Strictly speaking we also had not a revelation per se but more of a confirmation of the way in which the police - Amaral in particular - utilised leaks to journalists to establish their narrative.
No Portuguese police press conferences when Hugo Beaty's bar dealt with the press releases to order.
Sandra Felgueiras had absolutely no qualms about putting it on record.
Maddie case: Sandra Felgueiras devastates Gonçalo Amaral and explains that the girl may be alive"I was deceived" was this way that the journalist of RTP, who accompanied the disappearance of the English child in 2007 in the Algarve, referred to the former inspector of the Judicial Police.
March 29, 2019
Sandra Felgueiras, one of RTP's best-known journalists and responsible for the information program 'Friday at 9', was one of Filomena Cautela's guests in '5 para a Meia Noite'. Asked about her participation in the Documentary about the Maddie case, broadcast on Netflix, the journalist decided to put "everything on clean plates".
In the documentary, Sandra reveals that her source was the former inspector of police Amaral and does not spare him criticism: "I was deceived and I was deceived in what? I was told (by Gonçalo Amaral) that the blood sample found in the car and in the McCann room corresponded, without a doubt, to Madeleine McCann."
"This created in me the conviction of the involvement of parents, because I believed deeply in Gonçalo Amaral. With him I maintained for several months a relationship of source and journalist", he explained.
This relationship changes in July 2008, more than a year after the child's disappearance: "When the secret files are finally made public – until then the process was a secret of justice – one learns what the results of the Birmingham laboratory say."
"The report was scary and it said: The blood sample has five allelos in 20 possible (from the room) and in the car 17 out of 20. However, the sample is so insignificant and so tiny that here in the laboratory, there are at least 100 people who have an identical sample, which makes this sample criminally unrevealing," said Sandra Felgueiras.
The journalist says she then called Gonçalo Amaral to ask for explanations. "If there is a probability that the child is alive, no matter how small and tiny, you don't go to the thesis 'the parents killed her' and you don't look for it anymore. This made me deeply disgusted," she admitted.
https://www.flash.pt/celebridades/nacional/detalhe/caso-maddie-sandra-felgueiras-arrasa-goncalo-amaral-e-explica-que-a-menina-pode-estar-vivaAnd that is precisely what Amaral did. He wrote Madeleine off without a shred of supporting evidence -
"If there is a probability that the child is alive, no matter how small and tiny, you don't go to the thesis 'the parents killed her' and you don't look for it anymore. This made me deeply disgusted,"
