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Original Source:
Express 06 May 2007 [Now removed from internet] |
Sunday May
6,2007
By Matt Drake and David Paul |
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KIDNAPPED toddler Madeleine McCann is in
the clutches of a paedophile, Portuguese
police said last night.
Detectives are convinced the
three-year-old is still alive and they
believe she is being held in a lair no
more than three miles from the luxury
holiday apartment where she was snatched
from her bed.
A prime suspect has been identified,
thanks to more than 30 witnesses
contacting police with his description
and a desperate hunt to find him was
under way yesterday. But detectives were
last night refusing to release copies of
a sketch of Madeleine’s kidnapper in
case he panics for fear of being caught
and kills her.
Dozens of tourists in Praia da Luz in
the western Algarve abandoned their
holidays yesterday to join police search
teams and local residents looking for
golden-haired Madeleine.
And volunteers from more than an hour’s
drive away from the seaside village of
Praia da Luz have been turning up at the
Mark Warner resort in the village
offering their services.
I cannot deny we are looking for a
paedophile
Director of judicial police, Guilhermino
Encarnacao
Search co-ordinator Dave Shelton, 38,
from Manchester, who has lived in the
village for more than 16 years running
an air conditioning company, said: “I
came here first on Friday morning, I
speak a little Portuguese and was
helping police knock on the doors of all
the apartments. Then people just started
coming out of the woodwork saying,
‘We’ve heard, what can we do to help’.”
But despite the news of a prime suspect
there was mounting criticism of the
Portuguese police’s failure to respond
quicker and more decisively when the
youngster was first found to be missing
at 10pm on Thursday.
Friends and relatives of the McCanns
alleged yesterday that the search was
only upgraded to a major investigation
after the intervention of John Buck,
Britain’s ambassador in Portugal.
Despite being convinced – for reasons
they have refused to make public – that
Madeleine is still in the Algarve,
Interpol have been alerted about her
disappearance and checks were being made
at every Portuguese port and airport.
At a chaotic press conference held on
the steps of a police station in
Portimao yesterday, Guilhermino
Encarnacao, director of the judicial
police in the Faro region of Portugal,
confirmed that the search is centred on
an area no further than three miles from
the swish Mark Warner Ocean Club resort
where the McCanns had hired a
ground-floor holiday flat for £1,600 a
week.
“There is a prime suspect,” said Mr
Encarnacao. “There is a portrait sketch
of the suspect but I am not going to
release it because it may put the little
girl’s life in danger.”
When asked if he thought Madeleine was
still alive he added: “Yes, I believe
she is still alive. However, in Portugal
such kidnappings are not only just for
money, they can be for sexual abuse. I
cannot deny we are looking for a
paedophile.”
Forensic experts have sealed off the
apartment, in a three-storey block,
where Madeleine disappeared. Her parents
had been dining at a Tapas bar several
hundred metres away but had checked on
Madeleine and their other children,
two-year-old twins Sean and Amelie,
every 30 minutes.
It was when Kate McCann returned to the
flat that she found the shutters of the
front window had been jemmied open and
the door left wide open. Madeleine was
taken while her brother and sister slept
either side of her.
At one point yesterday morning sniffer
dogs were taken into the apartment where
Madeleine had been sleeping to pick up
her scent before heading off around the
Ocean Club complex and into the nearby
village.
Yesterday the McCanns faced the grim
task of returning to the apartment to
take away Madeleine’s toys and clothing.
The family have moved to another flat a
few yards away while the increasingly
desperate search continues.
Doctors Gerry and Kate McCann, both 38,
from Rothley, Leicestershire, looked
shattered as they collected buckets and
spades, suitcases and other items from
their holiday home.
Meanwhile, Gerry’s sister Philomena
slammed Portuguese police for not doing
enough to find Madeleine’s faster.
Speaking from her home in Glasgow she
said Gerry was furious with the way the
inquiry was being handled. “My brother
is at his wits’ end. They’ve just played
it down from the minute he first
approached them.
“I mean, you can hear his voice
breaking. His wife, she can barely stand
up. She can’t sleep, she can’t eat.
“They spent seven hours in the police
station yesterday. What for? It took
three hours just to get a statement from
Kate, and Kate is an extremely
articulate young woman. What’s going
on?”
The McCanns could have dropped all their
three children off at a drop-in creche
provided by the Mark Warner holiday firm
at the Ocean Club while they dined out
last Thursday, or paid for one of the
firm’s staff to babysit for them at the
apartment, but chose not to use either
option.
That has sparked a wave of criticism of
the couple, but yesterday their friends
and family hit back.
Madeleine’s uncle, retired head teacher
Bryan Kennedy said: “Kate and Gerry are
highly responsible parents, very much
devoted to the family idea.”
He added: “We understand that it is a
pleasant resort which is supposed to be
safe for families – just the type of
place where you can put your children to
bed and keep popping back to make sure
they were safe.”
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