Q: One of the biggest criticisms of the Portuguese investigation, which they acknowledge as well, is
that they did not interrogate the parents from the start, if only to eliminate them. When you started
your investigation, you appear to have done the same. Did you formally interview the McCann’s under
caution, ever consider them as suspects?
MR: So when we started, we started five or so years into this and there is already a lot of ground
been covered, we don’t cover the same ground, what we do is pull all the material we had at the start,
all the Portuguese material, private detective material, with all the work that had been done, what that
evidence supports, what rules these lines of enquiry out, what keeps them open and you progress
forward. It would be no different if there were a cold case in London, a missing person from 1990, we
would go back to square one look at all the material and if the material was convincing it ruled out that
line of enquiry we would look somewhere else. So you reflect on the original material, you challenge
it, don’t take it at face value. You don’t restart an investigation pretending it doesn’t exist and do all
the same enquiries again that is not constructive.