Madeleine McCann: Have her parents been ‘cleared’ of any involvement in her disappearance’?
by Felicity Hathaway
- August 2013
The purpose of this short article, intended
mainly to those who are maybe ‘newcomers’ to the details surrounding Madeleine
McCann’s reported disappearance, is to answer the question: Have Gerry &
Kate McCann been ‘cleared’ - formally or
otherwise - of any involvement in the disappearance, from the Portuguese
holiday resort of Praia da Luz, of their daughter?
If, for example, you consult Wikipedia’s
article on Madeleine McCann, it states this: “In July 2008, the McCanns were
cleared by the Portuguese Attorney-General”. Is this really true?
Background
On Thursday 3 May 2007, Kate McCann reported
Madeleine as missing. She was quite clear from the outset that she ‘knew’
Madeleine had been abducted. Thus
began the world’s biggest-ever search for a child claimed to be missing.
Hundreds of Portuguese police searched for Madeleine and then formally
investigated her disappearance. There were thousands of reported ‘sightings’ of
Madeleine in dozens of countries; all false.
Things changed in August 2007. Some of
Britain’s top police officers, based at the National Police Intelligence
Agency, including Britain’s top criminal profiler, Lee Rainbow, advised
Portuguese detectives that they should investigate the possible involvement of
the McCanns in Madeleine’s disappearance. The Portuguese police called in
internationally-renowned British police dog handler Martin Grime to examine
locations in Praia da Luz, including the McCanns’ apartment and their hired car.
His two dogs - a cadaver dog and a bloodhound
- found the smell of a human corpse in nine separate locations connected to the
McCanns, but nowhere else. These included three locations in their apartment,
two in their hired car, and two on Kate McCann’s clothes. Blood and body fluids
which could have been from Madeleine McCann were found in some of the same
locations (see below).
On 7 September 2007, the investigation
co-ordinator, Dr Gonçalo Amaral, pulled the McCanns in for questioning, and
made them arguidos, that is, formal
suspects - on suspicion of hiding Madeleine’s body. While Gerry McCann answered
police questions, Kate refused to answer any, replying ‘no comment’. She had
every legal right to do so, but it was strange behaviour for someone allegedly
looking for her missing daughter.
The McCanns described the suspicions against
them as ‘ludicrous’ and ‘unhelpful’. Gerry McCann later went on to claim that
police sniffer dogs were ‘notoriously unreliable’ - despite their increasing
use by police forces across the world, and their increasing reliability and
precision in detecting odours of a variety of materials, from bodies to drugs,
explosives and even certain medical conditions.
On 2 October 2007, Dr Amaral was removed from
the investigation into Madeleine’s disappearance. The Portuguese judicial
authorities then appointed a new investigation co-ordinator. He reported to the
District Attorney (not the Attorney-General as stated on Wikipedia) for that
region of Portugal, Jose de Magalhaes e Menezes. He issued a report on the
investigation, signed off by Deputy Attorney-General Joao Melchior Gomes, which
was made public in July 2008. The McCanns rely on this report for their claim
that they were ‘cleared’. So let’s now examine in more detail the contents of
his ruling.
The District Attorney’s ruling of July 2008
in the Madeleine McCann case
The quotation that the McCanns rely on is
this, found on page 4,649 of the file of police documents in the case released
to the public later that year:
“I order…the filing of the papers concerning
the suspects Gerald Patrick McCann and Kate Marie Healy [the surname then used
by Dr Kate McCann], as there is no evidence that they committed any crime
defined by Article 277.1 of the Code of Criminal Procedure”.
But let us now look at some of the other
statements in the Attorney-General’s report.
The contents of the District Attorney’s
report
The District Attorney nowhere says the
McCanns have been ‘cleared’.
In fact, on page 4648, he declares: “…it must
be clearly understood that this is not equivalent to final and irreversible closure of the enquiry”.
On page 4647 of the same report, we also read
these words:
“No evidence was obtained which would enable
the average person…to arrive at a clear and honest conclusion as to how the
child was taken from the apartment (dead or alive, and if dead whether
by negligent or wilful manslaughter)”. On the same page, the District
Attorney adds: “We do not have any grounds whatsoever for saying, with the necessary
degree of certainty, exactly what crime(s) may have been committed against
Madeleine McCann”.
