Throughout four months of intense investigation, frenzied media attention and swirling innuendo, Kate and Gerry McCann have remained resolute about three things: their daughter Madeleine was kidnapped, she could still be alive, and to suggest that they had any involvement is utterly absurd.
On Friday, however, the months of muttered doubts and increasingly open accusations against the couple came to a climax. Kate McCann, after 16 hours of intensive questioning over two days, was named by police as an arguida — official suspect — in the presumed death of their daughter, who was nine days short of her fourth birthday when she vanished.
The police line of investigation, the McCanns’ spokesperson, Justine McGuinness, confirmed, was that rather than being snatched from their apartment on May 3 while her parents dined in a nearby tapas restaurant, Madeleine had allegedly died in the family’s apartment at some point earlier that evening. She said that 22 questions had been put to Mrs McCann, concerning ”a series of ridiculous allegations”, relating to alleged DNA evidence found on her clothes and a trace of blood allegedly discovered in the car that the couple hired 25 days after Madeleine vanished. The ”clear suggestion”, she said, was that McCann had been responsible for her daughter’s death.
Asked whether the line of questioning centred on the allegation that McCann, a GP, had been the primary agent, with her husband, a cardiac surgeon, as a secondary figure, McGuinness confirmed that this was the case. ”There’s a fear that perhaps she might be arrested for a crime that we have no idea was committed by anybody and that she absolutely did not commit,” she said, adding that McCann was ”absolutely horrified” at the turn of the investigation.
She was not arrested or charged on Friday, however, and left the police station in Portimao, near the resort of Praia da Luz where her daughter disappeared, at around 3.30pm. Mr McCann was also interviewed on Friday.
The implication of Friday’s developments is that the police are investigating whether Madeleine’s body could have been recovered and moved weeks after her disappearance, while the media were scrutinising the couple’s every move.
Sedatives
The McCanns continue to vehemently deny any suggestion that they were involved in Madeleine’s disappearance. They launched a legal action last month against a Portuguese magazine that reported that police believed Madeleine might have died from an accidental overdose of sedatives. Their spokesperson said that the couple ”have not, would not, and would never conceive of using sedatives on their children”.
Writing in his online blog before he too attended the police station, Mr McCann said on Friday: ”The suggestion that Kate is involved in Madeleine’s disappearance is ludicrous. Anyone who knows anything about May 3 knows that Kate is completely innocent. We will fight this all the way and we will not stop looking for Madeleine.”
The police investigation, which appeared to be floundering in the weeks after Madeleine’s disappearance, has gained new impetus since key sites were re-examined early last month by a team of British officers and two police dogs, one trained to find traces of blood, the other to find dead bodies. Both indicated a positive response in the apartment in which the family had been staying, the BBC reported on Friday night. Minute samples of blood discovered were sent to the forensic science service in Birmingham.
The McCanns’ account of events surrounding their daughter’s disappearance has remained consistent: on May 3, the night before they were due to return to the United Kingdom after a week’s holiday, they left Madeleine and her two-year-old twin siblings asleep in their holiday apartment and met seven friends with whom they had been holidaying for a final dinner.
Madeleine attended a creche that afternoon at the Ocean Club resort where they were staying, and was collected at 6pm; at 8.30pm the couple joined their friends at dinner, but they have insisted the children were looked in on at approximately half-hourly intervals. At 10pm, Kate McCann discovered her daughter had gone.
Local media have published detailed accounts of the evening, apparently based on the leaked witness statements of the rest of the party. According to a report in the newspaper Sol, the friends told police that Mr McCann checked in on the children at around 9.05pm, and another member of the party, Matthew Oldfield, did the same half an hour later.
What is unclear is whether the parents physically looked in on the children every time or merely listened at the window to see if they were crying. It was while Mr McCann was away from the table, having run into an acquaintance outside his apartment, that Jane Tanner, another friend, saw a man walking in the direction away from the McCann apartment carrying a child over his shoulder wearing pink pyjamas, as was Madeleine.
On Friday the seven friends issued a statement saying they were ”totally appalled at any suggestion that Kate had anything to do with Madeleine’s disappearance”. The statement added: ”She is innocent. We know this because we are her friends, we were with her on the night, and we witnessed first hand the unimaginable grief Kate and Gerry suffered and continue to suffer.”
It has been reported for some weeks that the investigators had concerns about supposed discrepancies between the friends’ accounts, which appear mostly to relate to minor inconsistencies in their timings of the comings and goings from the dinner table.
Gerry McCann’s brother John said on Friday: ”Everybody who knows Gerry and Kate knows that to implicate them is ridiculous. It doesn’t make sense if you look at the timelines on the night. They were there with other people, they had children to put to bed — it’s not feasible.”
It would seem, however, that the police focus has turned increasingly to the period between 6pm and 8.30pm, when the couple were alone with their children.
The implication, which the McCanns and their supporters say is ludicrous, is that Madeleine’s body would have been concealed somewhere and lain undetected throughout the fingertip search of the town and its surrounding area in the days following her disappearance, before being moved some weeks later.
One of Britain’s leading forensic pathologists raised questions about the suggestion that the body could have been stored for so long.
Derrick Pounder, professor of forensic medicine at the University of Dundee, said: ”A body is not in very good condition 25 days after death, especially in a Portuguese climate. The decomposition smell would be obnoxious, lingering and very difficult to get rid of.”
Trails that went cold
Robert Murat was questioned and declared an arguido 11 days after Madeleine vanished.
On May 25 police released a description of a man seen carrying a child on the night Madeleine disappeared.
There were a string of supposed sightings at service stations and in countries including Malta and Spain. The most promising sighting seemed to come from Belgium, where a child therapist said she was ”100% sure” she saw Madeleine at a restaurant in Tongeren. But tests on a bottle the girl drunk from were inconclusive.
Police searched scrubland 14km from Praia da Luz after a letter sent to a Dutch newspaper claimed Madeleine’s body was buried there. – Guardian Unlimited Â