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Original Source:
MAIL:
22 AUGUST 2007 |
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Last
updated at 10:03am on 22nd August 2007 |
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A smear campaign waged against Kate and Gerry McCann is diverting police from
the real problem of finding Madeleine, a close friend said today.
David Payne, who was dining with the McCanns the night the three-year-old
vanished, spoke publicly about the investigation today for the first time.
Mr Payne is upset that the McCanns and other close friends on holiday in Praia
da Luz in Portugal
when Maddy went missing have been dragged into the inquiry.
Today a senior police officer briefed Portuguese media that the McCanns should
not go home because the investigation is at a possibly decisive phase.
The implication - that the McCanns or their friends have some involvement in
her disappearance 111 days ago - is being seen as yet another smear.
Police have briefed reporters that Madeleine died in the apartment - was either
murdered or killed accidentally - and have increasingly come to discount the
theory that she was abducted.
One of the other friends on the trip, Russell O'Brien, a consultant from Exeter, has been forced
to deny his involvement in Madeleine's disappearance after intense media
speculation. He is now considering suing certain publications.
Mr Payne, a senior research fellow in cardiovascular sciences at Leicester University, was on holiday with his
doctor wife Fiona, 34, their two children and Mrs Payne's mother, Dianne
Webster, when Madeleine went missing.
He said today: "We don't want to be caught up in a media showdown. We just
want Madeleine to come back and it is just saddening that other events are
taking over. It is awful to see what is being written. All these smears and
rumours are overshadowing the important thing which is to get Madeleine
back."
Mr Payne said the friends remained in "regular contact".
His intervention came as the police inquiry appeared again to have stalled. The
only official suspect, British-born Robert Murat, is expected to be formally
cleared.
Sources have suggested Portuguese detectives have fallen out with British
police over the delivery of potentially vital forensic results from the Birmingham lab.
According to reports, while one test for blood found in the McCanns' apartment
is definitely from a man, another sample has still to be formally identified.
If that blood sample turned out to come from Madeleine that would add weight to
the theory that she died in the room.
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