Leave No Stone Unturned

" Didn't see a soul between 9.pm and 9.30.pm. " 


What , not Matt doing his window listening ?
Not Gerry doing his " how beautiful and toilet visit " ?
Not Jez with baby in pushchair ?
Not Gerry/Jez chatting ?
Not Jane flip flopping past ?
Not Gerry/Jane going back to Tapas ? 
Not Matt and Russell off on their " checks " ? 

This one for Williams Thomas - Not Maddie leaving the apartment looking for her mum and dad ? 

How much whisky did they drink ?  

Scotch mist!

This is an interesting observation penned in March 2010 by friend of the cause Ironside R.I.P.

THE CHARGE WILL BE :::::SIMULATED NEGLECT TO PROVE ABDUCTION (March 18th, 2010)

All of the Tapas are involved by the simple fact they have ALL lied. I am however, only interested in two. The witness statement of Dianne Webster and Russel O' Brian. PJ statements and not the ones in Leicester.The Leicester statements have no value.

O'Brian claims his daughter was sick and Jane went alone to dinner around 20H35/20H40..O'Brian also claims to have left 5 minutes later. When he arrived ALL the adults were there, without the children. David and Fiona were missing and Dianne Webster. CLEARLY THEN not ALL the adults were there. Remember the time ALMOST 9 p.m..

Dianne Webster, in her statement said she arrived with the Paynes approx. 21.00H. She does not recall, but thinks perhaps Gerry and Matt had not been in the Restaurant. I have no interest in Matt only Gerry. Gerry would be by now on his way to or in the apartment..We know this because he met with Jez Wilkins.

In this regard, asked specifically whether, on the journey to the restaurant, if they had passed either of the two individuals described in the preceding paragraph, she answered categorically not.

Questioned about the members who, during the dinner, had absented themselves from the restaurant, the witness says that, as she recalls, there were some people who left, failing to identify which, except for RUSSEL who had left the restaurant and taken a little more time than usual due to, from what she knows, his daughter had been sick.

Asked, she states that it would be normal for one member of each of the couples to get up regularly in order to check in their apartments if the children were well.

She clarifies that the practice was for each couple to check their own children, it not being usual for anyone to check the children of other couples.

The question asked, she thinks that up to the date of the disappearance it had never happened that anyone had entered the apartment of another couple in order to check their offspring.

Nevertheless, it seems that the couple PAYNE and the witness, did not make any trips to apartments, because they had an intercom called the "baby monitor", through which sounds or noises of the children could be heard.

Prompted to state for the record the movements that occurred that night, during the above dinner, the witness reiterated that she could not say specifically who had left nor when they had done so.

Therefore, she can only say with precision that, at around 22.00 Kate McCann returned to the restaurant, seemingly in panic, communicating to others the fact of Madeleine's disappearance.

Asked about the reaction of other members of the group when they heard the above from KATE, the witness says that everyone, except the witness, left the restaurant and went to the apartment of the couple McCANN in order to find out what was going on.

In turn, as relates to her, the witness says she stayed at the restaurant for about five minutes, then, noting that the remaining members of the group had not returned, she followed in the direction of the McCANNS' apartment.

In that apartment she found that KATE was completely in panic, in "state of shock

Because she was asked, she states that she entered the apartment by the sliding glass door of the patio at the back, which gives access to the lounge. Then she went to the children's bedroom, noting that there she found KATE and the twin siblings of MADELEINE .

She added that she did not remember too much detail about the scenario that she found in that bedroom, other that what she said above. However, she states that KATE had repeatedly commented that, on arriving at the bedroom, she had found the window of the room, with its shutter, both open. Yet, she [DW] did not notice, upon entering the room, if the window was or was not open.

However, she wants to stress that immediately afterwards, she went outside the apartment in order to ascertain whether she would be able to raise the shutters by hand from the outside, and found it was impossible for her. Consequently she infers that at the time of her arrival at the apartment the window would have been closed already.

Because she was asked, she says she does not know if the window, and the shutter, of the couple's bedroom were open or not, in that she did not enter that room.

Prompted about the conditions of light inside the apartment at the time, the witness believes that they were good, judging that the lights were lit as she recalls no darkness.

Regarding the bedroom previously occupied by Madeleine, she does not remember if the lights were lit, but knows that when she entered the twins were still sleeping in their beds, which makes her think that maybe those lights were switched off. She added that, for her to see the twins and their cradles, and the bed of MADELEINE, the darkness would not be complete, but that the room had some light she thinks must have been from the light of the lounge.

She adds that that night, and after the occurrence of the facts under investigation, she was in the apartment on two separate occasions. At the time described above she remained about 10 minutes in the apartment.

After this time she returned to the restaurant to get her handbag as well as the MCCANN couple's camera and "baby monitor" of her daughter, and was soon back again in the apartment.

The question being asked about the people that were inside the apartment of McCANN at that time, the witness said that the McCANN couple were present (although on the first occasion she had no recollection of having seen GERRY), and FIONA, not remembering any other people that were there. However, she admits the possibility of there being [others] inside the apartment, including David, in that, as mentioned above, all of them had gone to the apartment following the news that KATE had given.

The question asked, she states to know that male members of the group undertook a search around [outside of] the apartment to try to locate Madeleine, which was absolutely fruitless. The deponent states that FIONA had asked her to move to their daughters to make sure that everything would be well with them, hence the deponent will have returned to her apartment from which she did not leave anymore.

THE BABY MONITOR....Dianne Webster was listening to the baby monitor...

If we change the scenario and the plan was ALL children would be together, one baby monitor would be all that was needed.

I believe Dianne Webster knew what had happened and she wanted no part...Dianne through the baby monitor would be able to hear muffled sounds of someone collecting the heavily sedated twins, sedated so they would not wake or remember their journey ...Then and only then did she rise and slowly walk to Apartment 5A. Her witness statement correct 'I saw Kate, and the twins in their cots'

What is it ? holding a group of Doctors who have let themselves be villified for neglect when in fact neglect did not take place. What is the very dark secret that holds them together and why are the Mccanns taking all the heat?

Jane Tanner: Vilified as a pathological liar

Russel O'Brian: Too ashamed to show his face on the Court room steps.

Madeleine Beth McCann knows the secret, but dead children, cannot speak.

[Acknowledgement pamalam of gerrymccannsblog]

Stephen Carpenter had dinner booked for 7pm at the tapas, he said all the group of 10? were seated at 8-30.

He said he saw members of the group, including Gerry and Kate, leave the table, he thinks to check on the children.

Carpenter and family left the tapas between 9-15 and 9-30, his wife remembers someone calling Madeleine at this time.

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A reasonably balanced version of the truth..

Disappearance of Madeleine McCann

Madeleine Beth McCann (born 12 May 2003) is a British missing person who disappeared from her bed in a holiday apartment in Praia da Luz, Portugal, on the evening of 3 May 2007, at the age of 3. The Daily Telegraph described the disappearance as "the most heavily reported missing-person case in modern history".[5] Madeleine's whereabouts remain unknown,[6] although German prosecutors believe she is dead.[2]

Madeleine was on holiday from the United Kingdom with her parents, Kate and Gerry McCann; her two-year-old twin siblings; and a group of family friends and their children. The McCann children had been left asleep at 20:30 in the ground-floor apartment, while their parents dined with friends in a restaurant 55 metres (180 ft) away.[7] The parents checked on the children throughout the evening, until Kate discovered Madeleine was missing at 22:00. Over the following weeks, particularly after misinterpreting a British DNA analysis, the Portuguese police came to believe that Madeleine had died in an accident in the apartment and that her parents had covered it up. The McCanns were given arguido (suspect) status in September 2007, which was lifted when Portugal's attorney general archived the case in July 2008 for lack of evidence.[8][9]

Madeleine's parents continued the investigation using private detectives until Scotland Yard opened its own inquiry, Operation Grange, in 2011. The senior investigating officer announced that he was treating the disappearance as "a criminal act by a stranger", most likely a planned abduction or burglary gone wrong.[10] In 2013, Scotland Yard released e-fit images of men they wanted to trace, including one of a man seen carrying a child toward the beach on the night Madeleine vanished.[11] Shortly after this, Portuguese police reopened their inquiry.[12] Operation Grange was scaled back in 2015, but the remaining detectives continued to pursue a small number of inquiries described in April 2017 as significant.[13][14]

In 2020, police in the German city of Braunschweig stated there was a new suspect in Madeleine's disappearance,[15][2] whom public prosecutor Hans Christian Wolters was convinced had abducted and murdered the child.[16]

Madeleine's disappearance attracted sustained international interest and saturation coverage in the UK, reminiscent of the death of Princess Diana in 1997.[17] Her parents were subjected to intense scrutiny and baseless allegations of involvement in their daughter's death,[a] particularly in the tabloid press and on Twitter.[21][22] In 2008 they and their travelling companions received damages and apologies from Express Newspapers,[23] and in 2011 the McCanns testified before the Leveson Inquiry into British press misconduct, lending support to those arguing for tighter press regulation.[24][25]

Madeleine Beth McCann (born 12 May 2003) is a British missing person who disappeared from her bed in a holiday apartment in Praia da Luz, Portugal, on the evening of 3 May 2007, at the age of 3. The Daily Telegraph described the disappearance as "the most heavily reported missing-person case in modern history".[5] Madeleine's whereabouts remain unknown,[6] although German prosecutors believe she is dead.[2]

Madeleine was on holiday from the United Kingdom with her parents, Kate and Gerry McCann; her two-year-old twin siblings; and a group of family friends and their children. The McCann children had been left asleep at 20:30 in the ground-floor apartment, while their parents dined with friends in a restaurant 55 metres (180 ft) away.[7] The parents checked on the children throughout the evening, until Kate discovered Madeleine was missing at 22:00. Over the following weeks, particularly after misinterpreting a British DNA analysis, the Portuguese police came to believe that Madeleine had died in an accident in the apartment and that her parents had covered it up. The McCanns were given arguido (suspect) status in September 2007, which was lifted when Portugal's attorney general archived the case in July 2008 for lack of evidence.[8][9]

Madeleine's parents continued the investigation using private detectives until Scotland Yard opened its own inquiry, Operation Grange, in 2011. The senior investigating officer announced that he was treating the disappearance as "a criminal act by a stranger", most likely a planned abduction or burglary gone wrong.[10] In 2013, Scotland Yard released e-fit images of men they wanted to trace, including one of a man seen carrying a child toward the beach on the night Madeleine vanished.[11] Shortly after this, Portuguese police reopened their inquiry.[12] Operation Grange was scaled back in 2015, but the remaining detectives continued to pursue a small number of inquiries described in April 2017 as significant.[13][14]

In 2020, police in the German city of Braunschweig stated there was a new suspect in Madeleine's disappearance,[15][2] whom public prosecutor Hans Christian Wolters was convinced had abducted and murdered the child.[16]

Madeleine's disappearance attracted sustained international interest and saturation coverage in the UK, reminiscent of the death of Princess Diana in 1997.[17] Her parents were subjected to intense scrutiny and baseless allegations of involvement in their daughter's death,[a] particularly in the tabloid press and on Twitter.[21][22] In 2008 they and their travelling companions received damages and apologies from Express Newspapers,[23] and in 2011 the McCanns testified before the Leveson Inquiry into British press misconduct, lending support to those arguing for tighter press regulation.[24][25]

People

Madeleine McCann

Madeleine McCann was born in Leicester and lived with her family in Rothley, Leicestershire. At her parents' request, she was made a ward of court in England shortly after the disappearance, which gave the court statutory powers to act on her behalf.[26] Police described Madeleine as blonde-haired, with blue-green eyes, a small brown spot on her left calf, and a distinctive dark strip on the iris of her right eye.[4][b] In 2009 the McCanns released age-progressed images of how she may have looked at age six, and in 2012 Scotland Yard commissioned one of her at age nine.[29][30]

Kate and Gerry McCann

Madeleine's parents are both physicians and practising Roman Catholics. Kate Marie McCann, née Healy (born 1968, Huyton, near Liverpool) attended All Saints School in Anfield, then Notre Dame High School in Everton Valley, graduating in 1992 with a degree in medicine from the University of Dundee. She moved briefly into obstetrics and gynaecology, then anaesthetics, and finally general practice.[31]

Gerald Patrick McCann (born 1968 in Glasgow) attended Holyrood R.C. Secondary School before graduating from the University of Glasgow with a BSc in physiology/sports science in 1989. In 1992, he qualified in medicine and in 2002 obtained his MD, also from Glasgow. Since 2005, he has been a consultant cardiologist at Glenfield Hospital, Leicester.[32] The McCanns met in 1993 in Glasgow and were married in 1998. Madeleine was born in 2003 and the twins, a boy and girl, in 2005.[33]

Tapas Seven

The McCanns were on holiday with seven friends and eight children in all, including the McCanns' three.[34] The nine adults dined together most evenings at 20:30 in the resort's tapas restaurant, as a result of which the media dubbed the friends the "Tapas Seven".[35] The Tapas Seven included Fiona and David Payne, both physicians; their two children; and Fiona's mother, Dianne Webster. The McCanns had known the Paynes for years; Kate had met Fiona in 2000 when they both worked in Leicester General Hospital's intensive care unit.[36]

Accompanying them were two couples the Paynes had originally introduced to the McCanns: Jane Tanner, a marketing manager, and her partner, Russell O'Brien, a physician, who were on holiday with their two children; and Matthew Oldfield, another physician, who was with his wife, Rachael Oldfield, a lawyer, and their daughter. Gerry, Russell and Matthew had worked together over the years.[34][35] The "Tanner sighting"—Jane Tanner's report that she saw a man carry a child away from the resort 45 minutes before Madeleine was reported missing—became one of the most-discussed aspects of the case.[37]

5A Rua Dr Agostinho da Silva, Praia da Luz

The McCanns arrived on 28 April 2007 for their seven-night spring break in Praia da Luz, a village in Portugal's Algarve region with a population of 1,000, known as "Little Britain" because of the concentration of British homeowners and holidaymakers.[38] They had booked through the British holiday company Mark Warner Ltd, and were placed in 5A Rua Dr Agostinho da Silva, an apartment owned by a retired teacher from Liverpool, one of several privately owned properties rented by the company.[39]

5A was a two-bedroom, ground-floor apartment in the fifth block of a group of apartments known as Waterside Village, which lay on the perimeter of part of Mark Warner's Ocean Club resort.[40] Matthew and Rachel Oldfield were next door in 5B, Jane Tanner and Russell O'Brien in 5D, and the Paynes and Dianne Webster on the first floor.[41] Located on the corner of Rua Dr Agostinho da Silva and Rua Dr Francisco Gentil Martins, 5A was accessible to the public from two sides.[42] Sliding glass patio doors in the living room at the back overlooked the Ocean Club's pool, tennis courts, tapas restaurant and bar. The patio doors could be accessed via a public street, Rua Dr Francisco Gentil Martins, where a small gate and set of steps led to 5A's balcony and living room. 5A's front door was on the opposite side of the block from the Ocean Club, on Rua Dr Agostinho da Silva.[43][44]

The McCanns' children slept in a bedroom next to the front door, which the McCanns kept locked. The bedroom had one, waist-high window with curtains and a metal exterior shutter, the latter controlled by a cord inside the window; the McCanns kept the curtains and shutter closed throughout the holiday. The window overlooked a narrow walkway and residents' car park, which was separated from the street by a low wall.[45] Madeleine slept in a single bed next to the bedroom door, on the opposite side of the room from the window, while the twins were in travel cots in the middle of the room. There was another single bed underneath the window.[43]
Thursday, 3 May 2007

Daytime: McCann family activities

Thursday, 3 May, was the penultimate day of the family's holiday. Over breakfast Madeleine asked: "Why didn't you come when [my brother] and I cried last night?" After the disappearance, her parents wondered whether this meant someone had entered the children's bedroom. Her mother also noticed a large brown stain on Madeleine's pyjama top.[46]

