Madeleine McCann is alive and could be home with her parents by Christmas, the private investigator hunting for her declared yesterday.

 

Francisco Marco made a series of astonishing claims, saying he even knew who snatched the missing four-year- old and is close to reuniting her with Kate and Gerry McCann.

The director general of Metodo 3, the private detective firm hired by the McCanns, confidently predicted Madeleine would be rescued from her kidnappers in North Africa or the Iberian Peninsula.

Despite not knowing exactly where Madeleine is being held, Mr Marco proclaimed to a Spanish newspaper that he was certain which group of paedophiles had taken her and he was gathering proof so police could arrest them.

The claims come as police sources revealed that the case against the McCanns appeared to be crumbling with fresh doubts being cast over evidence.

In his boldest statement of progress to date, Francisco Marco said: "God willing, I hope she'll be back with her parents before Christmas."

 

Though he admitted to having no proof that Madeleine is still alive, the private detective insisted he was confident that she was the day after she was kidnapped.

 

He told the Spanish free daily Metro: "I have no proof Madeleine is alive. We have proof of her movements after her kidnap and we know she was alive the day after her disappearance.

 

"We are certain the kidnappers left Portugal at a certain moment in time.

"I talk of certainties because we know which group may have her or could have kidnapped her to sell her on to others."

 

He went on: "One of the things that makes us believe Madeleine is alive is that every day she's worth more to them.

"In principle we're talking about paedophiles. I don't think they're Spanish.

"It's obviously not a kidnap carried out by professionals for economic reasons.

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"The McCanns are a middle-class family, two doctors, without vast financial resources.

"A professional kidnapper would have done something with Madeleine by now. He would have given her back or left her."

 

Barcelona-based Metodo 3 has worked for the McCanns since September on a '50,000-a-month contract - the equivalent of '2,000 per working day - from the Find Madeleine Fund.

 

The agency claims to have around 35 investigators working on the case in Britain, France, Spain, Portugal and Morocco.

 

But its controversial boss has previously come under fire for grossly inflated claims of progress.

 

Metodo 3 has yet to find any concrete evidence about where Madeleine could be, and Portuguese police have dismissed the agency as "small fry" and "irrelevant".

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Yesterday police sources revealed that photographs taken of the McCanns' holiday apartment, where specks of blood were found on the wall, may be inadmissible in any court case against the parents.

 

A senior police source told Portuguese newspaper 24 Horas that detectives took only digital photographs of the scene, which were handed to an outside photography agency to print because police crime laboratory printers were broken.

 

 

Now police are said to fear that the evidence will be called into question as the images could have been tampered with.

 

A high ranking officer in the case told the paper: "Manipulation of digital photographs is the easiest thing in the world."

 

Yesterday a close friend of the McCanns' raised concerns yesterday about the extraordinary claims of Mr Marco.

 

He said: "There are discussions about whether we wish this level of certainty to go out.

 

"We do not want this said if it cannot be proved to be true. But certainly we believe that Metodo 3 is making progress."

 

The McCanns' official spokesman Clarence Mitchell said: "We remain absolutely confident in Metodo 3 and their operational capacity to find Madeleine."

The Barcelona-based Metodo 3 has been working for the McCanns since September and Mr Marco has already travelled to Morocco to follow up a reported sighting of a blonde girl with the same distinctive marking as Madeleine in her right eye.

However it is not the first time the agency has made extremely optimistic, occasionally reckless, claims about the case's progress.

disappeared on 3 May from a holiday apartment in Praia da Luz in the Algarve in Portugal, before Metodo 3's six-month contract runs out next March.

 

Police in Portugal were investigating Robert Murat just three days after Madeleine McCann disappeared, it was claimed yesterday.

Detectives secretly searched the British expatriate's hire car eight days before they made him an official suspect, or arguido, police sources said.

Previously it had been reported that Mr Murat hired the blue Hyundai Getz on May 12, nine days after Madeleine vanished from Praia da Luz.

But yesterday police sources told the Portuguese daily

Diario de Noticas that he hurriedly hired it on May 6, telling staff he could not even wait two hours for it despite apparently having two vehicles at home already.

His behaviour seemed so bizarre that the sales assistant reported the incident to police.

Portuguese police, who were already keeping Mr Murat under surveillance, were also suspicious of why he was unable to use one of his own vehicles.

However, the 30-minute search revealed nothing.