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Disappeared and Abducted Children and Young Adults => Madeleine McCann (3) disappeared from her parent's holiday apartment at Ocean Club, Praia da Luz, Portugal on 3 May 2007. No trace of her has ever been found. => Suspects => Topic started by: Wonderfulspam on January 31, 2014, 06:53:53 PM
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8th May 2011
Sunday Express
by James Murray
Maddie link to German child killer
THIS is the man who has confessed to one child murder and is now facing questioning over the disappearance of Madeleine McCann.
The 40-year-old German youth worker, who we can name only as Martin N, is being questioned over at least three child murders and 40 suspected attacks on children across Europe.
He bears a striking resemblance to the photofit of a man seen holding a child in his arms just minutes after Madeleine was snatched from Praia da Luz.
He targeted children on holiday, entering their tents, apartments or villas, armed with a knife or gun and wearing a black balaclava and clothing. He also threatened to kidnap a child unless the parents paid a ransom.
Private detectives working for Kate and Gerry McCann will now try to discover if he was in Portugal when Madeleine vanished from the family’s apartment at the Algarve resort on May 3, 2007.
McCann spokesman Clarence Mitchell said: “Our private investigators became aware of this man a month ago and they will be liaising with the German investigators. The investigation is at an early stage.”
In Germany he can be referred to only as Martin N because of its laws on naming suspects
German detectives will shortly question the child killer over the disappearance of six-year-old blond German boy Renee Hasse, snatched from the beautiful Amoreira beach near Aljezur on the Algarve in June 1996. The beach is some half an hour’s drive from Luz.
They believe Martin N was in Portugal that summer and are checking his passport and bank accounts to build up a complete picture of his movements over the past 20 years across Europe and South America.
They are trying to establish if the Hamburg-based youth worker, who is said to have used his good communication skills with children to lure his victims, was acting alone or was part of a ring of paedophiles.
He was arrested last month after a major police operation. In Germany he can be referred to only as Martin N because of its laws on naming suspects.
Officers say he has confessed to the murder of nine-year-old Dennis Klein, who vanished during a school field trip at the Lower Saxony coastal town of Cuxhaven on September 5, 2001.
Mushroom pickers discovered the child’s body about 15 miles away two weeks later but the killer’s trail had long gone cold. Earlier this year, a witness who saw a television programme about the case recalled seeing an estate car parked on a forest path at about 4.30am in early September 2001.
A boy who resembled Dennis was in the back seat and a man in the front. The brawny, bespectacled man, who looked to be in his early 30s, matched a description police had received of the suspect from sex abuse victims. He was dressed in black.
In 1992, police said that Martin N had kidnapped and killed 13-year-old Stefan Jahr.
A month earlier he had entered a youth hostel in Bremen, pointed a knife at a boy and ordered him to follow him.
The boy’s scream alerted a teacher who frightened the attacker off.
French police are believed to be about to question Martin about the fate of Jonathan Coulom, 11, who disappeared from a school hostel in St Brevin in the west of France. His body was found six weeks later, handcuffed and in his pyjamas in a pond 30 yards from the hostel.
This could be just the tip of the iceberg. Detectives in Holland want to speak to him about the murder of Nicky Verstappen in August 1998.
The boy disappeared from a tent in Brunssum and his body was found in a plantation of fir trees the next day.
Although so far he is suspected of killing or attacking young boys, clinical psychologist Ron Bracey stressed that gender is not so important to paedophiles, making it quite possible that he could target a girl like Madeleine.
He said: “With paedophiles the gender of the child isn’t really that relevant. It’s quite possible he could have killed girls and boys.”
The thought that Madeleine may have been abducted by a paedophile, and is possibly still being abused, is Kate McCann’s worst fear, according to a newspaper interview yesterday. She was speaking in advance of her book, simply called Madeleine, which is published on Thursday.
Meanwhile a profile of Martin N began to emerge yesterday. German police interviewed him in 2004 after two boys complained they had been sexually attacked.