The children spent the morning in the resort's Kids' Club, then the family lunched at their apartment before heading to the pool.[43] Kate took the last known photograph of Madeleine at 2:29 that afternoon, sitting by the pool next to her father and two-year-old sister.[47] The children returned to the Kids' Club, then at 18:00 their mother took them back to 5A, while their father went for a tennis lesson.[43] The McCanns put the children to bed at around 19:00. Madeleine was left asleep in short-sleeved, pink-and-white Marks and Spencer's Eeyore pyjamas, next to her comfort blanket and a soft toy, Cuddle Cat.[48]
20:30: Tapas restaurant

At 20:30 the parents left 5A to dine with their friends in the Ocean Club's open-air tapas restaurant, located on the other side of the pool.[49] 5A lay about 55 metres (180 ft) from the restaurant as the crow flies, but getting to the restaurant involved walking along a public street to reach the doors of the Ocean Club resort, then walking through the resort to the other side of the pool, a distance of about 82 metres (295 ft).[7] The top of the apartment was visible from the tapas restaurant, but not the doors. The patio doors could be locked only from the inside, so the McCanns left them closed but unlocked, with the curtains drawn, so they could let themselves in that way when checking on the children. There was a child-safety gate at the top of the steps from the patio and a low gate at the bottom, which led to the street.[49]

The resort's staff had left a note in a message book at the swimming-pool reception area, asking that the same table, which overlooked the apartments, be block-booked for 20:30 for the McCanns and friends every evening for the last four evenings of the holiday. The message said the group's children were asleep in the apartments. Kate believes the abductor may have seen the note.[50] The McCanns and their friends left the restaurant roughly every half-hour to check on their children. Gerry carried out the first check on 5A at around 21:05. The children were asleep and all was well, except that he recalled having left the children's bedroom door slightly ajar, and now it stood almost wide open. He pulled it nearly closed again before returning to the restaurant.[49]

21:15: Tanner sighting
drawing
Artist's impression of the man Jane Tanner saw, released October 2007; Scotland Yard believe it was an uninvolved British tourist carrying his daughter.[51][52]

The sighting by Jane Tanner, one of the Tapas Seven, of a man carrying a child that night became an important part of the early investigation. Tanner had left the restaurant just after 21:00 to check on her own daughter, passing Gerry on Rua Dr Francisco Gentil Martins on his way back to the restaurant from his 21:05 check. He had stopped to chat to a British holidaymaker,[53] but neither man recalled having seen Tanner. This puzzled the Portuguese police, given how narrow the street was, and led them to accuse Tanner of having invented the sighting.[54]

Tanner told the police that at around 21:15 she had noticed a man carrying a young child walk across the junction of Rua Dr Francisco Gentil Martins and Rua Dr Agostinho da Silva just ahead of her. He was not far from Madeleine's bedroom, heading east, away from the front of apartment 5A.[55] In the early days of the investigation, the direction in which he was walking was thought to be important because he was moving toward the home of Robert Murat, the 33-year-old British-Portuguese man who lived near 5A, and who became the case's first suspect.[56][37][57]

The child in the man's arms was wearing light-coloured pink pyjamas with a floral pattern and cuffs on the legs, similar to Madeleine's. Tanner described the man as white, dark-haired, 5 ft 7 in (1.70 m) tall, of southern European or Mediterranean appearance, 35–40 years old, wearing gold or beige trousers and a dark jacket, and said he did not look like a tourist. According to Kate, Tanner passed the information to Portuguese police as soon as Madeleine was reported missing, but they did not pass the description to the media until 25 May.[58] Madeleine's Fund hired a forensic artist to create an image of the man, which was released in October 2007.[59][60]

The sighting became important because it offered investigators a time frame for the abduction, but Scotland Yard came to view it as a red herring.[51] In October 2013, they said that a British holidaymaker had been identified as the man Tanner had seen; he had been returning to his apartment after collecting his daughter from the Ocean Club night creche.[61] Scotland Yard took photographs of the man wearing the same or similar clothes to the ones he was wearing on the night, and standing in a pose similar to the one Tanner reported. The pyjamas his daughter had been wearing also matched Tanner's report. Operation Grange's lead detective, Detective Chief Inspector Andy Redwood, said they were "almost certain" the Tanner sighting was not related to the abduction.[51][62]

22:00: Smith sighting
Further information: § Oakley International
photograph
E-fit images of the Smith sighting, released by Scotland Yard in 2013[11]

The rejection of the Tanner sighting as crucial to the timeline allowed investigators to focus on another sighting of a man carrying a child on the night of Madeleine's disappearance, this one reported to Portuguese police on 26 May 2007 by Martin and Mary Smith, who had been in Praia da Luz on holiday from Ireland.[63] Scotland Yard concluded in 2013 that the Smith sighting offered the approximate time of Madeleine's kidnap.[11][64]

The Smiths saw the man at around 22:00 on Rua da Escola Primária, 500 yards (460 m) from the McCanns' apartment, walking away from the Ocean Club and toward Rua 25 de Abril and the beach. He was carrying a girl aged 3–4 years. She had blonde hair and pale skin, was wearing light-coloured pyjamas, and had bare feet. The man was mid-30s, 5 ft 7 in–5 ft 9 in (1.75–1.80 m), slim-to-normal build, with short brown hair, wearing cream or beige trousers. He did not look like a tourist, according to the Smiths, and had seemed uncomfortable carrying the child.[65][66] E-fits based on the Smiths' testimony were first created in 2008 by Oakley International, private investigators hired by the McCanns, and were publicized in 2013 by Scotland Yard on the BBC programme Crimewatch.[67]
22:00: Reported missing

Kate had intended to check on the children at 21:30, but Matthew Oldfield, one of the Tapas Seven, offered to do it when he checked on his own children in the apartment next door to 5A. He noticed that the McCanns' children's bedroom door was wide open, but after hearing no noise, he left 5A without looking far enough into the bedroom to see whether Madeleine was there. He could not recall whether the bedroom window and its exterior shutter were open at this point. Early on in the investigation, Portuguese police accused Oldfield of involvement because he had volunteered to do the check, suggesting to them that he had handed Madeleine to someone through the bedroom window.[43][68]

Kate made her own check of 5A at around 22:00. Scotland Yard stated in 2013 that Madeleine was probably taken moments before this.[69] Kate recalled entering the apartment through the unlocked patio doors at the back and noticing that the children's bedroom door was wide open. When she tried to close the door, it slammed shut as though there was a draught, which is when she saw that the bedroom window and its shutter were open. Madeleine's Cuddle Cat and blanket were still on the bed, but Madeleine was gone. After briefly searching the apartment, Kate ran back towards the restaurant, screaming, "Madeleine's gone! Someone's taken her!"[70]

At around 22:10, Gerry sent Matthew Oldfield to ask the resort's reception desk to call the police, and at 22:30 the resort activated its missing-child search protocol.[71] Sixty staff and guests searched until 04:30, at first assuming that Madeleine had wandered off. One of them told Channel 4's Dispatches that, from one end of Praia da Luz to the other, searchers calling Madeleine's name could be heard.[72]

Early response

Portuguese police

Two officers from the gendarmerie, the Guarda Nacional Republicana (GNR), arrived at the resort at 23:10 from Lagos, 5 miles (8 km) away.[73] At midnight, after briefly searching, they alerted the criminal police, the Polícia Judiciária (PJ), in nearby Portimão. Kate recounted that the PJ arrived just after 01:00.[74] According to the PJ, they arrived within 10 minutes of being alerted.[75] At 02:00 two patrol dogs were brought to the resort, and at 08:00 four search and rescue dogs.[76] Police officers had their leave cancelled and started searching waterways, wells, caves, sewers and ruins around Praia da Luz.[38][77] Inspector Gonçalo Amaral, head of the PJ in Portimão, became the inquiry's coordinator.[78]

It was widely acknowledged that mistakes were made during the so-called "golden hours" soon after the disappearance. Neither border nor marine police were given descriptions of Madeleine for many hours, and officers did not make house-to-house searches.[79][80] According to Kate, roadblocks were first put in place at 10:00 the next morning.[65] Police did not request motorway surveillance pictures of vehicles leaving Praia da Luz the night of the disappearance, or of the road between Lagos and Vila Real de Santo António on the Spanish border. Euroscut, the company that monitors the road, said they were not approached for information.[81] It took Interpol five days to issue a global missing-person alert.[65] Not everyone in the resort at the time was interviewed; holidaymakers later contacted the British police to say no one had spoken to them.[80]

The crime scene was not secured. Portuguese police took samples from Madeleine's bedroom, which were sent to three forensic labs. It was reported on 1 June 2007 that DNA from one "stranger" had been found, but around twenty people had entered apartment 5A before it was closed off, according to Chief Inspector Olegário de Sousa of the PJ.[82][54] According to Kate, an officer placed tape across the doorway of the children's bedroom, but left at 03:00 without securing the apartment.[74] The PJ case file, released in 2008, showed that 5A lay empty for a month after the disappearance, then was let out to tourists before being sealed off in August 2007 for more forensic tests.[39][83] A similar situation arose outside the apartment when a crowd gathered by the front door of 5A, including next to the children's bedroom window—through which an abductor may have entered or left—trampling on evidence.[84] An officer dusted the bedroom window's exterior shutter for fingerprints without wearing gloves or other protective clothing.[54]

British police

In the United Kingdom it was agreed that Madeleine's home force, Leicestershire Police—led by Chief Constable Matt Baggott—would coordinate the British response, although it remained a Portuguese inquiry.[85] A strategic coordinating group, or "gold" group, was put together, representing Leicestershire Police, the Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA), the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP), and the National Police Improvement Agency (NPIA). The PJ gave a British team a room in which to work, but apparently resented their presence. British police were used to feeding their data into HOLMES 2 (the Home Office Large Major Enquiry System); in Portugal, the information was collected in boxes. In addition the PJ had less autonomy than police in the UK, often having to wait for magistrates' decisions, which slowed things down. In an interview for Anthony Summers's and Robbyn Swan's book Looking for Madeleine (2014), Jim Gamble, head of CEOP at the time, said Portuguese police felt they were being condescended to, and that the British were acting as a "colonial power".[86]
Media and PR
Further information: § Tabloids and social media, and § Madeleine's Fund
photograph
Tribute in Rothley, the McCanns' home town, on 17 May 2007

A PJ officer acknowledged in 2010 that Portuguese police had been suspicious of the McCanns from the start because of the "media circus".[87] Gerry told Vanity Fair in 2008 that he had decided to "market" Madeleine to keep her in the public eye. To that end, a string of public relations consultants arrived in Praia da Luz, deeply resented by the local police, who saw the media attention as counterproductive.[38] Alex Woolfall of the British PR firm Bell Pottinger, representing Mark Warner Ltd, dealt with the media for the first ten days, then the British government sent in press officers. This was apparently unprecedented.[88]

The first government press officer was Sheree Dodd, a former Daily Mirror journalist, who was followed by Clarence Mitchell, director of media monitoring for the Central Office of Information.[89] When the government withdrew Mitchell, the McCanns hired Justine McGuinness, who was reportedly headhunted for the job. When she left, Hanover Communications took over briefly, headed by Charles Lewington, formerly John Major's private secretary.[90][89] In September 2007, Brian Kennedy of Everest Windows stepped forward as a benefactor and offered to cover Mitchell's salary so that he could return. Mitchell resigned from his government position and started working for the McCanns full-time; he was later paid by Madeleine's Fund.[5][91]

The McCanns set up Madeleine's Fund: Leaving No Stone Unturned Ltd on 15 May 2007 to raise money and awareness; its website attracted 58 million hits in the first two days.[92] Throughout May and June the couple's PR team arranged events to sustain media interest in the case, including a visit to the Portuguese city of Fátima[38] as well as trips to Holland, Germany, Spain,[93] and Morocco.[94] On 30 May 2007, accompanied by reporters, the couple flew to Rome—in Sir Philip Green's Learjet—to meet Pope Benedict XVI,[38] a visit arranged by Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, the Archbishop of Westminster.[93] The following month balloons were let off in 300 cities around the world.[95]

By early June, journalists were voicing concerns: the "sheer professionalism of it ... troubled journalists", according to Matthew Parris.[96] Placing Madeleine on the front page of a British newspaper would sell up to 30,000 extra copies.[38] She appeared on the cover of People magazine on 28 May 2007,[97] on the front page of several British tabloids every day for almost six months, and as one of Sky News's menu options: "UK News", "Madeleine", "World News".[38][98] Between May 2007 and July 2008, the Portuguese tabloid Correio da Manhã published 384 articles about Madeleine.[99] By June 2008 a search for her name on YouTube returned over 3,680 videos and seven million posts.[100]
First Portuguese inquiry (2007–2008)

First arguido

Twelve days after Madeleine's disappearance, Robert Murat, a 34-year-old British-Portuguese property consultant, became the first arguido (suspect) in the case.[101][102] Born in Hammersmith, West London, Murat lived in his mother's house, Casa Liliana, 150 yards (137 m) from apartment 5A in the direction in which the man in the Tanner sighting had walked.[101] He was named a suspect after a Sunday Mirror journalist told Portuguese police he had been asking about the case. The PJ had briefly signed Murat up as an official interpreter; he said he had wanted to help because he had a daughter in England around Madeleine's age.[103][104]

Three members of the Tapas Seven—Fiona Payne, Russell O'Brien and Rachael Oldfield—said they had seen Murat outside apartment 5A shortly after the disappearance, as did an Ocean Club nanny and two British holidaymakers. This would not have been surprising considering how close Murat lived to 5A, but he and his mother said he had been at home all evening.[105][106] The McCann circle was clearly suspicious of Murat: one of the McCanns' supporters offered Richard Bilton, a BBC reporter, "exclusive access to any new developments in the case" if Bilton would report back what the press pack was saying about Murat.[107] Beginning on 15 May 2007, Murat's home was searched; the pool drained; his cars, computers, phones and video tapes examined; his garden searched using ground radar and sniffer dogs; and two of his associates questioned.[101][108] In March 2008, one of those associates had his car set fire to, with the word fala ("speak") sprayed in red on the pavement.[109]

There was nothing to link Murat or his friends to the disappearance, and Murat's arguido status was lifted on 21 July 2008 when the case was archived.[8] In April 2008 he received £600,000 in out-of-court settlements for libel in what The Observer said was the largest number of separate libel actions brought in the UK by the same person in relation to one issue; his friends received £100,000 each.[110] In July 2014, during Operation Grange, one of those friends was questioned again as a witness, this time by the PJ on behalf of Scotland Yard.[111] In December that year Murat and his wife were questioned, also on behalf of Scotland Yard, along with eight others.[112] In 2017 Murat's mother added her voice to those who had witnessed suspicious events around 5A that night: she told the BBC that she had driven past apartment 5A that night and had seen a young woman in a plum-coloured top behaving suspiciously just outside it, information she said she passed to the police at the time. She also said she had seen a small brown rental car speeding toward the apartment, driving the wrong way down a one-way street.[113]

Witness statements

In statements to the PJ, witnesses described men behaving oddly near apartment 5A in the days before the disappearance and on the day itself. Scotland Yard came to believe that these men may have been engaged in reconnaissance for an abduction or burglary. There had been a fourfold increase in burglaries between January and May 2007, including two in the McCanns' block in the seventeen days before the disappearance, during which burglars had entered through windows.[51][114]

Several witnesses reported men collecting for charity. On 20 April, a bedraggled-looking man asked a tourist in her apartment near 5A for money for an orphanage in nearby Espiche; apparently there were no orphanages or similar in or near Espiche at the time. The witness described the man as pushy and intimidating.[115] On 25 or 26 April, the tourist who rented apartment 5A before the McCanns found a man on his balcony who had entered via the steps from the street.[116] Polite and clean-shaven, the visitor asked for money for an orphanage.[117] On the day of the disappearance, 3 May, there were four charity collections by two men in the streets around 5A.[116] At 4:00 p.m. two black-haired men approached a British homeowner looking for funds for a hostel or hospice in or near Espiche, and at 5:00 p.m two men approached another British tourist with a similar story.[118]

