Jim Gamble? A PI for the McCanns? Really? I never knew that.
Jim Gamble,
who acted as the senior child protection officer during the UK's initial McCann probe, argues that Portuguese cops did not initially examine the phone data.
He told Daily Star Online:
“The information about what telephone was there at a particular time in connection with another number… was captured, but it had never been properly interrogated.
"So that data hadn't been analysed. They hadn't looked for those things you would expect to see – telephone calls taking place immediately before or immediately after and in close proximity."
In 2010, Gamble published a report into the case – commissioned by then Home Secretary Alan Johnson – which led the Metropolitan Police to re-open their investigation due to failings from Portuguese detectives.
In it, he recommended the “cell dump” – a vast backlog of phone data collected from towers – be examined again.
He added: “I think the Portuguese investigation at the beginning was bungled…it very quickly fell under such a high level of scrutiny and political kind of pressure…they didn't kind of consider all of the hypotheses in the order that they should at the time that they should.
“They lost the golden hour, they lost the early hours in the investigation.
Mr Gamble continued: “Much of the information that was held by the Portuguese…was in boxes.
“And that type of approach makes it very difficult to systematically consider the information that you have and to identify lines of inquiry and to follow those lines of inquiry up. And that was part of that problem.”
https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/latest-news/madeleine-mccann-cops-missed-call-22295432It seems that from very early on in Amaral's investigation (he tells us in his book right from the morning of the fourth) his obsession with Madeleine's parents caused him to ignore very obvious investigative strategies.
Scotland Yard used it appropriately in 2013 and discovered phone calls made by burglars at the requisite time and in the requisite area requiring investigation.
If the German assessment is correct it seems they were on the right track contrary to sceptic derision. It is certainly a track which didn't really have to wait until 2013 or 2017; the information was available to Portuguese investigators in 2007 ~ they just didn't check it.
After Amaral was sacked one of the first tasks his replacement Rebelo had to address was digitising the information lying around in boxes; the Amaral investigation just wasn't fit for purpose but he was so proud of it ... he wrote a book!