Maddie: Enough of Lies!
SYNOPSIS
In the so-called 'Caso Maddie', the only certainty is that, on the night of May 3, 2007, after 10 pm, in Praia da Luz, in the Algarve, a warning was given of the disappearance of a British child, with the approximate age of 4 years.
Kidnapping planned? Abduction motivated by sexual gratification? Voluntary disappearance? Responsibilities of Parents or Others with Child Custody Duty? Accidental death (with or without taking sleeping pills)? Death in the hours or days before the disappearance alert? It is not known. But there is already a suspect. A suspect was built without even proving the existence of an abduction and, above all, without knowing the victim.
Today, a lot is known about a suspect, whether truth or lies, but little, or almost nothing, about the victim. It is not known, for example, whether he was the target of abuse, as the Mallorca episode seems to suggest. On the other hand, Maddie seemed to denote speech difficulties for a 4-year-old. But the child's clinical history is missing, which is a mystery. Neither the parents gave it nor the British authorities allowed access to it. What do the British police know? What about detectives hired by parents? Until when will the Portuguese justice maintain its neutrality in a case whose jurisdiction is its own?
After millions of euros and pounds spent, the family insists on the abduction thesis, a pedophile is sought, the German police investigates incongruously and the case remains where it was in 2007. Who is hiding the truth? The mysteriously missing child deserves an objective and serious investigation.
Gonçalo Amaral
Gonçalo Amaral was born in 1959, in Torredeita, Viseu. He studied Engineering, but eventually graduated in Legal and Criminal Sciences at the Faculty of Law of Lisbon. He joined the Public Administration in 1973, at the age of 14, as a bellman, in the Armed Forces Social Services. In November 1981, he started the training course for agents of the Judiciary Police (PJ), and became an agent the following year. In 1997/1998, he attended the PJ sub-inspectors course, being ranked first among 100 students. In 2000/2001 he completed the PJ Coordinators course. He performed functions in Lisbon, the Algarve and the Azores. For years, he effectively pursued all types of violent and organized crime: thefts, robberies, murders, drug trafficking. He has had an unblemished professional career, widely recognized by his colleagues and superiors, as well as by judicial and prosecutors, by court officials and lawyers, with whom he has had the pleasure of dealing with for many years. Its maxim “justice takes place in silence”. He was operational coordinator of the investigations of the “Caso Maddie”, between May 3 and October 2, 2007, having on that occasion been removed from the investigation, in an unprecedented act in the history of the Judiciary Police. He retired on July 1, 2008, after 27 years of police career, in order to regain full freedom of expression in the case he investigated and to contribute, as far as possible, to the discovery of the material truth and for the realization of justice. He has published the books Maddie – The Truth of the Lie (2008), The English Gag (2010) and Lives without Defense (2011).