An "ugly" blond-haired man was seen on 2 May across the road from 5A, apparently watching it; he had also been seen on 29 April near the Ocean Club. On 30 April the granddaughter of 5A's former owners saw a blond-haired man leaning against a wall behind the apartments, and saw him again on 2 May near the tapas restaurant, looking at 5A. She described him as Caucasian, mid-30s, with short cropped hair, and "ugly" with spots.[119][120] On or before the day of the disappearance, a man was seen staring at the McCanns' block, where a white van was parked.[120] In the late afternoon of 3 May, a girl on the balcony of the apartment above 5A saw a man leave through the gate below, as though he had come out of a ground-floor apartment; what caught her attention was that he looked around before shutting the gate quietly, with both hands.[121] At 14:30 two blond-haired men were seen on the balcony of 5C, an empty apartment two doors from 5A. At 16:00–17:00 a blond-haired man was seen near 5A. At 18:00 the same or another blond-haired man was seen in the stairwell of the McCanns' block. At 23:00, after the disappearance, two blond-haired men were seen in a nearby street speaking in raised voices. When they realized they had been noticed, they reportedly lowered their voices and walked away.[122]
McCanns as arguidos

Early suspicion

The first indication that the media were turning against the McCanns came on 6 June 2007, when a German journalist asked them during a Berlin press conference whether they were involved in the disappearance.[123][124] On 30 June a 3,000-word article entitled "The Madeleine Case: A Pact of Silence" appeared in Sol, a Portuguese weekly, stating that the McCanns were suspects, highlighting alleged inconsistencies between their statements and implying that the Tanner sighting had been invented.[125] The reporters had obtained the Tapas Sevens' mobile numbers and that of another witness, so it was apparent that the inquiry had a leak.[53][124][126]

This and later articles in the Portuguese press, invariably followed up in the UK, made several allegations, based on no evidence, which would engulf the McCanns for years on social media. They included that the McCanns and Tapas Seven were "swingers", that the McCanns had been sedating their children, and that the group had formed a "pact of silence" regarding what had happened on the night of the disappearance.[103] Much was made of apparent inconsistencies within and between the McCanns' and Tapas Seven's statements. The police had asked the group questions in Portuguese, and an interpreter had translated the replies. According to Kate, the statements were then typed up in Portuguese and verbally translated back into English for the interviewees to sign.[68][103]

Among the inconsistencies was whether the McCanns had entered the apartment by the front or back door when checking on the children. According to the PJ case file, Gerry stated during his first interview, on 4 May 2007, that the couple had entered 5A through the locked front door for his 21:05 and her 22:00 checks, and in a second interview, on 10 May, that he had entered through the unlocked patio doors at the back.[127] (The patio doors could be unlocked only from inside, so the parents had left them unlocked to let themselves in.)[49] There was also an inconsistency about whether the front door had been locked.[127] Gerry told The Sunday Times in December 2007 that they had used the front door earlier in the week, but it was next to the children's bedroom, so they had started using the patio doors instead.[54] The PJ also questioned why, when Kate discovered Madeleine was missing, she had run to the tapas restaurant leaving the twins alone in 5A, when she could have used her mobile phone or shouted to the group from 5A's rear balcony.[128]

Another issue was whether the exterior shutter over Madeleine's bedroom window could be opened from outside. According to journalist Danny Collins, the shutter was made of non-ferrous metal slats on a roller blind that was housed in a box at the top of the inside window, controlled by pulling on a strap. Once rolled down, the slats locked in place outside the window and could be raised only by using the strap on the inside.[129] Kate said the shutter and window were closed when Madeleine was put to bed, but open when she discovered Madeleine was missing. Gerry told the PJ that, when he was first alerted to the disappearance, he had lowered the shutter, then had gone outside and discovered that it could be raised only from the outside.[130] Against this, Portuguese police said the shutter could not be raised from the outside without being forced, but there was no sign of forced entry; they also said forcing the shutter open would have caused a lot of noise.[129]

The apparent discrepancies contributed to the view of the PJ that there had been no abduction.[131][132] Kate's shout of "they've taken her" was viewed with suspicion, as though she had been trying to lend credence to a false abduction story.[54] Particularly from August onwards, these suspicions developed into the theory that Madeleine had died in apartment 5A as a result of an accident—perhaps after being sedated to help her stay asleep—and that her parents had hidden her body for a month, before retrieving her and driving her to an unknown place in a car they had hired over three weeks after the disappearance.[6][133] In 2010, Carlos Anjos, former head of the Police Detectives Union in Portugal, told the BBC programme Panorama that most Portuguese investigators still believed Madeleine had died as a result of an accident in the apartment.[134]
Portugal sends a letter rogatory

On 28 June 2007, the McCanns suggested to the PJ that the police request help from Danie Krugel, a South African former police officer who had developed a "matter orientation system", a handheld device that he claimed could locate missing people using DNA and satellites.[54] On hearing about this years later, one scientist said it had caused his "BS detector to go off the scale".[135] Kate wrote in 2011 that Krugel's claims made no sense, but the couple were desperate. In the second week of June they sent Krugel hair and eyelashes from Madeleine collected from the McCann family home by relatives in the UK. Krugel arrived in Praia da Luz on 15 July and told the McCanns his equipment had picked up a "static signal" in an area of the beach near the Rocha Negra cliff.[136][54][137]

The officer in charge of the PJ inquiry, Inspector Gonçalo Amaral, interpreted Kate's support of Krugel as a ploy. By this point he believed the McCanns were involved in the disappearance and that Kate was using Krugel—she had also considered using psychics—to "disclose the location of her daughter's body" without compromising herself.[138] With this in mind, the PJ sent a letter rogatory to the British police to ask for assistance in their search for Madeleine's body.[54][137]

In response, Mark Harrison, the national search adviser for the NPIA, arrived in Praia da Luz, walked around the search areas, and flew over them by helicopter.[139] Describing Krugel's ideas as "highly unlikely", Harrison's report, dated 23 July 2007, said that 100 officers had searched up to 9.3 miles (15 km) around Praia da Luz, but that the officer in charge and most of the team had no training in search procedures, with the exception of a search-and-rescue team from Lisbon. Search dogs had been used, but after five days instead of within two days as the handlers recommend. Harrison suggested searching the beach and shoreline, an open area near the village, Robert Murat's property, apartment 5A, the Tapas Seven's apartments, and any hired vehicles. He recommended using ground-penetrating radar and bringing in Keela and Eddie, two Springer spaniel sniffer dogs from South Yorkshire.[140][139]

British sniffer dogs arrive

Keela was a forensic investigation dog trained to give her handler, Martin Grime, a "passive alert" to the scent of human blood by placing her nose close to the spot, then freezing in that position. Eddie was an enhanced-victim-recovery dog (EVRD, or cadaver dog) who gave a "bark alert" to the scent of human cadavers, including shortly after the death of the subject, even if the remains were buried, incinerated, or in water; he was trained to bark only in response to that scent and not for any other reason.[141]

The dogs arrived in Praia da Luz on 31 July 2007 and were taken to apartment 5A, nearby wasteland, and the beach. Both dogs alerted behind the sofa in the living room of 5A, and Eddie gave an alert near the wardrobe in the main bedroom.[142][143] There were no alerts on the beach or wasteland.[144] The PJ obtained warrants to search the house the McCanns had rented on Rua das Flores, and the silver Renault Scénic the couple had hired 24 days after Madeleine went missing. The house and grounds were searched on 2 August. The only alert was from Eddie when he encountered Cuddle Cat, which was lying in the living room; Keela did not give an alert.[145] The police left with boxes of the McCanns' clothes, Cuddle Cat, a pair of latex gloves, suitcases, a notepad, two diaries—including one that Kate had started after the disappearance—and a friend's Bible she had borrowed. A passage the Bible's owner had marked from 2 Samuel, about the death of a child, was copied into the police case file along with a Portuguese translation.[146] The items were taken to another location, where Eddie alerted his handler to one of the boxes of clothes.[147] A source close to the McCanns' lawyers told reporters that, if there was indeed a smell of corpses on Kate's clothes, it could have been caused by her contact with corpses as a family doctor.[148]

The police removed the Renault[149] and, on 6 August, Keela and Eddie were taken to an underground car park opposite the PJ headquarters in Portimão, where ten cars were parked, 20–30 feet apart, including the McCanns' and Murat's.[150] Eddie, the cadaver dog, gave an alert outside the McCanns' car by the driver's door.[151][143] The next morning Keela alerted to the rear driver's side inside the boot (trunk) and the map compartment in the driver's door, which contained the ignition key and key ring. When the key ring was hidden underneath sand in a fire bucket, she alerted again, as she did when the bucket was moved to a different floor of the car park.[152] Almost immediately the Portuguese press began running stories that Madeleine had died inside apartment 5A.[153]

British DNA analysis

Hair and other fibres were collected from areas in the car and apartment 5A where Keela and Eddie had given alerts, and were sent to the Forensic Science Service (FSS) in Birmingham for DNA profiling, arriving around 8 August 2007.[154] At this point, according to The Sunday Times, the PJ "abandoned the abduction theory".[54] On 8 August, without waiting for the results from Birmingham, Portuguese police called the McCanns to a meeting in Portimão, where Guilhermino Encarnação, PJ regional director, and Luis Neves, coordinator of the Direcção Central de Combate ao Banditismo in Lisbon, told them the case was now a murder inquiry.[155] When Encarnação died of stomach cancer in 2010, The Daily Telegraph identified him as a major source of the leaks against the McCanns.[156] Both the McCanns were interrogated that day; the officers suggested that Kate's memory was faulty.[155]

The FSS used a technique known as low copy number (LCN) testing. Used when only a few cells are available, the test is controversial because it is vulnerable to contamination and misinterpretation.[157] On 3 September, John Lowe of the FSS emailed Detective Superintendent Stuart Prior of the Leicestershire Police, the liaison officer between the British and Portuguese authorities. Lowe told Prior that a sample from the car boot contained fifteen out of nineteen of Madeleine's DNA components, and that the result was "too complex for meaningful interpretation":

   A complex LCN [low copy number] DNA result which appeared to have originated from at least three people was obtained from cellular material recovered from the luggage compartment section ... Within the DNA profile of Madeleine McCann there are 20 DNA components represented by 19 peaks on a chart. ... Of these 19 components 15 are present within the result from this item; there are 37 components in total. There are 37 components because there are at least 3 contributors; but there could be up to five contributors. In my opinion therefore this result is too complex for meaningful interpretation/inclusion. ... [W]e cannot answer the question: Is the match genuine, or is it a chance match.[c]

Continued..

McCanns made arguidos

Lowe's email was translated into Portuguese on 4 September 2007. The next day, according to Kate, the PJ proposed that, if she were to admit that Madeleine had died in an accident in the apartment and that she had hidden the body, she might only serve a two-year sentence. Her husband would not be charged and would be free to leave.[160] Both parents were given arguido status on 7 September,[161] and were advised by their lawyer not to answer questions. The PJ told Gerry that Madeleine's DNA had been found in the car boot and behind the sofa in apartment 5A.[162] Gerry did respond to questions, but Kate declined to reply to 48 questions she was asked during an eleven-hour interview.[163]

The DNA evidence was a "100 percent match", journalists in Portugal were told.[164] British tabloid headlines included "Corpse in McCann Car" (London Evening Standard, 16 October 2007), while the Daily Star reported that a "clump of Maddie's hair" had been found in the car.[165] The leaks came directly from Portuguese police, according to testimony in 2012 from Jerry Lawton, a Daily Star reporter, to the Leveson Inquiry.[d] Matt Baggott of the Leicestershire Police told the inquiry that, because the Portuguese were in charge of the case, he had made a decision not to correct reporters; his force's priority, he said, was to maintain a good relationship with the PJ with a view to finding Madeleine.[167]{{efn|Matt Baggott, former chief constable of Leicestershire Police (Leveson Inquiry, 28 March 2012): "[A]s a chief constable at the time, there were a number of I think very serious considerations. One for me, and the Gold Group who were running the investigation, which was a UK effort, was very much a respect for the primacy of the Portuguese investigation. We were not in the lead in relation to their investigative strategy. We were merely dealing with enquiries at the request of the Portuguese and managing the very real issues of the local dimension of media handling, so we were not in control of the detail or the facts or where that was going.
"I think the second issue was there was an issue, if I recall, of Portuguese law. Their own judicial secrecy laws. I think it would have been utterly wrong to have somehow in an off the record way have breached what was a very clear legal requirement upon the Portuguese themselves....
"There was also an issue for us of maintaining a very positive relationship with the Portuguese authorities themselves. I think this was an unprecedented inquiry in relation to Portugal. The media interest, their own reaction to that. And having a very positive relationship of confidence with the Portuguese authorities I think was a precursor to eventually and hopefully one day successfully resolving what happened to that poor child.
"So the relationship of trust and confidence would have been undermined if we had gone off the record in some way or tried to put the record straight, contrary to the way in which the Portuguese law was configured and their own leadership of that."[168][169][170]

McCanns return to the UK, Almeida report

Despite their arguido status, the McCanns were allowed to leave Portugal, and on legal advice did so immediately, arriving back in England on 9 September 2007.[171] The following day Chief Inspector Tavares de Almeida of the PJ in Portimão signed a nine-page report concluding that Madeleine had died in apartment 5A as a result of an accident, that the restaurant meal and apparent regular checks on the McCann children had been part of the cover-up, that the Tapas Seven had helped to mislead the police, and that the McCanns had concealed the child's body before faking an abduction. An eleven-page document from the Information Analysis Brigade in Lisbon analysed alleged discrepancies in the McCanns' statements.[172][87] On 11 September the public prosecutor, José Cunha de Magalhães e Meneses, handed the ten-volume case file to a judge, Pedro Miguel dos Anjos Frias.[173] Meneses applied for the seizure of Kate's diary and Gerry's laptop.[174] The police also wanted to trace telephone calls between the McCanns and the Tapas Seven, and there were details in the report about the number of suitcases the McCanns and their friends had taken back to England.[175]

On 28 September 2007, according to a diplomatic cable published by WikiLeaks in 2010, the United States ambassador to Portugal, Al Hoffman, wrote about a meeting he had had with the British ambassador to Portugal, Alexander Ellis, on 21 September 2007. The cable said: "Without delving into the details of the case, Ellis admitted that the British police had developed the current evidence against the McCann parents, and he stressed that authorities from both countries were working co-operatively. He commented that the media frenzy was to be expected and was acceptable as long as government officials keep their comments behind closed doors."[176]

Control Risks, a British security company—paid by an anonymous donor to assist the McCanns since 7 May 2007[177]—took hair samples from the McCann twins on 24 September 2007, at their parents' request. The twins had slept through the commotion in apartment 5A after Madeleine was reported missing; Kate wrote that she was concerned the abductor might have given the children sedatives.[178] According to the PJ files, Kate had asked them to take samples, three months after the disappearance, but they had not done so.[179] Control Risks took a sample from Kate too, to rebut allegations that she was on medication. No trace of drugs was found.[180]

Gonçalo Amaral's removal, later developments

On 2 October 2007 Chief Inspector Gonçalo Amaral was removed from his post as the inquiry's coordinator and transferred to Faro after telling the newspaper Diário de Notícias that British police had only pursued leads helpful to the McCanns. As an example, he criticized their decision to follow up an anonymous email to Prince Charles that claimed a former Ocean Club employee had taken Madeleine.[78][181]

Amaral was himself made an arguido one day after Madeleine's disappearance, in relation to his investigation of another case, the disappearance of Joana Cipriano. The following month he was charged with making a false statement, and four other officers were charged with assault. Eight-year-old Joana Cipriano had vanished in 2004 from Figueira, seven miles (11 km) from Praia da Luz. Her body was never found, and no murder weapon was identified. Cipriano's mother and uncle were convicted of her murder after confessing, but the mother retracted her confession, saying she had been beaten by police. Amaral was not present when the beating is alleged to have taken place, but he was accused of having covered up for others. The other detectives were acquitted. Amaral was convicted of perjury in May 2009 and received an eighteen-month suspended sentence.[182]

The McCann inquiry was taken over by Paulo Rebelo, deputy national director of the PJ, which expanded its team of detectives and began a case review.[183] On 29 November 2007 four members of the Portuguese inquiry, including Francisco Corte-Real, vice-president of Portugal's forensic crime service, were briefed at Leicestershire Police headquarters by the FSS.[184] In April 2008 the Tapas Seven were interviewed in England by the Leicestershire Police, with the PJ in attendance.[185]

