At up to 40,000 pages, the Portuguese police's Madeleine McCann case files raise more questions than they answer, writes STEPHEN McGINTY
THE worn stone of the court house at Portimao glowed in the late afternoon sunshine. Since before noon, journalists and television camera crews had been waiting outside for access to the locked files on the disappearance of Madeleine McCann.
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h individual had to fill out a form stating their interest in the case and to hand over a blank DVD to which the files, the size of which has been estimated at between 10,000 to 40,000 pages, were copied. On Monday at 4:10pm, European time, a female court official carried a cardboard box down the steps and called out the number of each media organisation.
After 15 months in which all information connected with the abduction of the three-year-old was restricted under Portuguese law, except for partisan leaks designed to blacken the names of her parents, Gerry and Kate McCann, the press and the public were drowning in witness statements, photographs, e-fits and reported sightings.
As the press hurried off to translate key files into English, and lawyers and detectives for the McCann family began focusing on tangible leads, it would quickly become apparent that, as the Portuguese authorities decided on 21 July, when the case was closed, the files contained everything and nothing.
For the armchair obsessives who view the abduction of the little girl from the bedroom of her parent's holiday apartment in the resort of Praia da Luz as the 21st century's equivalent of the assassination of JFK in 1963 or the kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby in 1932, there were the poignant pictures of the child's bedroom and personal details about the couple's relationship.
A hand-drawn sketch by Kate McCann showed that when the couple left their three children to dine at a nearby tapas restaurant with seven friends, they did not sit beside each other.
In a police interview, Kate explained that the previous night she had been angry at her husband for ignoring her during dinner and had decided to sleep in the room next door, beside the children. Gerry appeared to be unaware of the tiff, saying he assumed she had gone to the next-door bedroom because of his snoring.
Then there was Kate McCann's heart-breaking letter to Chief Inspector Paolo Rebelo, the man leading the investigation, pleading for information: "Madeleine is the most precious thing in our life." It went unanswered.
The principle emotion the couple have had since examining the case files is anger at a botched job. For the first time they saw the e-fit drawings never publicised of a young white man with dark, deep-set eyes, that were put together from sightings by Derek Flack, a holidaymaker and Lance Purser, a British expat. Mr Flack, 64, told police he had seen a man acting suspiciously around the McCanns' apartment just before Madeleine went missing. Mr Purser, 45, said he had seen a similar man in the weeks before the disappearance. They learned that four days before both were named as "arguidos" – official suspects – the Forensic Science Service in Birmingham had told the police that suspected blood samples sent to them might not be blood and could not be directly linked to Madeleine. However the Portuguese police used the samples to name the McCanns as arguidos then leaked the false line that the couple may have used the car, which was rented 25 days after her disappearance, to move their daughter's body. The police note said: "Confronted with the fact that Madeleine's DNA was gathered from behind the sofa and from the boot of the vehicle, and analysed by a British laboratory, he said he could not explain why this would be."
While others may question a police decision to release all their files, the McCann family believe it is to be welcomed. John McCann, Gerry's brother yesterday told The Scotsman from his Glasgow home: "We are continuing in a very co-ordinated way the search for Madeleine and it's been very useful to see the police case files as it allows us to see what has and what has not been done.
"The e-fits and potential sightings were hugely frustrating to learn about. But there is a strange irony in the fact that we could not get any information for so long, and now we are flooded with information, especially as the police were persistent and selective with their leaks."
THE line of inquiry that offered hope, albeit of a horrendous sort, was that the child had been abducted to order by a paedophile gang. An intelligence officer in the Metropolitan Police Vice Squad heard that a Belgian child abduction ring had placed an order for a "young girl". According to the report, Madeleine McCann was spotted on holiday by someone connected with the gang, who took her picture. It was sent to Belgium, where the paedophiles agreed she should be abducted – and three days later she was gone.
The e-mail was sent from the Met on 4 March to counterparts in the Leicestershire force and in Portugal. DC John Hughes from Leicestershire forwarded the e-mail to the Policia Judiciaria at Portimao on 21 April, the next day it was sent to Ricardo Paiva, one of the three Portuguese police officers leading the investigation.
On 28 April the Portuguese police faxed the information to Interpol in Lisbon and asked them to investigate it as a matter of urgency. Interpol replied on 23 May, passing all the information gathered from its bureaux in London, Brussels, Germany and Finland.
On 27 May, Interpol sent an urgent fax to Portuguese police asking for more information, but an undated return fax told them they had all the information that there was.
Belgium is less than 100 miles from Amsterdam where there have been two possible sightings of Maddie. Shop assistant Anna Stam, 41, spoke to a little girl called "Maddy" who said she had been taken from her mother while on holiday in May last year. Hannie Wiechmann, 71, called police after seeing a young child she believed to be the missing girl in the second week of May last year. Police have also investigated a sighting of a girl who looked like the missing child at a service station near the town of Tongeren on Dutch border last August.
EARLIER this week the Metropolitan Police said the tip-off, recorded by an intelligence officer working for Scotland Yard's CO14 clubs and vice unit, was second or even third-hand and impossible to corroborate in the UK or abroad.
Yet last night a former senior detective said the material was "a gold mine" for the detectives hired by the family.