He was given a small fine but appeared before the courts again in 2006 when a man said Martin N had demanded 20,000 euros or he would tell police the man had child pornography on his computer. Two years later Martin N was asked to supply a DNA sample for police but failed to keep the appointment.
It is believed that between 2000 and 2008 he worked for an evangelical church on a project for the homeless.
His mother is distraught about the police investigation and does not accept the boy she raised has grown into a monster. She describes him as “normal, a little timid and very attentive”.
She insists he never showed signs similar to “the cruelty necessary to commit these horrible crimes”, although a German magazine claims he was scarred by his father leaving the family when he was young.
At 21, the suspect finished a teacher training course and started to travel. Police know he visited Ecuador in 1993, Peru in 1995 and Portugal the following year. He has also made repeated trips to Holland and Denmark.
Police psychologist Alexander Horn said: “During his studies to be a school teacher he was a solid student, although not over-brilliant. No professor observed any behaviour that brought special attention, no evidence from work colleagues that recalled him as a violent person. In fact, quite the reverse.
“Everyone who has been his neighbour or has worked with him describes him as reliable, amiable, friendly and very intelligent. He was always disposed to help with a smile on his lips.”
There are suggestions, however, that in 1987 he sent letters threatening extortion to neighbouring families. One is alleged to have warned: “If you don’t follow our instructions, your children will die.”
His penalty involved doing social work for eight weeks. Five years later he went on to kill his first victim.
German police spokesman Anke Rieken said: “Every place that he has been, every person with whom he has been in contact could lead us to more victims.”
http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/245336/Maddie-link-to-German-child-killer
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11th September 2011
Sunday Express
by James Murray
Kate McCann flies to Germany in hunt for missing Maddie
KATE McCann flies to Germany this week to make a powerful television appeal for new witnesses to come forward as Scotland Yard detectives investigate fresh leads produced by her book about her daughter Madeleine’s disappearance.
The intriguing developments come as German police intensify their investigation into a serial child killer, Martin Ney, who bears a resemblance to a man said to have been seen with a child in his arms shortly after Madeleine vanished.
Buoyed by the determination and resolve of the 30 strong team of Yard detectives, Kate and her husband Gerry are focusing their energy on a media blitz in Germany in the hope that their emotional appeals will produce key witnesses.
On Thurdsay, they will fly to Hamburg to appear on the Reinhold Beckmann Show and will tell the popular presenter they believe German tourists who visit the Algarve each year may be able to unlock the mystery of Madeleine’s disappearance from the resort town of Praia da Luz in May 2007 when she was approaching her fourth birthday.
A source said: “Kate and Gerry have felt for a long time that a German who visited the Algarve or who lives there knows something and they want to stir consciences.”
Last week the couple undertook a round of interviews with German journalists at a hotel near their home in Rothley, Leicestershire.
The German broadsheet newspaper Suddeutsche Zeitung published an interview with the couple yesterday in which Kate revealed in her darker days she wishes the abductor had taken her instead of Madeleine.
“There are days in which I wished I was able to swap with Madeleine,” she said, adding that the ordeal had made her marriage stronger.
“People are still looking out for Madeleine and that gives me hope. It is your child, you must go on.”
http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/270496/Kate-McCann-flies-to-Germany-in-hunt-for-missing-Maddie
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26th February 2012
Sunday Express
by James Murray
Child killer vows: I didn’t take Madeleine McCann
A PREDATORY German paedophile who will be sentenced tomorrow for abducting and murdering three boys has denied he is behind other child crimes, including the abduction of Madeleine McCann.
Today we can reveal that Scotland Yard has been in contact with German detectives questioning Martin Ney, 41.
It follows our disclosure last May that Ney looks very like the photofit of a man seen acting suspiciously hours before Madeleine vanished from a holiday apartment in Portugal in May 2007.
The photofit was drawn up by a woman who saw a man leaving the rear of the next-door apartment. She said he very “quietly” closed the gate and looked around nervously to see if he was being watched. The photofit was published in Kate McCann’s best-selling book, Madeleine.