The PJ planned in December 2007 to hold a reconstruction in Praia da Luz, using the McCanns and Tapas Seven rather than actors, but the Tapas Seven declined to participate.[186] The poor relationship between the McCanns and Portuguese police was evident again that month when, on the day the couple were at the European Parliament to promote a monitoring system for missing children, transcripts of their interviews with the PJ were leaked to Spanish television.[187] The national director of the PJ, Alípio Ribeiro, resigned not long after this, citing media pressure; he had publicly said the police had been hasty in naming the McCanns as suspects.[188] As of May 2008 Portuguese prosecutors were examining several charges against the McCanns, including child abandonment, abduction, homicide, and concealment of a corpse.[189]
Inquiry closed (21 July 2008)

On 21 July 2008 the Portuguese Attorney General, Fernando José Pinto Monteiro, announced that there was no evidence to link the McCanns or Robert Murat to Madeleine's disappearance. Their arguido status was lifted and the case was closed.[8][9] On 4 August, Portugal's Ministério Público released seventeen case files containing 11,233 pages on CD-ROM to the media, including 2,550 pages of sightings.[190][e] The files included a 58-page prosecutors' report, which concluded: "No element of proof whatsoever was found which allows us to form any lucid, sensible, serious and honest conclusion about the circumstances."[192] In 2009 Portugal released a further 2,000 pages.[193] Days after the case closed, excerpts from Kate's diary, which had been taken by the PJ in August 2007, were published in translation by a Portuguese tabloid, Correio da Manhã, despite a Portuguese judge's ruling in June 2008 that the seizure had been a privacy violation and that any copies must be destroyed.[194] On 14 September 2008, a News International tabloid, News of the World, published the extracts, again without permission and now improperly translated back into English.[195][196]

Amaral's book (24 July 2008)

The lingering tensions between the McCanns and the PJ had reached such a height that Amaral resigned from the force in June 2008 to write a book alleging that Madeleine had died in an accident in the apartment and that, to cover it up, the McCanns had faked an abduction.[197][78] Three days after the case closed, Amaral's book, Maddie: A Verdade da Mentira ("Maddie: The Truth of the Lie"), was published in Portugal by Guerra & Paz.[198] By November 2008 it had sold 180,000 copies and by 2010 had been translated into six languages.[199][87] A documentary based on the book was broadcast on TVI in Portugal in April 2009, watched by 2.2 million viewers.[200]

The McCanns began a libel action against Amaral and his publisher in 2009.[201] Madeleine's Fund covered the legal fees.[202][203] In 2015 they were awarded over €600,000 in libel damages; Amaral's appeal against that decision succeeded in 2016.[201] A judge had issued an injunction against further publication or sales of the book in 2009, but the Lisbon Court of Appeal overturned the ban in 2010, stating that it violated Amaral's freedom of expression.[204] The ban was reinstated in 2015 as part of the libel ruling, then lifted when Amaral's appeal succeeded in 2016.[205][201] The McCanns appealed the 2016 decision to Portugal's Supreme Court, but the court ruled against them in February 2017. In their 76-page ruling, the judges wrote that the McCanns had not, in fact, been cleared by the archiving of the criminal case in 2008.[9][206] In March 2017, the Supreme Court rejected the McCanns' final appeal.[202]

Madeleine's Fund inquiry (2007–2011)

Raising money

The McCanns set up Madeleine's Fund: Leaving No Stone Unturned Ltd on 15 May 2007, twelve days after the disappearance.[207][208] Over 80 million people visited the fund's website in the three months after the disappearance.[38] From September 2007, Brian Kennedy of Everest Windows supported the couple financially, and Kennedy's lawyer joined the fund's board of directors.[209][210][211] As of February 2017 it had seven directors, including the McCanns.[212]

Appeals by public figures were screened at football matches across the UK. Between May 2007 and March 2008, the fund received £1,846,178, including £1.4 million through the bank, £390,000 online, and £64,000 from merchandise.[213][214][f] Donations included £250,000 from the News of the World, £250,000 from Sir Philip Green, $50,000 from Simon Cowell, and $25,000 from Coleen Rooney.[215] J. K. Rowling and Richard Branson also made large donations; Branson donated £100,000 to the McCanns' legal fund.[216] Madeleine's Fund did not cover the couple's legal costs arising from their status as arguidos,[217] but it was criticized in October 2007 for having made two of the McCanns' mortgage payments, before they were made arguidos.[218] A reward of £2.5 million was also offered, including from the News of the World, Rowling, Branson, Green, and a Scottish businessman, Stephen Winyard.[219]

In March 2008, Express Newspapers paid the fund £550,000 and £375,000 in libel damages arising out of articles about the McCanns and the Tapas Seven, respectively.[220][221] In 2011, Kate McCann's book, Madeleine, was serialized by The Sunday Times and The Sun, both owned by News International, for a payment to the fund of £500,000 to £1 million.[222][223] In December 2015, the fund stood at around £750,000.[224]

Private investigators

Madeleine's Fund hired several firms of private investigators, causing friction with Portuguese police. Shortly after the disappearance, an anonymous benefactor paid for the services of a British security company, Control Risks.[225] There had reportedly been four independent sightings from North Africa; Brian Kennedy went to Morocco himself in September 2007 to look into one.[226][227][210] A Norwegian woman had reported seeing a girl matching Madeleine's description in a petrol station near Marrakesh, Morocco, on 9 May 2007; the child had reportedly asked the man she was with, in English, "Can we see Mummy soon?" When the witness returned home to Spain, she learned about the disappearance and telephoned the Spanish police. A month later, according to Kate, the police had still not formally interviewed the woman, which led the McCanns to fear that leads were not being pursued. The McCanns themselves travelled to Morocco on 10 June 2007 to raise awareness. They spent the night at the British ambassador's residence and were briefed by consular staff and a Metropolitan Police attaché.[228]

Kennedy hired a Spanish agency, Método 3, for six months at £50,000 a month, which put 35 investigators on the case in Europe and Morocco. The relationship came to an end in part because the head of the agency made several public statements that concerned the McCanns, including to CBS that, "We know the kidnapper. We know who he is and how he has done it."[210] Another private investigator was David Edgar, a retired detective inspector hired in 2009 on the recommendation of the head of Manchester's Serious Crime Squad.[229] Edgar released an e-fit in August that year of a woman said to have asked two British men in Barcelona, shortly after the disappearance, whether they were there to deliver her new daughter.[230] Other private initiatives included a Portuguese lawyer financing the search of a reservoir near Praia da Luz in February 2008,[231] and the use of ground radar by a South African property developer, Stephen Birch, who said in 2012 that scans showed there were bones beneath the driveway of a house in Praia da Luz.[232]

Oakley International

In 2008, Madeleine's Fund hired Oakley International, a Washington, D.C.-registered detective agency, for over £500,000 for six months.[227][233] Oakley sent a five-man team to Portugal led by Henri Exton, a former British police officer who had worked for MI5. The Oakley team engaged in undercover operations within the Ocean Club and among paedophile rings and the Roma community.[227]

Exton questioned the significance of the Tanner sighting, and focused instead on the sighting by Martin and Mary Smith of a man carrying a child toward the beach. The Oakley team produced e-fits based on the Smiths' description.[64] This was a sensitive issue, because Martin had recently watched BBC coverage of the McCanns's arrival in the UK from Portugal, at the height of public debate about their alleged involvement.[234] As Gerry exited the aircraft with his son in his arms, Smith believed he recognized him as the man he had seen carrying the child in Praia da Luz. He reported his suspicion to the Leicestershire Police but later came to accept that he was mistaken: at 22:00 witnesses placed Gerry in the tapas restaurant. Nevertheless, publication of the Smith e-fits, which bore some resemblance to Gerry, would have fed the conspiracy theories about the McCanns.[64]

Exton submitted his report to Madeleine's Fund in November 2008 and suggested releasing the e-fits, but the fund told Exton that the report and its e-fits had to remain confidential. The relationship between the company and the fund had soured, in part because of a dispute over fees, and in part because the report was critical of the McCanns and their friends: it suggested that Madeleine may have died in an accident after letting herself out of the apartment through its unlocked patio doors.[64] Madeleine's Fund passed the e-fits to the police—the PJ and the Leicestershire Police had them by October 2009, and Scotland Yard received them when they became involved in August 2011[235]—but did not otherwise release them. Kate did not include them with the other images of suspects in her book, Madeleine (2011), although she suggested that both the Tanner and Smith sightings were crucial.

Scotland Yard released the e-fits in October 2013 for a BBC Crimewatch reconstruction. After it had aired, The Sunday Times published that the McCanns had had the e-fits since 2008.[64] In response, the couple complained that the Sunday Times story implied (wrongly) that they had not only failed to publish the e-fits but had withheld them from the police. The newspaper published an apology on an inside page in December 2013.[235] The McCanns subsequently sued and received £55,000 in damages,[236] which Gerry said would be donated to charity.[237]
Further police inquiries (2011–present)
Gamble report
Alan Johnson, British Home Secretary (2009–2010)

The McCanns met the British Home Secretary Alan Johnson in 2009 to request a review of the case.[238] Johnson commissioned a scoping report from Jim Gamble of CEOP.[156][239] By March 2010, the Home Office had begun discussions with the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) about setting up a British inquiry.[156][240]

Delivered in May 2010, the Gamble report examined how several British agencies had become involved in the search for Madeleine, including CEOP itself, the Leicestershire Police, the Metropolitan Police Service, SOCA, the NPIA, Crimestoppers, the Home Office, Foreign Office, and 10 Downing Street. Gamble criticized the lack of coordination; everyone had wanted to help, and some had wanted "to be seen to help", he wrote, which had "created a sense of chaos and a sense of competition" hampering the inquiry by causing resentment among the Portuguese police.[239] He recommended renewed cooperation between the British and Portuguese authorities; that all relevant information be exchanged between the police forces; that police perform an analysis of telephone calls made on the night of the disappearance; and that all leads be pursued, including those developed by private detectives.[241]

Operation Grange

In May 2011, under Home Secretary Theresa May, Scotland Yard launched an investigative review, Operation Grange, with a team of 29 detectives and eight civilians.[242] The announcement of the review appeared to have been triggered by a News International campaign by way of The Sun.[222] The issue of whether this request was the result of "threats" or "persuasion" from News International chief executive Rebekah Brooks was one of the issues raised at the Leveson Inquiry.[243][244][245][246]

On 11 May 2011, as it was serializing Kate's book, Madeleine, the front page of The Sun hosted an open letter from the McCanns in which they asked Prime Minister David Cameron to set up a new inquiry; 20,000 people signed the newspaper's petition that day.[247] On the same day, according to her testimony to the Leveson Inquiry, May spoke by telephone, at her instigation, to Brooks and Dominic Mohan, editor of The Sun.[240] The next day she wrote to the commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, Sir Paul Stephenson, to say that Portuguese police had agreed to cooperate with a British inquiry.[248] Within 24 hours, Cameron made the announcement about Operation Grange, to be financed by a Home Office contingency fund.[249]

Operation Grange was led by Commander Simon Foy. Detective Chief Inspector Andy Redwood of Scotland Yard's Homicide and Serious Crime Command was the first senior investigating officer, reporting to Detective Chief Superintendent Hamish Campbell.[242] The team consisted of three detective inspectors, five detective sergeants, nineteen detective constables, and around six civilian staff.[250] By July 2013 the review had become an investigation.[251] When Redwood retired in 2014, he was replaced by DCI Nicola Wall.[252][253]

The team had tens of thousands of documents translated, released an age-progressed image,[254] and investigated over 8,000 potential sightings. By 2015 they had taken 1,338 statements, collected 1,027 exhibits, and investigated 650 sex offenders and 60 persons of interest. The inquiry was scaled back in October 2015 and the number of officers reduced to four.[255] The Home Secretary approved an additional £95,000 of funding in April 2016 for what the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, said was one remaining line of inquiry.[256] Another £85,000 was approved to cover up to September 2017;[257] and £150,000 to cover until 31 March 2019, taking the cost of the inquiry to £11.75 million.[258] The Home Office said it would approve similar funding for 2019.[14]

Funding

In September 2018, the Home Office announced: "We have received and are considering a request from the Metropolitan Police Service to extend funding for Operation Grange until the end of March 2019". Up to that month, Operation Grange had cost £11.6m.[259] In November 2018, an extra £150,000 is granted to continue the investigation, the latest in a series of six-month extensions which took the cost of Operation Grange to an estimated £11.75m. June 2019, the British government said it would fund Operation Grange until March 2020.
Theories: Planned abduction, burglary, wandered off

DCI Redwood made clear that Operation Grange was looking at a "criminal act by a stranger", most likely a planned abduction or a burglary that Madeleine had disturbed.[10] There had been a fourfold increase in local burglaries between January and May 2007, including two in the McCanns' block in the seventeen days before the disappearance, during which intruders had entered through windows.[114][51] In an interview in April 2017, just before the tenth anniversary of the disappearance, Scotland Yard's Assistant Commissioner, Mark Rowley, appeared to dismiss the burglary hypothesis, while adding that it was "not entirely ruled out". Referring to the suspects who might have been involved in burglaries in the area, he said that police had "pretty much closed off that group of people". The remaining detectives were focusing on a small number of inquiries that they believed were significant.[13][260] Also that month there were claims that Scotland Yard was looking for a woman seen near 5A at the time of the disappearance.[261]

Redwood said in 2013 that, "on one reading of the evidence", the disappearance did look like a pre-planned abduction, which "undoubtedly would have involved reconnaissance".[114][51] Several witnesses described men hanging around near apartment 5A in the days before the disappearance and on the day itself.[114] In May 2013, Scotland Yard wanted to trace twelve manual workers who were at the Ocean Club when Madeleine disappeared, including six British cleaners in a white van who were offering their services to British expats.[262] In October 2013 Scotland Yard and Crimewatch staged a reconstruction—broadcast in the UK, the Netherlands and Germany—during which they released e-fits of the men seen near 5A and of the Smith sighting.[263] Days after Crimewatch aired, Portugal's attorney general reopened the Portuguese inquiry, citing new evidence.[12]

Another theory is that Madeleine, nearly four at the time, left the apartment by herself, perhaps to look for her parents, and was abducted by a passerby or fell into one of the open construction sites nearby.[264] This is widely regarded as unlikely. According to her mother, Madeleine would have had to open the unlocked patio doors, close the curtains behind her, close the door again, open and close the child gate at the top of the stairs, then open and close the gate leading to the street.[265]
Tracking mobile phone calls

Using mobile-phone tracking techniques, and with the cooperation of over thirty countries, police traced who had used cell phones near the scene of Madeleine's disappearance within the important time frame.[266] The analysis turned up several calls and texts near the Ocean Club between a 30-year-old former Ocean Club bus driver, and his 24-year-old and 53-year-old associates. Detectives interviewed them in June 2014; they denied any connection to the disappearance.[112][267] Police also found that the cell phone of Euclides Monteiro, a former Ocean Club restaurant worker who had previously been fired for theft, had been used near the resort that night. Originally from Cape Verde, Monteiro died in 2009 in a tractor accident. The suspicion was that he had been breaking into apartments to finance a drug habit; his widow said he had been questioned previously about break-ins involving the sexual assault of children but had been cleared by DNA evidence.[268]
Holiday-home sexual assaults

Scotland Yard issued another appeal in March 2014 for information about a man who had entered holiday homes occupied by British families in four incidents in the western region of Algarve between 2004 and 2006, two of them in Praia da Luz. On those occasions he had sexually assaulted five girls, aged 7–10, in their beds. The man spoke English with a foreign accent and his speech was slow and perhaps slurred. He had short, dark, unkempt hair, tanned skin, and in the view of three victims a distinctive smell; he may have worn a long-sleeved burgundy top, perhaps with a white circle on the back. These were among twelve incidents reported in the area between 2004 and 2010.[269] The PJ reportedly believed the intruder in the four incidents between 2004 and 2006 was Monteiro.[270]
Searches and interviews in Praia da Luz

