Thanks. Excerpts from first link:
TPN: What did you find at the apartment?
GA: No signs of forced entry. There were no signs of glove marks on the window.
Where and how could they have hidden the body for over twenty days?
GA:That was what we were trying to find out. Searching within their friends, because the couple had a lot of acquaintances. We tried to understand where the little girl could have been during those twenty something days.
Out of reach from the searches.
GA: Yes. There was information that the couple had been seen walking towards a certain apartment block, we were trying to understand which apartment it was. Who had access to that apartment. But everything stopped.
Within the theory of the parents' involvement, can you reconstruct that night?
GA: We had already concluded, long before the Irish witness, that if those persons were involved, there was only one possibility. It pointed towards the beach. Not only because of what [locations] they knew but also due to the terrain's conditions. In that area, it is not easy to dig a hole. One either knows where holes already exist, or it is not possible, within a short time lapse, to decide where to place a corpse without knowing the area. If there was involvement, it would have been towards the beach area. Which is later corroborated by the Irish witness.
You admitted the possibility that the children had been given sedatives.
GA: The twins, with the lights on, with the lights off, with a crowd of people going in and out, slept until 2 a.m., when they were carried into another apartment. Even then, they continued to sleep. That sleep is not normal.
But the Judiciária did nothing.
GA: Once again, we were inhibited. We thought about asking the parents to test their hair, in order to understand whether there were sedatives, but as soon as it was found out, it would be said that we were suspecting the parents, and it was being avoided at all costs that it became public that those suspicions existed.
JP: But did you think that you were in the presence of a genuinely worried couple, desperate to find their daughter?
GA: I didn't make that type of judgment. In a criminal investigation, we have to base ourselves in facts, we have to be objective and leave emotions behind. The parents' situation of anguish is logical, there was anguish, now whether it was anguish over the disappearance of their daughter or over knowing that their daughter was dead, it's different and it cannot be distinguished like that. But in fact there was anguish contrary to what is being said, not in the police building but it's known that the little girl's mother cried, she apparently cried that morning, so that anguish could be over the loss of her daughter, right? Therefore if they are committed to searching, it's not normal that on the first day, the first hour, the only possible lead was abduction, abduction and it's extended into saying abduction by Portuguese paedophile networks, therefore, these conclusions are made too soon after the event, because several possibilities were open at that moment, therefore, from then onwards I also find that strange and we took it into consideration.
GA: There are situations that are reported in the book but there are others when there isn't a normal behaviour, so the person despairs during a moment of anxiety and we actually try to understand, we try, if it's an obstruction that was the issue there, if it was really a demand for ransom, and we try to negotiate with that individual who was in Holland.
JP: That episode is particularly surprising.
GA: And then we watch that, us Portuguese who were there...
JP: ... and the English...
GA: ... and the English, we watched it in stupefaction, he was sitting there with a lollipop laughing on the phone and we were all waiting...
JP: We're talking about Gerry McCann, at the moment when, because someone did try a coup like that, correct? So while you were waiting for him to make contact with you…
GA: … maybe it was his way of reacting to that tension, maybe it's justifiable but to us, we were shocked, it's not. We were searching for his daughter, doing our job.
JP: While he visited sites on the internet...
GA: No, he was on the phone.
JP: Ah he was on the phone and sucking on a lollipop wasn't it and laughing and chatting?
GA: Yes! Completely detached from what was going on and about to happen…
JP: So that shocked you in particular?
GA: Me and the colleagues who were present.
JP: It seems not. I insist on the questions concerning your impressions because it was maybe the aspect of the book that I was most avid to know whether or not you would take that route, and twice or thrice you let the text slide towards it, and I was really very surprised over that behaviour from Gerry McCann at the moment when the possibility of his daughter's ransom is being discussed, which was obviously fictitious, but his behaviour relating to it and some observations that you make concerning Kate McCann. Namely a certain irritation and ill humour under several circumstances. Can you define who is Kate McCann?
GA: It is difficult to define, isn't it. She almost cried in front of us, and then she lowered her head and when she returned she came back more aggressive, more
JP: But within the couple she is the more combative, the more controlling person.
GA: I didn't want to take that route in terms of rendering things subjective but…
JP: I noticed that.
GA: … but that is how it was. It was a bit, there was something not right there, but maybe a psychiatrist or someone could analyse the behaviour.
JP: Very well, you don't want to say much about your personal impressions of her ahaha
GA: The issue here is not… I don't have to worry about the McCann couple. What I have to worry about, or had to worry about is that little girl and find out what happened to her. It's logical that knowing who the parents are and their behaviour, how they react, all of that is important within an investigation. But the most important thing is for us to integrate with what we have, to find the facts and to follow a route in terms of the final objective. Therefore, discussing the parents… it's a question…
JP: Do you really reach the theory of an accidental death according to your theory, before the dogs arrive in Portugal, or…
GA: Yes, before the dogs come to Portugal, there are signs of death as I say in the book, signs which are given by the family that a cadaver is being searched. This gentleman comes from South Africa, and hair from the little girl, supposedly from the little girl, he places it inside a machine which he invented and we hear its contents which says that there within a certain area of the beach lies a cadaver. So he came on the couple's request, otherwise he would not be requested. Then, the dogs' intervention follows a work of analysis, of planning carried out by a British national consultant, from the British police, he was here in Portugal, he saw the area, he consulted the process with what happened, therefore with facts that existed, he went to the area, he rode a helicopter, consulted with academics, and all that and he reached the conclusion that we have to search for a cadaver. In order to search for a cadaver these experts have to be used, these dogs and that was what happened. So from there on…
JP: So that was what is called a good relationship between British and Portuguese investigators.