The District Attorney, earlier in his report
(page 4605), summarises the lack of evidence that Madeleine was abducted as
follows: The possibility of abduction was exhaustively investigated. No
ransom was ever requested, nor were there any sufficiently consistent clues
found to support this theory”.
Later in his report he notes: (page 4643,
also pages 4597-8) “Whilst it is an undeniable fact that Madeleine disappeared
from Apartment 5A in the Ocean Club, the manner and circumstances in which it
happened are unclear, despite the huge number of investigations, and the
potential range of crimes suggested. The potential range of crimes suggested
throughout the enquiry - including abduction for sexual purposes or
other uses and accidental death and hiding of the body - still stands”.
Contradictions
The District Attorney’s report is clearly
unhappy with the many contradictions as between the different witness
statements of the McCanns and their friends. On page 4597 of his report, for
example he says:
“All members of the group including the
McCanns were questioned exhaustively several times in order to compile as many
facts as possible to help get at the truth. The witnesses’ statements revealed
important details which were not entirely understood and coherent”. Later (page
4636), he emphasised this point again: “There were certain points in the
statements and witnesses which, apparently at least, were contradictory or
lacked physical support”. He went on to list five important contradictions,
which can be summarised as follows:
Relating to the claim by the McCanns’ friend
Jane Tanner that she had walked up a lane between the Ocean Club and the
apartment at around 9.15pm on the night Madeleine was reported missing
Relating to how the shutters and window of the children’s bedroom were found open with no sign of a break-in
Relating to doubts about how many times the McCanns and their friends checked on their children that night
Relating to
multiple contradictions between the evidence of Kate McCann and the
McCanns’ friend David Payne about an alleged meeting between them at
around 6,30pm on the evening Madeleine was reported missing
Relating
to the claims by Jane Tanner that she really saw someone walking with a
child near the McCanns;’ apartment at around 9.15pm that evening.
The refusal of the McCanns and all their
friends to take part in a reconstruction of the events of 3 May 2007
In order to get at the truth about what
really happened on the day Madeleine was reported missing, the Portuguese police
wanted to bring the McCanns and their friends back to Portugal for a
reconstruction. They all refused to attend. The District Attorney says (page
4597):
“Despite every effort by the Judiciary Police
and the Public Prosecutor’s Office, this was not possible”.
Almost in despair, towards the end of his
report, he writes (page 4638):
“Although the Portuguese authorities did
everything to facilitate their journey to Portugal, for reasons unknown, and
after clarifying the many questions they raised about the need for the journey,
they decided not to attend. The people most prejudiced were the McCanns
themselves, who lost the opportunity to prove what they had always protested,
their innocence. It also hindered the investigation because the above
facts remained unexplained”.
The evidence of two British cadaver dogs
Several pages of the District Attorney’s
report deal with the findings of an internationally renowned British police dog
handler, Martin Grime. He was called in on the advice of the top ‘criminal
profiler’ in the National Police Intelligence Agency, Lee Rainbow, and another
senior British police officer, Mark Harrison. He took with him to Portugal two
so-called ‘cadaver dogs’, one, Eddie, trained to alert only to the scent of a
human corpse, and Keela, trained to alert to blood. On pages 4628-9 of his
report, the District Attorney states that:
“The results of the search with these dogs,
filmed and on file, were as follows:
Eddie ‘marked’ the following areas where he
detected the odour of a human corpse:
- Area near
wardrobe in McCanns’ bedroom in their holiday apartment
- Area near window
of the lounge of the McCanns’ apartment
- An area in the
garden below the veranda
- In a wardrobe
containing the pink soft toy ‘Cuddle Cat’ at the villa rented by the
McCanns after they left their apartment
- An item of
clothing belonging to Kate McCann
- Another item of
clothing belonging to Kate McCann
- A T-shirt of one
of the children
- An area below
the driver’s door of the Renault Scenic hired by the McCanns
- The key of the
vehicle (which police had hidden in a firefighting sandbox)
Additionally, Keela, the ‘blood’ dog, alerted
to human blood in all these places which were also ‘marked’ by Eddie:
- In the same
place in the lounge in the apartment
- Below the tiles
in the lounge, after the tiles had been taken up
- The bottom of
the left curtain below the window in the lounge
- The bottom
right-hand side of the boot of the Renault Scenic
- The storage pocket
in the driver’s door, which contained the driver’s key
- The driver’s key
(again, when it was hidden in a firefighting sandbox)”
The District Attorney added these three
significant comments:
a)
“The work of these dogs can be appreciated
much better on film” (page 4629)
b)
“These [particular] dogs have been used successfully
many times by Scotland Yard and the FBI” (page 4630), and
c)
“Scientist Dr John Lowe, from the British
Forensic Science Service, Birmingham, says that the [police] normally accept the
word of the handler” (page 4630).