In June 2014, officers from Scotland Yard and the PJ, accompanied by archaeologists and sniffer dogs, searched drains and dug in 60,000 square metres (15 acres) of wasteland in Praia da Luz. Nothing was found.[271] The following month, at Scotland Yard's request, the PJ in Faro interviewed four Portuguese citizens, with Scotland Yard in attendance. No evidence was found to implicate them.[260] One man, an associate of Robert Murat, was first questioned shortly after the disappearance.[111][272] Pedro do Carmo, deputy director of the PJ, told the BBC that the interviews had been conducted only because Scotland Yard had requested them.[273]

Eleven people, including three Britons, were interviewed in December 2014. According to Portuguese media, Scotland Yard compiled 253 questions for the interviewees, including, "Did you kill Madeleine?" and, "Where did you hide the body?"[274] Robert Murat, his wife, and her ex-husband were questioned, as were the former Ocean Club bus driver and his two associates who had telephoned or texted each other near the Ocean Club around the time of the disappearance.[267] They admitted to having broken into Ocean Club apartments but denied having taken Madeleine.[112][275]
German investigations in 2020

In June 2020, the public prosecutor of the German city of Braunschweig ordered an inquiry regarding the possible involvement of then-43-year-old Christian Brueckner (also known simply as “Christian B” under German privacy laws), a convicted sex offender believed to have been living in a borrowed VW camper van in the Algarve region at the time of Madeleine's disappearance. A British woman who was Brueckner’s girlfriend at the time reported that he told her the night before the abduction: "I have a job to do in Praia da Luz tomorrow. It’s a horrible job but it’s something I have to do and it will change my life. You won’t be seeing me for a while."[276] Brueckner’s car, a Jaguar XJR6, was registered to a new owner the day after Madeleine disappeared.[2] Hans Christian Wolters, from the public prosecutor's office, stated that they were starting proceedings under the presumption that Madeleine is dead, due to Brueckner’s criminal record.[2] Brueckner has previously been convicted of unrelated counts of child sexual abuse and drug trafficking, and as of 2019 is serving a prison sentence in Germany for raping a 72-year-old American pensioner in the Algarve region; he is scheduled for release in September 2025.[277][15][278]

On 3 June 2020, the Criminal Police Office made a public appeal for information relating to the McCann case on Aktenzeichen XY… ungelöst, a crime programme broadcast by the public television station ZDF.[279] German police stated that they received useful information in 2013 after the case was first featured on Aktenzeichen XY, but that it took years to find substantial evidence for prosecution, and that they still need more information.[280] The prosecutors asked the public for information about Brueckner’s phone number and a number that dialed him on the day of the disappearance, with which Brueckner’s number had a 30-minute connection.[2][281]

On 27 July 2020, German police began searching an allotment in Hanover in connection with the investigation.[282] In October 2021, the Mirror reported that Wolters had become convinced that Brueckner abducted and murdered Madeleine.[16]
Other inquiries

In the early days of the inquiry, Portuguese police searched through images seized from paedophile investigations, and Madeleine's parents were shown photographs of sex offenders in case they recognized them from Praia de Luz.[283] Several British paedophiles were of interest. In May 2009, investigators working for the McCanns tried to question one, Raymond Hewlett; he had allegedly told someone he knew what happened to Madeleine, but he retracted his statement and died of cancer in Germany in December of that year.[284] Scotland Yard made inquiries about two paedophiles who had been in jail in Scotland for murder since 2010; the men had been running a window-cleaning service in the Canary Islands when Madeleine went missing.[285]

A man from Northern Ireland who died in 2013 was discussed in the media in connection with the disappearance: after being released from prison for the sexual assault of his four daughters, he had moved to the Portuguese town of Carvoeiro, approximately 40 kilometres (25 mi) from Praia da Luz; he was there when Madeleine went missing.[286] Another focus of Operation Grange was Urs Hans von Aesch, a deceased Swiss man implicated in the 2007 murder, in Switzerland, of five-year-old Ylenia Lenhard. Ylenia disappeared on 31 July 2007, nearly three months after Madeleine, and was found dead in September as a result of toluene poisoning. Von Aesch was living in Spain when Madeleine disappeared.[287] In June 2016, Operation Grange officers interviewed an alleged victim of the deceased broadcaster Clement Freud, who was accused that year of having a history of child sexual abuse.[288] Freud had had a home in Praia da Luz and had befriended the McCanns in July 2007, several weeks after the disappearance.[289] Freud's family said he had been in the UK when Madeleine went missing.[290]

Tabloids and social media
"Trial by media"

Eilis O'Hanlon wrote that the disappearance "could almost stand as a metaphor for the rise of social media as the predominant mode of public discourse".[21] Twitter, one year old when Madeleine went missing, became the source of much of the vitriol.[291] Ten years later, the "#McCann" hashtag was still producing over 100 tweets an hour, according to researchers at the University of Huddersfield.[292] Social media's attacks included a threat to kidnap one of the McCanns' twins,[200] and when Scotland Yard and Crimewatch staged their reconstruction in 2013, there was apparently talk of phoning in with false information to sabotage the appeal.[293] One man who ran an anti-McCann website received a three-month suspended sentence in 2013 after leafleting their village with his allegations.[294] The following year a Twitter user was found dead from a helium overdose after Sky News confronted her about her 400 anti-McCann tweets.[295]
photograph
Roy Greenslade called the Daily Express coverage a "sustained campaign of vitriol".[296]

The couple's status as photogenic, articulate, and professional was at first beneficial. Every institution in the UK wanted to help, from 10 Downing Street down.[297] The McCanns took full advantage of the interest by hiring public relations consultants and offering regular events to sustain media interest. However the frenzy eventually turned against the couple, and there began what PR consultant Michael Cole called the "monstering of the McCanns".[298] They were harshly criticized for having left their children alone in an unlocked apartment, despite the availability of Ocean Club babysitters and a crèche; the argument ran that a working-class couple would have faced child abandonment charges.[299] Seventeen thousand people signed an online petition in June 2007 asking Leicestershire Social Services to investigate how the children came to be left unattended.[300]

Kate's appearance and demeanour were widely discussed, with much of the commentary coming from other women, including Booker Prize-winner Anne Enright in the London Review of Books.[301] Kate was deemed cold and controlled, too attractive, too thin, too well-dressed, or too intense.[302] She had apparently been advised by abduction experts not to cry on camera because the kidnapper might enjoy her distress, and this led to more criticism: the Portuguese tabloid Correio da Manhã cited sources complaining that she had not "shed a single tear".[303] Journalism professor Nicola Goc argued that Kate had joined a long list of mothers deemed killers because of unacceptable maternal behaviour.[304] Commentators compared her experience to that of Lindy Chamberlain, convicted of murder after her baby was killed by a dingo. Like Kate, she was suspected, in part, because she had not wept in public.[305] There was even a similar (false) story about supposedly relevant Bible passages the women were said to have highlighted. Chamberlain asked: "How can you apologise to me and do this again to someone else?"[306]

In November 2011, the McCanns testified before the Leveson Inquiry into British press standards.[25] The inquiry heard that Peter Hill, the editor of the Daily Express, in particular, had become "obsessed" with the couple.[307] Express headlines included that Madeleine had been "killed by sleeping pills", "Find body or McCanns will escape", and "'McCanns or a friend must be to blame'", the latter based on an interview with a waiter.[308] "Maddie 'Sold' By Hard-Up McCanns" ran a headline in the Daily Star, part of the Express group.[309] Lord Justice Leveson called the articles "complete piffle".[307] Roy Greenslade described them as "no journalistic accident, but a sustained campaign of vitriol against a grief-stricken family".[296]
Libel actions

In addition to their legal efforts against Gonçalo Amaral and his publisher, the McCanns and Tapas Seven brought libel actions against several newspapers. The Daily Express, Daily Star and their sister Sunday papers, owned by Northern & Shell, published front-page apologies in 2008 and donated £550,000 to Madeleine's Fund.[23] The Tapas Seven were awarded £375,000 against the Express group, also donated to Madeleine's Fund, along with an apology in the Daily Express.[221] The McCanns received £55,000 from The Sunday Times in 2013 when the newspaper implied that they had withheld e-fits from the police.[236]

Robert Murat received £600,000 in out-of-court settlements for libel in relation to 100 articles published by eleven newspapers—The Sun and News of the World (News International), Daily Express, Sunday Express and Daily Star (Northern & Shell), London Evening Standard, Daily Mail and Metro (Associated Newspapers), Daily Mirror, Sunday Mirror and Daily Record (Mirror Group Newspapers).[310] According to The Observer, it was the largest number of separate libel actions brought in the UK by the same person in relation to one issue.[110] His two associates were each awarded $100,000, and all three received public apologies.[310] The British Sky Broadcasting Group, which owns Sky News, paid Murat undisclosed damages in 2008 and agreed that Sky News would host an apology on its website for twelve months.[311]
Netflix documentary (2019)
Main article: The Disappearance of Madeleine McCann

Netflix released an eight-part documentary series, The Disappearance of Madeleine McCann, on 15 March 2019. Interviewees included Jim Gamble, former head of CEOP; Alan Johnson, former British home secretary; Brian Kennedy, the British businessman who supported the McCanns financially; Justine McGuiness, the McCanns' former spokesperson; Gonçalo Amaral, former head of the PJ investigation; Robert Murat, the first arguido; Julian Peribañez, a former Método 3 private investigator; Sandra Felgueiras, a Portuguese journalist who covered the disappearance; and Anthony Summers and Robbyn Swan, authors of Looking for Madeleine (2014).[312][313]
See also

   List of people who disappeared
   Reactions to the disappearance of Madeleine McCann
   Reported sightings of Madeleine McCann
   Disappearance of Suzy Lamplugh – previously Britain[314] and the world's[315] biggest ever missing person's inquiry

Notes

Simon Foy, former head of homicide, Scotland Yard (BBC Panorama, 3 May 2017): "Even on the first glance of what we looked at, and when we took the information back and ran it through our own understanding and, you know, verified sightings and accounts and statements, and all the rest of it, it was perfectly clear to us that the McCanns themselves had nothing at all to do with the actual disappearance."[18]

   Pedro do Carmo, deputy director of the PJ (BBC Panorama, 3 May 2017): "There is no fact at this point or evidence that suggests they [the parents] were involved in Madeleine McCann's disappearance."[18]
   Mark Rowley, Scotland Yard's assistant commissioner (The Daily Telegraph, April 2017), when asked about the McCanns' involvement: "[T]here's no reason whatsoever to reopen that or to start rumours that that's a line of investigation".[13]
   Esther Addley (The Guardian, 27 April 2012): "It was, the [Portuguese] attorney general found, largely due to a catastrophic misinterpretation of the evidence collected by these officers [Leicestershire police] that the Portuguese team came to suspect the McCanns in the disappearance. ... Last month, Matt Baggott, at the time chief constable of Leicestershire, admitted to the Leveson inquiry that he had known the Portuguese officers, then heavily briefing reporters that the McCanns were guilty, were wrong on crucial DNA evidence. He could have corrected reporters' errors, even behind the scenes, he admitted, but had judged it better not to."[19]
   Brian Cathcart (New Statesman, 22 October 2008): "[T]he McCann case was the greatest scandal in our news media in at least a decade ... Error on this scale, involving hundreds of 'completely untrue' news reports, published on front pages month after month in the teeth of desperate denials, can only be systemic. Judging by what appeared in print, it involved a reckless neglect of ethical standards, a persistent failure to apply even the most basic journalistic rigour, and plenty of plain cruelty."[20]

Gerry McCann (CNN, 11 May 2011): "[T]he technical term is coloboma, where there's a defect in the iris. I don't think it is actually. I think it's actually an additional bit of colour. She certainly had no visual problems."[27][28]
The email from John Lowe (Forensic Science Service, 3 September 2007) continued: "The individual components in Madeleine's profile are not unique to her; it is the specific combination of 19 components that makes her profile unique above all others. Elements of Madeleine's profile are also present within the profiles of many of the scientists here in Birmingham, myself included. It's important to stress that 50% of Madeleine's profile will be shared with each parent. It is not possible, in a mixture of more than two people, to determine or evaluate which specific DNA components pair with each other. ... Therefore, we cannot answer the question: Is the match genuine, or is it a chance match."[158][159]
Jerry Lawton, Daily Star (Leveson Inquiry, 19 March 2012): "Portuguese police leaked in briefings in Portugal to their journalists that the forensic test results positively showed that Madeleine had been in or linked her to the hire car that her parents didn't hire until three or four weeks after she'd disappeared, and that story became a—created a sea change, without overusing that word, in the way the story has been looked at.
"Those forensic test results became a bone of contention between the UK and the Portuguese police. I was present when a Portuguese team of forensic experts and detectives arrived in Leicester to discuss these results. Of course, they'd already leaked a version of the results. Leicestershire police presumably knew—although it turns out obviously that those test results did not prove that and that the Portuguese police had somehow misinterpreted these results. I just felt that had this been—that Leicestershire police could have briefed, off the record, even unreportable, that the Portuguese police had misinterpreted those DNA results. ...
"Every time you rang Leicestershire police on that inquiry—and it was a lot, from every media organisation—you were told: 'It's a Portuguese police inquiry. You'll have to contact the Portuguese police.' And of course, they were fully aware that the Portuguese police had judicial secrecy laws and they wouldn't talk about the case."[166]
In July the McCanns went to the High Court in London to gain access to 81 pieces of information Leicestershire police held about the sightings, before Portugal released the case files.[191]
£815,000 was spent during this period, including £250,000 on private detectives, £123,573 on the campaign, and £111,522 on legal costs.[213]

Reference sources here:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disappearance_of_Madeleine_McCann

[Subject to editing - maybe]

There is beyond doubt a journalistic coup going on and around the disappearance of Madeleine McCann but without knowing who knows who, it's difficult - if not impossible, to nail the reporter in chief.

There was talk of personal contacts in the world of media and press as far back as the night of 3rd/4th May 2007, in particular Rachael Oldfield if memory serves me right. The McCanns had a strong link in the name of Jon Corner who featured early in the story from the less salubrious angle, a media mogul with associates far and wide and then there was .... Clarence Mitchell !!!

Whatever, they all appear to be hacks of some sort or another with an overriding desperate need of camaraderie.

It's a pair of teeth that leads me along this trail - teeth belonging to a certain person in the name of Christian Brueckner. This is not about him personally, it's about the story surrounding teeth.

It all started with a couple of witnesses interviewed by the police conducting the initial 'official' investigation - Gail Cooper and Paul Gordon.

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The trail, the press version, would appear to have originated with Jane Tanner's metamorphic Tannerman, who started life on earth as an egg and gradually hatched into a faceless image carrying what she thought to be a child. Once firmly established as the 'abductor' by the press and media (Clarence Mitchell ), the 'abductor' spread far and wide but the teeth largely remained consistent.

As is customary with reportage on the case of Madeleine McCann, basic stories of potential 'abductors' were embellished and grew legs - and teeth.

It's a long journey with many twists and turns but where better to start..

Madeleine McCann suspect 'had facial surgery months after her disappearance'

A new TV investigation believes that convicted paedophile Christian Brueckner had his jaw reset and his teeth straightened shortly after Madeleine went missing in 2007

New claims have surfaced that Christian Brueckner had dental surgery on "rabbit teeth"

ByDave BurkePolitical Correspondent

09:14, 15 May 2022

The prime suspect behind Madeleine McCann's disappearance spent thousands on facial surgery just months after the youngster vanished, it is claimed.

A new TV investigation believes that convicted paedophile Christian Brueckner had his jaw reset and his teeth straightened shortly after Madeleine went missing.

It is alleged that he had his "rabbit" teeth reset in September 2007, four months after the British four-year-old is thought to have been snatched in Praia da Luz in Portugal.

He has denied any involvement and has not been charged.

Witnesses claimed to have seen a man with protruding teeth loitering around the apartment where the McCann's were staying.

He paid around £7,500 for the operation at a private dental clinic in his native Germany, it is alleged.