GA: Very good.
JP: Very good. Contrary to everything that was later reported by the press.
GA: Exactly.
JP: So your opinion is that an accidental death took place in that apartment.
GA: It is not my opinion. It's the opinion of the investigation. This has to be made very clear. I have repeated this several times but it's important.
JP: You are absolutely right, so according to the investigation…
GA: According to the investigation that was composed of English, Portuguese investigators…
JP: Exactly. The little girl died in that apartment?
GA: The little girl died in that apartment.
JP: On the evening of the 3rd of May.
GA: And we reached that conclusion with the data that we have.
DL: No, I just wanted to talk about the issue of the English lab's reports.
JP: That is very important, yes.
GA: The reports from the English labs… the English reports arrive shortly before the questionings that were scheduled. And it contained certain conclusions, if they thought they were inconclusive they shouldn't have mentioned it, the question of the 15 alleles in a profile of 19 from the little girl, stating that they match Madeleine McCann, but they also say that it could have been a construction let's say from various donors, from other persons, a contamination could have produced Madeleine McCann's profile by coincidence. But there are no excuses for saying that it is not from Madeleine McCann because they held the profiles of the father, the mother, the siblings, therefore there are no doubts that at least within that family they only matched Madeleine McCann's.
JP: That's true, that's true. In your opinion, Maddie, in the opinion of the investigation and of your colleagues and the team that you coordinated, did Maddie die that evening?
GA: She died.
JP: And someone took her from that apartment and placed her where?
GA: Look, when we are in an investigation of this kind we have to understand what the knowledge of those persons is, if they know other people, what contacts they have. If they have means at their disposal. We have to know the area itself, to know about the facility or the almost material impossibility to conceal the corpse within few hours and few minutes. And the conclusion that we reach with all of this, with all of this data is that, if there was any involvement from those nine persons, the corpse could only be in the beach area. And that is in fact where the gentleman…
JP: The investigator.
GA: Not the investigator, the Irish witnesses…
JP: Ah yes!
GA: … see a person passing, a man carrying a child, a little girl, they say that it is in effect Madeleine going towards the South area, let's put it that way, towards the sea side. Now whether or not she stayed there, that is another question. For how long she stayed there, what happens next, only the development of the investigation of that area of death, let's put it that way, could take us there.
JP: It sounds so unbelievable, the possibility that a body was placed on a cliff, or in any other area on the beach, and then removed and transported in a rental car.
GA: The corpse couldn't have remained there all the time. It's impossible.
JP: So where was it taken next?
GA: If we take into account that, if we consider the traces that were found in the car boot…
JP: … which are in fact…
GA: … which are in fact from the little girl. In order to justify that bodily fluid as the lab says, it could only have been preserved and conserved in the cold because otherwise it would have been…
JP: That means that…
GA: … in an advanced state of decomposition, at least it's a hypothesis. Therefore it's a question of a deep freezer, or something similar, and there we had to search for it and that was what we were doing. This means, the contacts that they had, where they went, where they were seen… There are people who say that they were seen entering an apartment block near the cemetery in Praia da Luz. At that point in time we weren't able to detect which apartment they entered, who lived there, because it's also a bit complicated because you have to understand it's a tourist area and often it's not known who the apartment belongs to.
JP: Of course, of course…
GA: Who lives there, for how long they live there, so all of that was being worked upon. To try to understand the support…
JP: If someone discovered a deep freezer in the area and…
GA: If it was actually a deep freezer, it doesn't exist anymore now.
JP: Is that still possible to find out? I imagine…
GA: Look, a few years ago on the Azores, after a homicide that had taken place years earlier, we managed to locate a vehicle that was already in a junk yard in which a taxi driver had been killed, a taxi driver from Praia da Vitória in the Azores. But we were unlucky, normally the van's back had a carpet but it didn't exist anymore. That carpet didn't exist anymore, so if we had found that carpet it would have been possible to prove that the death had taken place there, so anything is possible.
JP: And now we don't speak at all because we're arriving at the end. I only want, Gonçalo Amaral, I only want to know one thing. Will Maddie return to your life one of these days, or not?
GA: I think yes. This book has the will of clarifying and of contributing to the investigation, I think yes, there are more things to talk about.
JP: Is that your mission?
GA: It's not a mission, it's a question of recovering my dignity and my honour and that of my colleagues and of this institution to which I was so proud of belonging to for so many years, and of justice being done for the little girl.
