PORTUGUESE cops came up with their sickest slur yet against the McCanns yesterday – claiming little Maddie’s body may have been kept in a FRIDGE before being dumped.

They are working on the extraordinary theory that Kate killed her daughter accidentally and that dad Gerry helped her cover up.

And they make the bizarre claim that Maddie’s body was somehow stored in a fridge in one of the apartments at the holiday complex where she went missing in May.

Detectives believe they moved the four-year-old’s body between apartments in the Portuguese holiday resort of Praia da Luz.

They are said to be focusing on a “mysterious and fatal period” of 90 minutes when they claim Kate was alone in the apartment with her children while Gerry played tennis.

Detectives are convinced Maddie was killed “before dinner” and that her body was “passed through various locations” before going into the boot of the couple’s hired car.

 

Police sources revealed: “They are locating apartments with fridges.”

The McCanns’ spokesman Clarence Mitchell last night dismissed the latest slurs as “utterly ridiculous” and begged for an end to the smear campaign.

He said: “Each and every one of these nonsensical allegations causes real pain and hurt for both Gerry and Kate. It makes a most awful situation far, far worse.”

Since naming them as official suspects, Portuguese police have leaked several allegations against Kate and Gerry, both 39-year-old doctors from Rothley, Leics.

They claimed they could have disposed of Maddie’s body on a “suspicious” trip to Spain on August 3. And they say Spanish police were also examining CCTV footage of the day trip to the city of Huelva just over the border.

But yesterday Spain’s civil guard denied any involvement, adding weight to the McCanns’ insistence that they are being smeared by unnamed police sources.

Spokesman Antonio Castilla said: “We are not investigating the McCann parents in any way, shape or form. The reports are false.”

Yesterday, daily newspaper Dia-rio de Noticias said detectives were pinpointing apartments in the area of Praia da Luz.

A source told them: “Police believe the death happened before dinner in the period between 19.00 and 20.30. During this time, Madeleine’s father was seen playing tennis at the complex, therefore the child and her twin siblings were in the charge of the mother.

“There are no registers nor witnesses who had seen Kate and Madeleine in that fatal and mysterious hour and a half.” The couple have always maintained they went to dinner after the children were put to bed in their apartment at the Ocean Club.

A family friend yesterday said of the period between 7pm and 8.30pm: “Kate was not in the apartment alone with Maddie. They had both been playing tennis earlier. Then they put her to bed and were then down for dinner by 8.20pm.”

And referring to the lurid fridge allegation, the friend insisted: “That is total rubbish. Have you seen the size of the fridges in those apartments? Of course they did not stuff her in a fridge.” Meanwhile, it emerged yesterday that Kate and Gerry had been threatened with a year’s jail if they break Portuguese secrecy laws by speaking out about Maddie.

They fear this could mean no more TV appeals for information.

 

GERRY McCann last night backed a Portuguese move to create a Europe-wide alert system for missing children.