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Less than three weeks before Madeleine vanished, police in Portugal were told a girl had been subjected to a sickening indecent exposure by a man with sticking out front teeth.

According to The Sun, Brueckner travelled to Germany from Lisbon in September 2007, as detectives scrambled to work out what had happened to the missing toddler.

While in his homeland, the sex offender, now 45, underwent major work at a private clinic in Wuerzburg, Bavaria, it is claimed.

The operation usually costs around 9,000 euros - the equivalent of around £7,500.

On April 9, 2007, a 10-year-old girl was approached by a naked man on a beach at Salema, just seven miles from the apartment where Madeleine vanished from.

The man was said to have four protruding teeth from his upper jaw, with the victim, now 25, said to have told police he "looked like a rabbit".

In January 2008 an image by an FBI-trained artist was released showing a suspect who met this description.

It is also claimed this week that Brueckner had worked as an odd-job man at the complex where he McCanns were staying - meaning he knew it "inside out".

Brueckner - who is serving a prison sentence for raping a woman in her 70s in Portugal - has denied having anything to do with Madeleine's disappearance.

The revelations were uncovered by filmmakers Jutta Rabe and Jon Clarke, who are working on a TV documentary about the case.

Mr Clarke has previously penned a book called My Search For Madeleine.

German prosecutor Hans Christian Wolters told The Sun he has "everything he needs" to charge Brueckner with the indecent exposure case and Madeleine's disappearance.

Authorities told the newspaper he will "definitely" face more charges in the coming weeks.

The suspect has been linked to the abduction and rape of an Irish tour rep, as well as indecent exposure to four children in 2017 in the Algarve.

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A look at the 'creepy man' reportedly seen by Paul Gordon and Gail Cooper, a week before the McCanns arrived, which resulted in the infamous 'George Harrison' sketch and the 'police-style' press conference in London.

Portuguese police dismissed the sketch as having "no credibility" and officers accused the McCanns of diverting attention away from themselves. Carlos Anjos, president of the Judicial Police Inspectors Union, said: "All sense has been completely lost."

Another police source said the picture was based on information "without any consistency", which shows a man who could be one of "hundreds of people" and is "another diversionary manoeuvre".

[Acknowledgement pamalam of gerrymccannsblog]

May 22, 2023
madeleine mccann died 29th april

Aged care in-home Lourenco supplied the police with a photograph he said he had taken of the mans car. Maddie 'killed by sleeping pill overdose'. "Kate McCann and Gerald McCann are involved in the concealment of the cadaver of their daughter, Madeleine McCann" George Moras, Honorary Chief Commissioner of the National French Police "Today, the only person prosecuted in the case of the disappearance of little Madeleine McCann is the officer who conducted the investigation. She did not make her statement until 20 August - over three-and-a-half months after the event. She had a pink hair bead on her. (The McCanns incidentally paid the amazing sum of 500,000 to Bell Pottinger to keep Madeleines name on the front pages of Britains newspapers for a year. If so, they would need to demonstrate that the shutters were previously in good working order. Madeleine McCann suspect charged with sexual offences by German prosecutors. Her mother came to fetch her at 12.25 for lunch and took her back at 2 o'clock. Madeleine would have been happily playing with her brother and sister, her friends in the Lobsters club, and her Mum and Dad for six days. If that analysis is correct, this shows evidence of cunning planning and deception, amounting to perverting the course of justice. Home; Services. It showed Madeleine in make-up. Portuguese police believe Madeleine McCann died in a 'tragic accident' and that her parents hid her body. However, in our view it is very unlikely that her death could have been a simple accident, otherwise the McCanns would have taken her to the local hospital. Thats 24 times as much time to think, plan and carry out a hoax abduction. Later, when re-interviewed by the Portuguese police on 10 and 11 July, after police had interrogated his mobile phone, and discovered that the account he had earlier given of his movements was false, he completely changed his story, claiming he had been too tired on 15 May to tell the truth. Madeleine's whereabouts remain unknown, although German prosecutors believe she is . Over thirteen years ago, on 3 May 3 2007, three-year-old Madeleine McCann vanished from a holiday apartment in Portugal's Praia de Luz, while her parents Kate and Gerry . Deliberately creating stories about claimed sightings of Madeleine which they knew to be false. 28 April 2007 - The McCann's arrive in Portugal Kate and Gerry McCann take their three children - Madeleine, three, and twins Amelie and Sean, two, on holiday to the Ocean Club complex in Praia da . Lourenco had evidently planned to call the police and already knew of the description that Jane Tanner had given to the police. Point 5. 6. Chapter 8: A man with a child in his arms. This suggests that Lourenco was part of a group of people who planned to deliberately sabotage the Portuguese polices investigation and send them off in entirely the wrong direction. Its Head of Risk, Alex Woolfall flew there the very next day (4 May) and he was later joined by another top Director of the company. Severe doubts about the evidence given by the McCanns and two Mark Warner creche nannies, Catriona Baker and Charlotte Pennington, regarding a high tea which Madeleine is said to have attended between 4.45pm and 6pm on Thursday 3 May. We refer in particular to her article on CMOMM posted on 28 September 2015, on the lack of credible evidence that Madeleine was seen alive after Sunday, link here: [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] It was Wojchiech Krokowski, a man from Poland on holiday with his wife for the week. He notes, as Kate McCann herself admits, that she washed Madeleines pyjamas on the morning of 3 May. (viii) What time shall we get her to say she saw someone? German police said earlier that the suspect, who lived near Praia da Luz, has been sentenced on numerous occasions to prison terms for sexual abuse of children in the past. This situation may raise questions concerning the circumstances in which the death of the child took place. It showed Madeleine in make-up. Madeleine McCann disappeared 15 years ago when she was 3-years-old when . Spending vast sums of money - much of it from the public - on expensive lawyers (including Michael Caplan QC, the top barrister who successfully stopped General Pinochet being extradited to Chile) and PR advisers, when none of these could have realistically helped to find Madeleine, The McCanns body language, including their obvious lack of raw emotion after the loss of their first child, Madeleines 4th Birthday Just 9 days after her parents reported her disappearance. The McCanns say the photo was taken at 2.29pm on Thursday 3 May. AS far as we know, they knew no-one in the area who could help them. Not only was Dr Payne not independent, being a very close friend of the McCanns, but there were 20 or more significant contradictions between the accounts of Dr Payne and Kate McCann about what took place at that meeting, how long it lasted etc. We do not therefore accept it as evidence that Madeleine was alive on Tuesday. dogs has alerted to rotting meat, not the odour of a corpse, The . Getting all the children changed and ready for bed and asleep before they set off for dinner? Our views are unlikely to change unless significant new evidence emerges. Did Madeleine McCann die on Sunday 29th April 2007, four days before . They even got the German police to search the plane for Madeleine at Berlin Airport. Cat, to work with her whilst she visited homes to issue death (as indeed they did so claim). The McCanns using different doors when entering and leaving their apartment. Madeleine McCann was three years old when she went missing in 2007. These and a number of other considerations about Robert Murat lead us to think that he was summoned to Portugal during Monday 30 April because something serious had happened to Madeleine the previous day, and that his help was needed to cover this up. The Madeleine McCann Research Group (MMRG) was set up in 2009, around the time that I created what was to become the most popular Madeleine McCann discussion forum on the internet: The Complete Mystery of Madeleine McCann (CMOMM). 28 votes, 55 comments. Doubtful or contradictory stories about what they did with Madeleine after Sunday, for example: Claiming to have gone on a trip to the beach with the children one day - despite the creche records saying the children were in their creches at the time and promoting stories about things that she had allegedly said or done, Contradictory stories about an alleged incident of the children crying at night-time: on Thursday: (a) it was the twins (b) it was Madeleine (c) it was Madeleine and Sean and (d) it was Amelie on the Wednesday not the Thursday. - somewhere where no-one could find it? But we believe we now have sufficient knowledge to be able to state with confidence what we say below. We now wish to take this research a stage further, and below is a short paper expressing the views of the Madeleine McCann Research Group. C. (If the twins were there) The McCanns would have had to make swift arrangements to move them out of the way whilst they decided what to do. This is consistent with her having been dead for some time before she was reported missing. The apartment. No-one else was reported to have ever died in that apartment. Later, the McCanns completely changed their tune. Here, quite apart from the matters dealt with above, are several other specific indications that an abduction hoax was indeed planned over a four-day period: The relevant facts are these. Jill Havern, forum owner -----The views of the Madeleine McCann Research Group, August 2016 Photograph: PA. Amaral released his book, The Truth of the Lie, three days after the Portuguese attorney general decided to end the search for . Is it possible that the McCanns and advisers were already planning to claim that the shutters had been jemmied open and smashed by the abductor on Thursday? Lourenco supplied the police with a photograph he said he had taken of the mans car. We have given, above, some general considerations as to when Madeleine may have died. A preliminary point to raise is: were the twins present when, according to the PJ theory, Madeleine died? Well, that depends on whether or not one accepts as gospel the claims of Gerry and Kate McCann, Catriona Baker and Charlotte Pennington that Madeleine was at a high tea in the Tapas restaurant from (according to Gerry McCann) 4.45pm onwards to about 6pm. In the very early weeks after Madeleine was reported missing, John Stalker, an experienced and respected detective chosen to work on the alleged Shoot to Kill policy in Northern Ireland, stated that in his opinion: My gut instinct is that some big secret is being covered up. So we suggest that all these things must have all happened, in approximately this order: They would first have to decide if Madeleine really was dead, or could be revived or resuscitated. The Last Photo shows Gerry McCann, Madeleine and her sister Amelie by the Ocean Club swimming pool. 24 April. Kate and Gerry McCann, the parents of the missing 4-year-old British girl Madeleine McCann, hold up a picture of Madeleine during a press conference on June 6, 2007 in Berlin, Germany. "It is now important to present a summary of this case, based on our deductions: reject what is false, throw out what we can't show with sufficient certainty and validate that which can be proven. In addition to all these considerations, for Martin Grimes cadaver dogs to have alerted to the scent of a corpse, no longer present, some three months after the McCanns had vacated their holiday apartment, Madeleines body must have been lying in the McCanns apartment for at least 90 minutes, probably two hours or longer. But many people did know about Freuds conduct and likewise kept it secret for decades. He was observed trying to sneak a look at confidential documents. A German prosecutor has said he is "sure" that Madeleine McCann -- the British girl who disappeared from a resort in Portugal in 2007 at the age of three -- was killed by suspect Christian Brckner. We cannot say. Whilst this doesnt prove that Jane Tanner and Robert Murat were in Krokowskis apartment that week, it certainly raises at least the possibility that they were. A judge refused to hear the dog handlers evidence, saying that sniffer dogs evidence was too unreliable. (v) Have we got anything we can carry her body out in, without anybody thinking there might be a body in it? It was very early - Madeleine might very well have been found alive and well later that Friday - but on that very day, many media editors immediately despatched reporters to Praia da Luz. A convicted paedophile and rapist named as a suspect in the disappearance of Madeleine McCann allegedly told his former lover he 'knows what happened to little Maddie'.. Christian Brueckner, 44 . When the film was published, the McCanns claimed she had been playing with Mummys make-up box, but that story didnt stand up to scrutiny. The body, the existence of which has been confirmed by the EVRD and CSI dogs but also by the results of the preliminary laboratory analyses, cannot be found. She said she spoke to a friend of hers, Edna Glyn, while the crying was going on, but neither of them did anything about it. Only one other photo of Madeleine was taken that week, the so-called Tennis Balls Photo. In addition, the Portuguese police appear to have received the images on a black-and-white program which only reproduced them as grainy greyscale images which made them very difficult to analyse. Immediately following the reported disappearance of Madeleine, the holiday company who arranged the holiday, Mark Warner, brought their PR company, Bell Pottinger, to Praia da Luz. But in the Make-Up Photo, she was looking very sad. It is time for us now to be still more specific about why we think she died on the Sunday that week. He kept pestering the police with plausible suggestions about lines of enquiry that they should be following. April 2017: The only four . It has happened many times before in many other similar cases. certificates, thats why the smell of death was on Cuddle Cat. Shortly afterwards, he was removed as a translator. 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Madeleine McCann – Portugal – 2007

Madeleine McCann disappeared on the evening of Thursday, 3 May 2007. She was on holiday with her parents and twin siblings in the Algarve region of Portugal. The British girl went missing from an apartment, in the central area of the resort of Praia da Luz, a few days before her fourth birthday, and has still not been found. Madeleine’s parents, Kate and Gerry McCann, have said that they left the children unsupervised in a ground floor bedroom while they ate at a restaurant about 120 metres (130 yards) away

Disappearance

Madeleine disappeared from a ground floor apartment, where the family was staying, on the evening of 3 May 2007. The apartment had been rented by the holiday company Mark Warner for the summer season as part of its Ocean Club. The layout of the Ocean Club may have contributed to the disappearance of Madeleine as its buildings are spread out across the village, such that anyone can wander in and out of the holiday areas.

Her parents reported to the police that they had taken Madeleine to their holiday apartment at 18:00 Western European Summer Time, to prepare Madeleine and her two-year-old twin siblings for bed. Then they left at 20:30, leaving the apartment unlocked, to dine with friends approximately 130 yards (120 metres) away at a tapas bar within the Mark Warner Ocean Summer Club. The McCanns said that they were taking turns checking on their children. At 20:55, one of the McCanns’ dinner companions, Matthew Oldfield, approached the bedroom window of the children to check if he could hear any noise in the room and at approximately 21:05/21:15 Gerry checked on the children. At 21:20 Jane Tanner noticed a man carrying a child going down the road next to the apartment of the McCanns. Slightly further down the road, Gerry was chatting to Jeremy Wilkins, whom he had met at the resort, and neither noticed Tanner as she walked past them to join the rest of the group at the tapas restaurant. At 21:30 Matthew Oldfield went to check the children but saw only the twins through the open bedroom door.

At around 22:00, Kate returned to check on the children and found Madeleine’s bed empty and the bedroom window open. An Ocean Club nanny, Charlotte Pennington, who was one of the first people to arrive at the apartment, said that Kate screamed both “They’ve taken her, they’ve taken her!” and “Madeleine’s gone!”. Kate said that the police were called within 10 minutes of finding her daughter gone. Gerry said it was one of their friends who alerted the resort manager and the police.

The GNR’s spokesman, Lieutenant Colonel Costa Cabral, said that the first call to the police (PJ) was at 23:50. According to the Portuguese police’s missing person notice, the disappearance had occurred “by 22:40”. The police stated that officers arrived within 10 minutes of being alerted, and an investigation unit began work within 30 minutes. Staff and guests at the complex searched until 04:30 while police on the Spanish border and all airports in Portugal and Spain were notified

Early stages

Following the disappearance, police carried out a search of the surrounding area with sniffer dogs, but it was called off on 11 May having produced no results. The Portuguese police Polícia Judiciária (PJ) said they were unsure whether Madeleine was still alive. They also examined photographs taken by holidaymakers to see if any suspects could be identified. The Maritime Police searched the coast including the caves. In the countryside, possible places of concealment were explored. The City Council helped the investigation by searching sewers and waterways. On 6 May it was revealed that the PJ had asked for the help of the SIS, the Portuguese secret service. On 7 May, it was reported that the PJ was looking for a 1.7-metre tall man with short brown hair and wearing a blue coat with a whitish collar.

The Portuguese media reported that the PJ were pursuing two lines of investigation: an abduction by an international paedophile network or an abduction by an adoption network. On 18 October 2007, British forensic scientist Professor David Barclay of Robert Gordon University was reported as saying the layout of the complex made it ‘a pervert’s paradise’.

On 17 June, after Madeleine was found to be missing, Chief Inspector Olegário de Sousa said that the presence of so many people in the apartment from which she disappeared, had complicated the work of the scientific team. He added that this could have destroyed all the evidence and could prove to be fatal to the investigation.

Murat and Malinka

At 07:00 WEST on the morning of 14 May 2007, searches began at Casa Liliana, a villa owned by Jennifer Murat, a British citizen, near the apartment where Madeleine disappeared. Police and scientific teams sealed off the house, and at 16:00 the swimming pool was drained.