[ NOTE: There are many YouTube videos of the
cadaver dogs alerting to the odours of a human corpse and blood in the McCanns’
holiday apartment, on some of their clothes, and in their hired car. Here are
some links:
Towards the end of his report, the District
Attorney refers again to the alerts of the two dogs, and to the other evidence
in the case, and writes this (page 4635):
“The fact that the parents were the last
people known to have been with Madeleine, alive and in a known place,
particularly with the possibility of a body having been in the apartment and in
the vehicle used by the parents…meant they had to be placed under suspicion.
The parents had no plausible explanation for these facts. Faced with the
evidence produced by the dogs and the laboratories, they had to be named as
suspects…”
It should be clear from these many quotations
from the District Attorney’s report - the very report that the McCanns rely on
to claim that they have been ‘cleared’ - that the report does not clear them. On the contrary, as can be
seen, even in this District Attorney’s final report, there remain many grounds
for suspecting the McCanns of active involvement in the disappearance of their
daughter. The original investigation co-ordinator, Dr Amaral, commented: "This is not a declaration of innocence".
An article in the Portuguese newspaper in July 2008 pointed out that: “The case will remain classed by the appointed prosecutor, Magalhães e Menezes, as one of possible homicide and hiding a body. Although the McCanns will no longer be formal ‘suspects’, archiving the case does not remove the Police’s suspicions against the couple”.
What other indications are there that we
should not treat the McCanns as ‘cleared’?
In this short article, we don’t have the
space to deal with the actual evidence that suggests that the McCanns were
involved in their daughter’s disappearance. All we will do is simply point to
the simplest ways for people to explore this issue further. Here are a few
suggestions for you to consider:
- Read the
book on the case, ‘The Truth of the Lie’, by the original co-ordinator of
the investigation to Madeleine’s disappearance, Dr Goncalo Amaral.
Published in Portuguese in 2008, it gives a first-hand account of his
investigation and the evidence he found. Translated and published in nine
European languages already, an English translation may be read online
here:
- Watch the
documentary for Portuguese TV made by Dr Amaral about the Madeleine McCann
case. Seen by millions already, it summarises the evidence in his book.
Watch it on YouTube, complete with English subtitles, here:
It’s in 6
parts of 10 minutes each.
- Read
the
hard-hitting interim report of Inspector Tavares de Almeida, filed on 10
September 2007, three days after the McCanns were made suspects. It
explains in clear terms all the evidence that led to them being pulled in
for questioning and made formal suspects. You can read it online (and
print off a copy) here:
- Research the
case using the main internet ‘library’ and archive on the case, at:
- Discuss
the
case online at the world’s main internet information and chat forum on the
case: ‘The Complete Mystery of Madeleine McCann’, at:
There’s also a useful library of
research articles there.
There’s
lots more on the internet. The above are just ‘tasters’ to get you started.
What
others have said on whether or not the McCanns have been ‘cleared’
Many current and former police officers, other experts and writers continue to cast serious doubt on the McCanns’ version of events. Here are just a few quotations from them:
Moite Flores, former police inspector and now political commentator in Portugal: “The only thing proven was that there was no abduction. I have no doubt that the child died”
Lee Rainbow, Britain’s top criminal profiler: “Madeleine's father
was the last one to see her alive. The family is a lead that should be
followed. Contradictions in Gerald McCann's statements might lead us to suspect
a homicide”.
Assistant Chief Constable of Leicestershire
Police
(2007): “While
both or one of [the McCanns] may be innocent, there is no clear evidence that
eliminates them from involvement in Madeleine's disappearance”.
Former top British detective, John Stalker: “My gut instinct is that some big secret is probably being covered up”.
Ricardo Paiva, one of the chief detectives on the original investigation, told a Lisbon
court in January 2010: “I share Gonçalo Amaral’s statement in the
book. Maddie died, probably in a tragic accident, and all indications point
towards the parents hiding the body”.
Director
of the Portuguese National Counter-Terrorism Unit, Luís Neves: “Hiding a body and accidental death are
possibilities”.
by Felicity Hathaway, August 2013
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