He explained: "The first thing I would be doing is looking for a policy file or master index. In British investigations these files detail all the lines of inquires and the reasons why some have fallen off or been abandoned.
"I would also examine all the forensic evidence and reports. Then you would do a detailed structured review. The benefit is that they can now take a cool, detached look.
"The case is very cold. The golden period is the first 12-24 hours. Yet the files are an absolute gold mine of possibilities."
Perhaps the most poignant and honest words in the vast case files were written by Joao Gomes and Jose Magalhaes e Meneses, the prosecuting lawyers who reviewed the police files. They said: "No element of proof whatsoever was found which allows us to form any lucid, sensible, serious and honest conclusion about the circumstances (of Madeleine's disappearance]."
THE EXPERT'S INSIGHT
'Nobody's done anything to find her'
Danny Collins, journalist and author of Vanished I DON'T think the release of the files enhances the case; it's yet another hindrance.
As we've seen on TV and read in the newspapers over the past few days, each day brings another direction, another sighting. First we've had a very questionable sighting in Amsterdam and the next day Madeleine is in the hands of a Belgian paedophile ring after a "kidnap to order" operation.
This won't give the McCanns any viable leads, it will just send the detectives of Método 3 chasing around to follow year-old sightings to justify their huge monthly fee.
The most interesting revelation in the case files is that nobody appears to have done anything to find her.
If a parent left a three-year-old unattended in an apartment with access to the street and returned one and a half hours later to find the child missing, what's the first logical thought that should enter their mind? That the child has wandered off.
Madeleine was tracked by a Republican Guard dog to 400 metres from the apartment on the night. This was largely unreported because it fitted neither the McCanns' insistence on abduction nor the police conviction that the child was dead.
Madeleine McCann will not be found until someone starts seriously looking for her.
• Vanished: The Truth About the Disappearance of Madeleine McCann is published by John Blake, priced £7.99.
THE INSIDER'S VIEW
'The McCanns are frustrated by the delays'
Clarence Mitchell, McCanns' family spokesmanIT HAS been frustrating beyond words, and the worst thing is that all this time, Madeleine has been let down by this lack of apparent co-operation. Kate wanted to write the letter. It was her idea. She wrote it in a more emotional way than perhaps Gerry would. It was sent without much hope and there was no response for a long time. There finally was a short response acknowledging the letter. We were told it would lie on file.
A reconstruction for Crimewatch has been on the cards for a while. We have had low-key contact with Crimewatch ever since they wanted to do something with us last year. Kate and Gerry may well take part – it is certainly something we would consider.
(On the report that the child may have been abducted to order, Mr Mitchell said:] Clearly any information of that nature – Kate and Gerry would hope that the Portuguese police with Interpol have acted to the absolute best of their ability in following this up.
The private investigators, as with all the other sightings and all the other information, will be pursuing this line as an absolute priority to establish if it has been fully investigated and properly ruled out. They have some of the information already from their lawyers and investigators and they are waiting to hear what is legitimate, what is promising and what is not.
They are frustrated by the delays and the mistakes. They have learned an awful lot, and God forbid she has fallen foul of any of these types.
IN QUOTES "Intelligence suggests that a paedophile ring in Belgium made an order for a young girl three days before Madeleine McCann was taken. Somebody saw Maddie, took a photograph of her and sent it to Belgium. The purchaser agreed and Maddie was taken."
– CO14 (vice unit) report from Metropolitan Police
"Unsubstantiated information was received by CO14 relating to the disappearance of Madeleine McCann."
– A Metropolitan Police spokeswoman
"I am appealing to you as a fellow human being to work with us … Lack of communication and a void of information, as the parent of a missing child, is torture."
– Kate McCann
"She came right to me to pat the dog. Then I let her go. Stupid, but I thought, since the police are so convinced it wasn't Madeleine. I let her walk away."
– Hannie Wiechmann, 71, who said she saw Madeleine in Amsterdam
"This is not , unfortunately, a crime fit for the investigative mind of a Sherlock Holmes or an Hercule Poirot, guided by the illusion that the forces of law and justice always restore order."
– Public prosecutor's report
"So the little girl stood before me and asked in English: 'Do you know where my mummy is?' I answered that her mother was a little further back in the shop and she answered: 'She is not my mummy.'"
– Anna Stam, Amsterdam shopkeeper in her witness statement to police
"Although they left their daughter alone with her siblings in the apartment, sometimes for extended periods, they were keeping an eye on them. We must also recognise that the parents are already paying a heavy penalty for their carelessness."
– Public prosecutor's report
KEY WORDS• ARGUIDO
Arguido derives from the Latin 'arguire' or 'arguere'. The English words "argue" and "argument" have the same etymology. Under Portuguese law an Arguido (male) or arguida (female) is normally translated as a "named suspect" or "formal suspect". Arguido status gives a range of legal protections, such as the right to remain silent and the right to a lawyer during questioning.
• Metodo 3
Is the name of the detective agency, based in Barcelona, and hired by the McCann family last September to conduct their own investigation. Initially, the British security company Control Risks Group, a firm founded by former SAS men, was called on for advice. The Spanish detective agency was hired, according to Clarence Mitchell, because of Portugal's "cultural connection" with Spain.
The full article contains 2217 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