Three people, including Jennifer Murat’s son Robert Murat, were questioned at the main police station in nearby Portimão. Robert Murat, a frequent visitor to the villa who has dual British-Portuguese nationality, had drawn the suspicion of Lori Campbell, a Sunday Mirror journalist, who informed the police. Murat’s former classmate Gaynor de Jesus said: “I do know that he has been the official translator for the police.” Murat had said that he was deeply concerned about the case because he had recently lost custody of his own three-year-old daughter, who looked like Madeleine.Subsequently, speaking at a Cambridge Union debate on 5 March 2009, Murat accused a journalist of trying to convince the Portuguese police that he was acting suspiciously, in order to break the story.

Robert Murat was given arguido (suspect) status on 15 May; before being given this status people are treated as witnesses. It was not clear if Murat or the police asked for the arguido status which gave extra rights such as the right to remain silent. However, a factor in Murat being made a suspect was three members of the Tapas Seven, Rachael Oldfield, Russell O’Brien, and Fiona Payne, saying that they saw him in the Praia da Luz complex during the evening Madeleine disappeared. Chief Inspector Olegário de Sousa told a news conference that an unnamed 33-year-old (believed to be Murat) had been interrogated, but not enough evidence was found to justify arresting him. Sousa said police had searched five houses on Monday and seized “various materials” from the properties which were being subjected to scientific tests and had questioned two other unnamed people as witnesses.

Murat stated that he was being made a scapegoat so that the police could be seen to have found a suspect.

It was reported on 16 May that two cars used by the Murats had been examined, and computers, mobile phones and several video tapes were taken from their villa. It also emerged that a British architect, who built the villa in 1993, was ignored when he called police about a hidden basement within the property.

The police were understood to have taken in for questioning Sergey Malinka, 22, a man of Russian origin, from whose property officers also took away a laptop computer and two hard drives. Malinka had set up a website for Murat and the two exchanged frequent phone calls since Madeleine’s disappearance – the reason the authorities started suspecting him. Chief Police Inspector Olegário de Sousa reiterated there was insufficient evidence to make any arrests. Police said that Malinka had been questioned as a witness for approximately five hours, which did not, having regard to the “dynamic” nature of the investigation, mean that he could not become a suspect.

Malinka spoke negatively of the coverage of the case in the Portuguese media, which had alleged that he was a convicted sexual offender. He denied he had contacted Murat, and said he was “completely innocent”. Inconsistencies in his account of his relationship with Robert Murat emerged: he had said he had not contacted Murat in a year but Murat’s mobile phone records allegedly show he called Malinka at 23:40 on the night Madeleine vanished. On 19 May, Portuguese detectives flew to England to interview Dawn Murat, the estranged wife of Robert Murat, and detectives re-interviewed other witnesses connected with Murat.

Murat was interviewed for a second and third time on 10 July and 11 July to clarify what detectives described as details and possible contradictions from his previous statement in the light of new information.On the second day detectives from the Polícia Judiciária questioned three friends of the McCanns who were dining with them at the time of the disappearance, Rachael Oldfield, Russell O’Brien and Fiona Payne, “to go over their accounts of events on 3 May”. The three were also brought face to face with Murat. As a result of the interviews, police examined discrepancies between statements from the three friends and that from Murat, in particular claims from the friends that they saw Murat outside the holiday complex on the night of the disappearance when he had stated that he was at home with his mother.Murat’s mother, Jenny, subsequently corroborated his alibi.
Police, including British detectives, resumed searching Casa Liliana on 4 August.Vegetation was cleared and the grounds were searched but despite the use of hi-tech scanning equipment and a British sniffer dog, no evidence was found that linked Murat with Madeleine.

Reports in the Portuguese press suggested that Murat had met Gerry whilst the latter was campaigning for the Labour Party. Murat denied this on 13 September, describing the reports as “absolutely ridiculous” and saying “I’ve never met the man before”. Murat had his computers and other possessions returned to him by the police in late March 2008. He was cleared of any involvement in the disappearance, and his arguido status was lifted on 21 July.

McCanns as suspects

The Polícia Judiciária (PJ), on 6 September, officially interviewed Kate for a second time, at the police station in Portimão with the McCanns’ Portuguese lawyer, Carlos Pinto de Abreu, present. The family’s spokeswoman Justine McGuinness said, “Kate will answer every question put to her – she has nothing to hide.” Pinto de Abreu made a formal application for the couple’s status to be changed from ‘witness’ to ‘assistant’ in the investigation. This is a technical move which would allow the McCanns to have more information about the progress of the investigation.When Pinto de Abreu emerged with Kate from the police station in the early hours of 7 September, after more than 10 hours of questioning, he said Kate “was interviewed as a witness and she still remains a witness. The investigation is ongoing and we cannot say any more.

Kate returned for further interview later on 7 September and was formally declared a suspect by the Portuguese police. During this interview Kate used her right to remain silent. After questioning, Kate was released from the police station just before 16:00 without being charged. Gerry was interviewed at the same police station during the afternoon and evening of 7 September and afterwards Pinto de Abreu announced that Gerry had also been named as a formal suspect.Before she became a suspect Kate said “The police don’t want a murder in Portugal and all the publicity about them not having paedophile laws here, so they’re blaming us,” and Gerry said “We are being absolutely stitched up.” Pinto de Abreu said that claims by relatives that police had offered Kate a plea bargain if she admitted to accidentally killing her child were wrong and the result of “a misunderstanding”.

The UK Foreign Office is providing the McCanns with assistance. Home Secretary Jacqui Smith said on 9 September “I am clear that the Portuguese police have the objective of solving this crime, and most importantly finding Madeleine, and that is what we in our support of the McCanns have tried to do as well.” The McCanns flew home on 9 September via Faro and East Midlands airports.

During the evening of 10 September, Sky News crime correspondent Martin Brunt, commenting on the analysis of samples returned from the Forensic Science Service, said that “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.”[71] Shortly afterwards, however, the national director of the Polícia Judiciária, Alípio Ribeiro, cautioned that the tests had not been conclusive and forensic science experts pointed to the dangers of contamination. Earlier, McGuinness had said that Kate told detectives there was “no way” Madeleine’s blood could have been found inside the car, which they had hired some 25 days after the disappearance, and continued to protest her innocence.To enable the McCanns to carry out independent scientific tests, the car was being kept in the garage of tycoon John Geraghty at his villa near Praia da Luz.

Sousa stated that at the end of the investigation the case file would be handed to the public prosecutor. The papers were given to the local prosecutor, José Cunha de Magalhães e Meneses, on 11 September. Meneses decided that there was sufficient evidence to pass the case to a judge, who had the power to approve any charges and also decide, within 10 days, on other actions that could have included placing the McCanns under house arrest in the Algarve, ordering further interrogations and authorising further searches.The judge appointed was Pedro Miguel dos Anjos Frias, Portimão‘s ‘juiz de instrução criminal’.

In addition to Meneses, a district prosecutor, Luis Bilro Verão, was appointed on 11 September 2007 to oversee the investigation. On 12 September Attorney General Fernando José Pinto Monteiro said that further police action was necessary after which there could be a reassessment of possible bail conditions for the suspects.

Anjos Frias authorised, on 12 September, the seizure of Kate’s diary and Gerry’s laptop, thought to be at the McCanns’ Rothley home, and other items. Leicestershire Police are expected to visit the McCanns, to attempt to implement this warrant. Social workers visited the McCanns on 13 September, at their request. Anjos Frias ruled on 19 September that the McCanns would not be reinterviewed for the time being.

The McCanns have been quoted as believing that their phones have been tapped from fairly early in the investigation. Clarence Mitchell, on 17 September, resigned as director of the Central Office of Information‘s media monitoring unit to become the McCanns’ media spokesman. In his first media appearance, the following day, he said that there was an innocent explanation for any potentially incriminating evidence the police may have found.Then Gerry said that he believed his daughter’s kidnapper had been hiding behind a door in their holiday apartment as he checked on his children.

In an effort to rebut accusations that she was on medication at the time of the disappearance, hair from Kate was tested in November. Toxicology tests showed no evidence that she had taken drugs in the past eight months. The twins were also tested for sedatives. No traces of sedatives were recorded. A team of four Portuguese detectives and scientists were briefed by the Forensic Science Service, at Leicestershire Police headquarters in Enderby on 29 November, about the forensic tests that the Birmingham laboratory had carried out. The results were understood to be inconclusive. In early February 2008, Alípio Ribeiro, the national director of the PJ, said that there “perhaps should have been another assessment” before the McCanns were declared arguidos.

It was reported on 10 April that parts of the McCanns’ interviews with the Portuguese police had been leaked. These were reported to include a statement that Madeleine had remonstrated with her mother for leaving the children unattended when they had been crying the previous night. Clarence Mitchell said that the leak was a “deliberate smear” and commented that it was curious that this should emerge on the day that the McCanns were in Brussels promoting a child welfareinitiative. The Polícia Judiciária said that it was entirely false that the contents of the report included material from the inquiry. They also regretted Clarence Mitchell’s “unfounded comments”.

In the judgement from the Tribunal da Relação de Évora, by Judge Fernando Ribeiro Cardoso on 29 April, it was revealed that the McCanns were being investigated for allegedly neglecting their daughter and that the police inquiry covered the possibilities of homicide, abandonment, concealment of a corpse and abduction. A judge in Portugal, on 15 May, extended the secrecy on the prosecution files for a further three months.The McCanns were cleared of any involvement in the disappearance, on 21 July, and their arguido status was lifted “due to lack of evidence that any crime was committed by the persons placed under formal investigation”.

Other suspects

The Portuguese police disclosed information, on 25 May 2007, about another possible suspect: this was a reference to a middle-build Caucasian, approximately 178 cm (5 ft 10 in) tall. However, the height of the man was subsequently corrected to that given on the Portuguese press release as 170 cm (5 ft 7 in). The man, aged between 35 and 40, was seen at 21:30 on 3 May, by a close friend of the McCanns, but this information was only made public two and half weeks later.According to Chief Police Officer Olegário de Sousa, the man was carrying a child, or something which might have resembled a child. He fitted the description of a suspect being hunted by Spanish police for the kidnappings of Sara Morales, 14, and 7-year-old Yeremi Vargas, in the Canary Islands.

Detectives tried to trace a British man who left the harbour in his yacht shortly after the disappearance, after having moored there for two years. A witness reported seeing a man carrying a child in his arms down to the marina, hours after Madeleine disappeared. On 29 May, detectives questioned four boat owners, three of them English, whose vessels were moored at the marina in Lagos, a town about five miles (8 km) from Praia da Luz.
A trace of DNA was found, on 1 June, in the bedroom from where Madeleine disappeared. The DNA did not match that of the McCanns, their three children nor that of Murat. The PJ handed the sample over to the national forensic science laboratories, the Instituto Nacional de Medicina Legal, and stated that there is a new suspect.In early August there was a suggested link with Urs Hans Von Aesch who had been on holiday in the area around the time that Madeleine disappeared. Von Aesch, a resident of Benimantell, Spain, who was implicated by Swiss police with the disappearance of five-year-old Ylenia Lenhard from Appenzell, Switzerland, had recently committed suicide.

The occupants of the flat above that from which Madeleine disappeared reported an intruder who apparently had entered with a key. There had been a similar burglary in the complex some weeks earlier. On 17 August, search warrants were signed for the home of a new suspect.

Briton Raymond Hewlett, who had been jailed for sexual offences against young girls, was, in May 2009, a person of interest. Hewlett denied any involvement in Madeleine’s disappearance and agreed to meet investigators working for the McCanns. Subsequently, he claimed to have seen Madeleine before her disappearance but required payment if he was to help the investigators. He did, though, voluntarily give police in Germany a DNA sample. Hewlett died, of natural causes, in December 2009.

In August 2009 it emerged that, 72 hours after Madeleine disappeared, two British men were approached, in Barcelona, by a woman who reportedly asked “Are you here to deliver my new daughter?” The woman, who was described as a ‘Victoria Beckham lookalike’, had an Australian accent and spoke fluent Spanish or Catalan.An E-fit picture was released showing a woman with short, spiky hair.Two detectives from the Metropolitan Police flew to Spain, in November 2011, it is thought to investigate that incident.

In February 2011, a private investigator said he had identified two key suspects in the Madeleine disappearance and believed she had possibly been taken to the United States.A 36-year-old man told a newspaper that he had informed police that McCann was taken by a Portuguese paedophile ring that hunts children in the Algarve region then proceeds to smuggle them out of the country.McCann family spokesman Clarence Mitchell told media that the paedophile ring lead had to be taken with caution.

Other aspects of the investigation

On 7 June, 2007, Spanish police received a phone call from a man claiming to know the whereabouts of Madeleine, using a mobile phone registered in Argentina. The call was described as “credible”.

In June, Spanish investigative journalist Antonio Toscano claimed that the four-year-old was abducted by a French sex offender, as part of a Europe-wide paedophile network. Then, on 28 June, Toscano claimed that Madeleine was alive and well in Europe but Madeleine’s parents refused to meet with him. Determined to leave no stone unturned, police also examined hundreds of reports from psychics and clairvoyants claiming to know the location of Madeleine. The police said that they decided to check them all in case they might contain a message from the kidnapper.

The investigation was thrown into confusion on 10 June when the detective coordinating the hunt, Gonçalo Amaral, head of the regional Polícia Judiciária, and four other Portuguese police officers, were charged with alleged offences relating to the inquiry into the disappearance of Joana Cipriano, from a village seven miles (11 km) from where Madeleine disappeared.

The Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf, on 13 June, received a letter that suggested that Madeleine was buried on a hillside, near Arão, nine miles (14 km) north-east from Praia da Luz. After a search of the area, however, the Portuguese police abandoned this lead on 15 June.

In early August, the British police team brought in to assist found microscopic traces of blood on the wall of the apartment from which Madeleine disappeared and that had not been detected by the Portuguese police. Using specially trainedsniffer dogs and ultraviolet technology they discovered the blood despite the apartment having been cleaned and reoccupied.Samples of blood, hair, and fibres were sent to the UK Forensic Science Service in Birmingham for DNA analysis. Examination of the scientific evidential material is continuing and initial findings, described as “significant”, were sent to Portugal around 4 September.

Following the publicising of the discovery of the blood spots, Sousa stated “The family are not suspects. This is the official position.” Then on 11 August, Sousa added that new evidence had given “intensity” to the possibility Madeleine had been killed. Sousa confirmed on 15 August that the sniffer dogs, which could only pick up the scent of a body which had been in situ for more than two hours, had detected the scent of a dead body. John Barrett, a former Scotland Yard dog handler, said that the dogs used to detect a ‘death smell’ on Kate’s Bible and clothes were brought in too long after Madeleine vanished since the crucial scent lasts for no longer than a month.

The position of the police was clarified on 16 August by Alípio Ribeiro, national director of the Polícia Judiciária, who said that although there was a strong hypothesis that Madeleine was dead, this could not be confirmed and the investigation was nowhere near a breakthrough.António Cluny, president of Portugal’s public prosecutor’s service, said on 24 September that “Without the little girl’s body everything is extremely complicated”. He went on to stress that all options from abduction to Madeleine’s death were still open.

The Portuguese police investigation team was reduced in October 2007. Following the removal of Gonçalo Amaral as investigation coordinator, other departures decreased the number of people working on the case from a peak of 200 to just six detectives which, with holidays, could mean as few as three working on the case at any one time.Paulo Rebelo, an assistant national director of the Polícia Judiciária, took over responsibility for the case on 8 October.

Ribeiro confirmed, during October, that Portuguese police officers were planning to fly to the United Kingdom to assist in the re-interviewing of the friends who dined with the McCanns at the time of the disappearance. To prepare for the re-interviewing, Joannes Thuy, a spokesman for the Portuguese public prosecutor, said on 15 January 2008 that Eurojust had been asked to be the go-between for the Portuguese and the UK authorities. As part of the preparations, Detective Superintendent Stuart Prior, of Leicestershire Police, flew to Portugal for discussions with his counterparts, in early March.The interviews, carried out by Leicestershire Police and attended by the Portuguese Police, began on 8 April.