When we asked the Yard why officers were interested in Ney, it issued a terse statement saying: “We are not prepared to discuss it.”
Ney, who faces life in prison, claims he is not guilty of a series of other child murders across Europe. According to the Spanish newspaper El Mundo, he would be familiar with the Algarve coastline having travelled to Portugal in the mid-Nineties.
British detectives are believed to be interested in Ney’s communications in internet chat rooms in which he used the nickname Gerd X. Although Ney claims his last child murder was in 2002, they found a posting by him in March last year which said: “Gerd X moves on to the next boy.”
In a 2002 posting he bragged: “I bought a camouflage suit to jump out of the bushes in children’s playgrounds if a beautiful boy goes past.”
The softly spoken youth worker was free to kill for 20 years. His first victim was Stefan Jahrd, 13, in 1992. Three years later he murdered Dennis Rostel, eight. Six years after that he snatched nine-year-old Dennis Kleinfrom.
Kai Thomas Breas, spokesman for the German prosecutors, told the Sunday Express: “He has said he hasn’t killed in Portugal.
“German police have been in contact with Scotland Yard. We think he had a sexual interest only in boys.”
http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/304470/Child-killer-vows-I-didn-t-take-Madeleine-McCann
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13th October 2013
Sunday Express
EXCLUSIVE: German Crimewatch to widen hunt for 'suspects'
TWO German sounding men are being sought by detectives trying to solve the Madeleine McCann mystery, we reveal today.
The focus of the hunt for the missing girl, now aged ten, will dramatically switch to Germany later this week when Kate and Gerry are expected travel there to make an urgent television appeal to run with new e fit pictures of potential suspects.
On Wednesday the German television channel ZDF will feature the BBC Crimewatch reconstruction in their programme, called Aktenzeichen XY, which means File Number XY.
Presenter Rudi Cerne will interview Kate and Gerry in the studio, allowing them to directly appeal to millions of Germans for help in identifying the men.
A blurb for that programme says detectives are now going on the "offensive," suggesting the Yard investigation is rapidly gathering pace.
It says the trawl through existing documents has produced new information which leads to Germany for the first time.
The blurb adds: "This is the reason why XY will show sketches of two men who appear to speak German and who have so far been paid little or no importance."
Programme makers say this is the reason why Scotland Yard approached the programme's producer and asked for a similar appeal on Dutch television on Tuesday night.
In Europe the Dutch and German accents sounds similar so the Yard felt it was vital to appeal to people in the Netherlands, where viewers will see the BBC Crimewatch reconstruction.
ZDF says Detective Chief Inspector Andy Redwood will travel to Holland to appear on that separate programme.
Scotland Yard has already made inquiries into potential suspects in Germany.
British child abuser Raymond Hewlett was staying on the Algarve when Madeleine went missing in 2007 and also stayed in Germany.
He says he was at a flea market 30 miles away when Madeleine was taken, but declined to speak to the McCann's private investigators.
He told people gypsies had been looking to buy children, but could never be pinned down on details.
Hewlett died from cancer in Germany in 2010 aged 64 without making any admissions.
The Yard also liaised with their German counterparts on the movements of serial child killer Martin N, who is serving a life sentence in jail in Germany for abducting and murdering three boys.
The charming youth worker targeted children at beach holiday resorts and broke into their homes to snatch them.
In 2011 the Sunday Express published a picture of him alongside an e fit of a man seen acting suspiciously around apartment 5 a in Praia da Luz, just hours before Madeleine was taken.
Ney looked uncannily like the e-fit, but has told German police he was not in Portugal and had nothing to do with Madeleine's disappearance.
http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/436289/EXCLUSIVE-German-Crimewatch-to-widen-hunt-for-suspects-in-Madeleine-McCann-search
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It has been claimed that Martin Ney (German - imprisoned since 2012) resembles an e-fit of a man collecting for an orphanage. Could this be the same person seen by the Smith family and the man described by 12 year old, Tamsin Silence?
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