portugal’s top legal official, Fernando Jose Pinto Monterio, appointed a second public prosecutor, Luis Bilro Verao, to work with Jose Cunha de Magalhaes e Meneses.

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 Portugal said charges against the couple were possible, but were concerned about the length of time since the McCanns were made official suspects.

Policia Judiciaria officers decided to submit the file to the public prosecutor despite awaiting more results from the Forensic Science Service in Birmingham.

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 Algarve.

“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

Portugal

is reported to have asked the judge in the Madeleine McCann case to make an emergency order allowing him to seize a mystery object.

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."

Portugal's attorney-general, who oversees the public prosecutor's office, said that officials would examine police findings and announce within 10 days what further steps would be taken.

"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 Algarve.

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 London later to decide if they should pay to fight Portuguese police allegations that the couple killed their four-year-old daughter.

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 Glenfield Hospital, Leicester, and friends Peter Hubner, 64, a retired consultant, and lawyer Philip Tomlinson, 76.

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 Glasgow home from Portugal, Eileen described the events of the past week as "dreadful".

"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 Iraq or the efficiency of the NHS, even if it should be. Instead, its great preoccupation is the disappearance of Madeleine McCann, a story that gets ever more strange.

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 U.K. cinemas following the disappearance of McCann.

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 U.K. audiences.

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 United States like it has in the U.K. It is only when someone said there was this case that was very similar to my film we looked it up.

"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 Portugal on May 3.

www.hollywood.com/news/Af...se/4797009

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 Portugal on May 3.

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 - Portugal's CID.

Legal experts said the judge has the power to order the couple back to Portugal and place them under house arrest.

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 Portugal if called in by police.

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 Portugal say it is more likely he wants to carry out fresh searches, conduct more interviews, or impose stricter bail conditions.

Officers are planning new searches in Praia da Luz, where Madeleine went missing, including digging around the village church of Nossa Senhora da Luz, according to Portuguese newspapers.

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 Portugal with the McCanns, said: "It's a small, well-tended church just up from the beach.

"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 Portugal. Mr and Mrs McCann have spoken of their fears that they are being framed.

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 Praia da Luz
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 Portugal. The same odour was found on Maddie’s soft toy Cuddle Cat. Kate said she had taken the toy to work.

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 Algarve holiday apartment in Praia da Luz more than four months ago.

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 Britain and Portugal had begun a campaign against the parents in August. The McCanns have strongly denied any involvement.

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