Alberto Costa, Portugal’s Minister of Justice, told a parliamentary committee hearing in Lisbon, on 13 February, that Portuguese police were “at a stage now where we are approaching the conclusion of the process.” Luis Antonio, theestranged husband of Murat’s girlfriend Michaela Walczuch, was questioned by police for a second time in early February.

The Portuguese police planned to hold a reconstruction, of the events of the night of Madeleine’s disappearance, in May 2008. They asked the McCanns, their friends, and holidaymakers to attend. However, the reconstruction was cancelled after the friends declined to participate
Alípio Ribeiro resigned as the national director of the PJ on 7 May, citing media pressure. His replacement was José Maria Almeida Rodrigues, a senior detective based in Coimbra.

Criticism of the parents

The parents have been criticised for leaving their children alone while they ate at a nearby restaurant despite the availability of a babysitting service and a creche. There has also been criticism of the parents in the Portuguese media.Diário de Notícias insisted that the McCanns were suspects and claimed that on the night Madeleine disappeared they had not checked on the children, contrary to what they told police.The Daily Telegraph has reported “Portugal has been stung by suggestions that the investigation has been handled ineptly, and while there is much sympathy locally for the McCanns they have also been criticised for leaving their children alone.”

Police questioned the couple on 10 May 2007 about why the three children were left alone in an apartment, with the patio doors unlocked, while they dined at the restaurant. In an interview with the BBC on 25 May, the McCanns acknowledged the criticism, and spoke of the guilt they felt. In reply to questions posed to them on 6 June at a press conference in Germany, when radio reporter Sabina Müller suggested that their behaviour was not normal for people whose child had been abducted, they denied involvement in any abduction of their daughter.

On the 10 Downing Street website a petition to the Prime Minister was started on 12 June 2007 requesting that Leicestershire Social Services fulfil their statutory obligation to investigate the circumstances which led to Madeleine and her siblings being left unattended in an unlocked, ground floor hotel room. In response, Leicestershire County Council said it was “discharging [its] duties in… a full and professional manner” but the family has declined to comment on the petition.The petition was rapidly rejected, with the reason given being the language it contained.

Following criticism in the Portuguese media of the behaviour of the McCanns, on 21 July 2007, the Crown Prosecution Service lawyers held “informal discussions” to consider whether any offence may have been committed under the Children and Young Persons Act 1933, which deals with ill-treatment, cruelty, neglect and abandonment of children under 16. The family said the calls to prosecute the McCanns were hurtful and unhelpful.

The lawyer of Robert Murat, Francisco Pagarete, criticised the McCanns in late November. He said that they “deserve to be cursed” for leaving their children alone.

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The conversation is rubbish, but the comments are not.

Good find .

I love the criminal expert epithet.

Bleksley is the criminal expert to Mark Williams-Thomas - they are a breed all of their own.

Mongrels.

Same old thing, "experts" backing up the McCann's and rubbishing the Portuguese police.

Maybe the portuguese didn't act in a way the UK police would have done, but after all these years the UK police are no nearer to an answer than the so called inept portuguese police investigation were.

When I first got interested in the disappearance of Madeleine, I quickly came to the realisation the UK police were not looking for Madeleine, they were burying her and I haven't had any reason to think otherwise.

I don't know how these 'experts' dare to ignore the fact that Madeleine's parents are bang in the middle of her so-called disappearance. It speaks volumes about their own characters, imo. Biased, stupid, under some sort of threat? There has to be a reason they introduce a subject, then ignore the two main players.

They keep saying they are satisfied the McCann's were eliminated by the Portuguese police at the time of Madeleine's disappearance.

That's their opinion, not the Portuguese police who still say they are suspects.

The fact still remains, there is zero evidence Madeleine was abducted, there is circumstantial she wasn't.

They never will discuss the "evidence" of the dog's, if the subject of the dog's findings does come up, it's explained away saying, the dog's are not infallible.

Funny how they rubbish the dog's findings because it doesn't fit in with their narrative and believe the very dodgy statements of the McCann's and their tapas friend's.

If they start a new investigation looking where they should have looked at the start, maybe the case would take a very different turn.

That's not likely to happen any time soon, it would be too embarrassing for them to admit they got it wrong.

crusader wrote:Funny how they rubbish the dog's findings because it doesn't fit in with their narrative and believe the very dodgy statements of the McCann's and their tapas friend's.

Indeed - they should believe the very doggy statements..

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Sorry if this has already been posted on the forum, and if this is the wrong thread.

The cadaver dog and blood hound alerts on the presence of cadaver and blood odour in appartment 5A and on items associated with the McCann's are very reliable. I trust the tested and proven detection capabilities of those specific dogs whose alerts you can observe visually factually for yourself over the verbal 3rd hand and hearsay information of humans.

The statements and timelines aren't reliable and purposely obscured and warped to throw off investigators.
It is a mistake to assume just because it involved a coverup from higher up this equals that all moving parts are automatically working in concert. That this wouldn't require a fair amount of on the fly improvisation inserting false information and leads altering timelines. Once the dissapearance was reported and the alarm was raised the clock starts ticking and the story was partially out of the conspirators hands and in the public domain from that moment on.

The biggest question is why the coverup? Considering the parents medical backgrounds, to avoid thorough toxicology and or physiological investigation and the consequences of that seems to be a reasonable assumption. Why so many people would willingly assist in the coverup is likely a mix of complicity, financial interests and other personal political agendas.

For example the McCanns visit the pope. The Vatican sees this as a perfect Public Relations opportunity to publicly seem to be supporting the victimized parents of a missing child to pad their own piousness. Now they've made the pope himself complicit in their charade and lies and upped the stakes. Afterwards it turns out the McCanns are tainted and that the pope praised and shook the hands of potential killers/neglectful parents and staked his reputation on that. This process draws in a bunch of unwilling ignorant accomplices and muddies the waters big time.

This makes many people tainted and complicit merely by touching this case out of misguided self serving interests that may have nothing to do with the case itself. Many important public peoples reputations are staked on the reliability of the McCanns and risk getting damaged by it for merely letting themselves get used for towing the McCann line. You will also see this on the lower levels of people involved in the investigation (journalists, public and private investigators) anyone who got baited into towing the line for the McCanns and promoting their lies has to stick to their guns and tell themselves now they where right or lose their self respect for being fooled/bribed into complicity in the coverup (of crimes against children). They have to tell themselves until the day they die that they did the right thing to sleep better at night or face they where terribly wrong for the rest of their lives.

Nox0123 wrote
The biggest question is why the coverup?


The scenario is, Madeleine had an accident in the apartment and died.


In my opinion they had two options
1 Take her to hospital.
2 dispose of her.


What would the consequences be of these actions.
1 The McCann's would be guilty of leaving their very young children unattended for many hours, drugged or otherwise, and the same would possibly fall on the tapas 7 after investigation.
They could possibly be charged with abandonment and neglect, maybe jail.
The scandal would ruin them. From the start, they have alway's put themselves first.


2 If they themselves found Madeleine dead or beyond medical help,  disposed of her and faked an abduction, they would become the innocent victims of a crime, and all blame, apart from leaving the children unattended would be shifted to the abductor.


G Amaral said the scene looked staged from the start and he suspected the parents, the arrival of the dogs Keela and Eddie, were in my opinion, proof that Madeleine died in the apartment. 

I don't think it can be said with any certainty that Madeleine died in apartment 5a. the dog alerts signaled the scent of blood and death not attributable to a specific individual - I think there is a distinct possibility the death occurred elsewhere and the body taken to apartment 5a for some reason.

I've never been entirely happy about the accident/death/neglect theories.   The witness statements of the main players spell out a contrived sequence of events leading up to Kate McCann's missing person alert on the night of 3rd May 2007.

It's quite apparent, again from the primary witness statements, that the holiday went haywire on or before Tuesday 1st May 2007.  Children have accidents all the time at the familial domicile and outside, I can see no reason to enter panic mode to cover-up what could have been simply explained - even if that explanation was somewhat economical with the truth.  In short, the groups future wouldn't have been in jeopardy because one of the children had an accident, albeit fatal.

Nor do I buy the sedation theory, that could also be easily explained by the child finding and taking medicament found hidden (or not) somewhere on the premises.  It's too speculative for my liking.

Looking at all aspects individually I see good reason to suspect foul play - something that would need to be deeply hidden, never to be found.  That would certainly call for the degree of apparent lies and deceit uncovered by release of the PJ files back in the summer of 2008.

Tuesday 1st May 2007 is the key in my view.  Follow the trail .... no family photographs, not family gatherings, no group activities, no evidence of a family of five seen out and about the Ocean Club complex - opting out of the groups communal eating arrangements and other activities, apart from the nightly Tapas restaurant booking, even that's shrouded in mist.  All typical things you would expect to see a family on holiday doing together.  

I am not basing my thoughts on speculation or any wild imaginings but on the evidence - or lack of, as the case may be.

As for ever understanding the level of support and protection awarded to the McCanns and their group of friends/acquaintances, I fear we will never know   It is however known from the evidence that members of the group, including the McCanns themselves, had contacts with the British media and press and political links.  As we know from experience, folk in any profession close ranks when the going gets tough - and possibly a knee jerk reaction to a potential intercontinental disaster.

Personally I believe the band wagon was (and is) overloaded with do-gooders accompanied by dodgy-doers, all looking for a piece of the action.

Ooops, where's me manners.

nox0123

The McCann children were spent more time with 'nannies' than with their parents. That probably helped in the following obfuscation. It would come as no surprise that they weren't seen en famille very often.

As I've said on so many occasions .... why was Dianne Webster there in the first place?

The mother/mother-in-law just didn't fit in with the 30'somethings mentality, if you believe the witness statements she didn't spend much time with her family aside from acting as their skivvy, so what was her purpose - to babysit whilst they all went on a jolly every night?

At the time there was the crèche option available, the staff listening service and/or the baby sitting service - why opt to leave your children alone every night in their respective apartments when childcare services were available, even if you had to pay something - and then there was Dianne Webster on tap.

None of it makes any sense to me.  If you're going to reject the available Ocean Club services why not leave all the children in one apartment under the care of one person.  Surely a more sensible arrangement than communal apartment watching.

The excuse the McCanns made was a) the children were used to routine and b) they didn't feel comfortable leaving their children with a stranger !?!, so they opted to leave them alone in an apartment situated on the ground floor with an unlocked patio door situated up a small flight of concrete steps.

The story is made-up to facilitate stranger abduction - there can be no other explanation.

I'll wager something happened earlier in the week and the entire story and time lines were invented to conceal the truth.

Kate McCann knows the abduction happened under other circumstances .... she was there.  A Freudian slip - you don't get much closer to the truth than that!

And sometimes she wanted to "shout the truth from the rooftops."
Well there is nothing to stop you now Kate, apart from a term in jail.

Verdi wrote:I don't think it can be said with any certainty that Madeleine died in apartment 5a. the dog alerts signaled the scent of blood and death not attributable to a specific individual - I think there is a distinct possibility the death occurred elsewhere and the body taken to apartment 5a for some reason.

I've never been entirely happy about the accident/death/neglect theories.   The witness statements of the main players spell out a contrived sequence of events leading up to Kate McCann's missing person alert on the night of 3rd May 2007.

It's quite apparent, again from the primary witness statements, that the holiday went haywire on or before Tuesday 1st May 2007.  Children have accidents all the time at the familial domicile and outside, I can see no reason to enter panic mode to cover-up what could have been simply explained - even if that explanation was somewhat economical with the truth.  In short, the groups future wouldn't have been in jeopardy because one of the children had an accident, albeit fatal.

Nor do I buy the sedation theory, that could also be easily explained by the child finding and taking medicament found hidden (or not) somewhere on the premises.  It's too speculative for my liking.

Looking at all aspects individually I see good reason to suspect foul play - something that would need to be deeply hidden, never to be found.  That would certainly call for the degree of apparent lies and deceit uncovered by release of the PJ files back in the summer of 2008.

Tuesday 1st May 2007 is the key in my view.  Follow the trail .... no family photographs, not family gatherings, no group activities, no evidence of a family of five seen out and about the Ocean Club complex - opting out of the groups communal eating arrangements and other activities, apart from the nightly Tapas restaurant booking, even that's shrouded in mist.  All typical things you would expect to see a family on holiday doing together.  

I am not basing my thoughts on speculation or any wild imaginings but on the evidence - or lack of, as the case may be.

As for ever understanding the level of support and protection awarded to the McCanns and their group of friends/acquaintances, I fear we will never know   It is however known from the evidence that members of the group, including the McCanns themselves, had contacts with the British media and press and political links.  As we know from experience, folk in any profession close ranks when the going gets tough - and possibly a knee jerk reaction to a potential intercontinental disaster.

Personally I believe the band wagon was (and is) overloaded with do-gooders accompanied by dodgy-doers, all looking for a piece of the action.

The sedation theory takes less speculation, foul play/murder takes much more speculation. It can't be easily explained if they all sedated their kids to have a good time and they could lose custody over the other kids. Then there's the possibility of signs of prior forms of abuse. It doesn't seem preplanned and wasn't staged well. Their connections, soliciting donations throwing a lot of money at it and gaining celebrities favors under false pretenses was what saved them for getting the average plebian treatment. 

Actually it takes a lot more speculation to go by the thesis that it was preplanned far in advance since the whole abduction story was shoddy and full of holes and contradictions. That tells you pretty clearly they probably didn't have a lot of time to prepare and mesh their stories or think things through very well. Most help from third parties seemed to come afterwards.

It is very likely she died in apartment 5A and the specialized cadaver and blood dogs prove that with a high accuracy, likely around the couch area. Also that the body decomposed in appartment 5A and was stored in a cupboard there for a period of time. The detection dog readings are very reliable and they have a proven track record and aren't your average neighbours pooch. That's the strongest circumstantial  evidence and indication of a death having occured to begin with. 

The specialized detection dogs Eddie and Keela readings are key and what broke the case wide open. They tell you with a high degree of certainty she died in appartment 5A. Her body was stored there for some time hours at least I believe, and her body was moved from the couch area to the cupboard in the parents bedroom to the reading outside in stages it seems. The parents moved their beds away from the cupboard and left a large open space there maybe because a decomposing body was there for sometime and they had to sleep next to it. That's why maybe one of the parents slept in the other bed in the other room. Their timeline is off and something had to have occurred much earlier. They obviously had time to clean and rearanged things but the dogs still detected it. The cadaver dog Eddie's reaction to 5A being the primary source of the cadaver odour was as powerful as when the interviewer put it to Gerry about the dogs alerts in 5A.

Since 30 april they already changed their routines and stopped walking to the restaurant for breakfast and had breakfast in 5a from that day forward from what I remember. The lack of photographs is a problem and may have been deleted if they where like those inappropriate make up photos. I don't believe the McCanns timeline and think she died earlier and am fairly certain they distorted the timeline and waited sometime before sounding the alarm to give themselves a head start. But they did not seem to have a lot of preparation time to match their stories and think about obvious contradictions and mesh their staged abduction theory such as the window only opening from the inside.

The McCann's proposing the thesis she was abducted by pedophiles from the start implies that they maybe tried to create an alibi for if her body was retrieved for some unforseen reason and showing signs of abuse. This would be the most obvious reasons for medical specialists to cover up an accidental death and Kate McCann making references to torn genitalia in her book substantiates that thesis. The use of sedatives and Gaspar statements about David Payne also give further clues why the others would lie for the McCanns. 

The most obvious thesis is that there was an unforseen accidental death in 5A and that sedatives and/or signs of abuse would be discovered and multiple people risked losing custody and/or their freedom and reputations including the unknowing celebrities who got duped into towing the McCann line later. It's a proper clusterfuck. Anyways those are some observations.

I'm not reading you, I haven't said Madeleine's fate was pre-planned if that's what you imply.

The dog alerts don't indicate anything other than the odour of blood and death - not who where or when.

You are clearly not new to fora, in particular CMOMM, so you will know instinctively how to navigate the forum in order to acquaint yourself with past discussion on any subject matter but should you require any assistance feel free to ask.

We are at your disposal.

That aside, you are on the right track