http://themaddiecasefiles.com/topic11625.htmlSunday Mirror
COPS PROBE KATE & GERRY STUDENT DAYS
Oct 14, 2007
by STEVE SMITH
SCOTS police are to delve into the student pasts of Kate and Gerry McCann.
The move is part of a root-and-branch review of police progress so far by Paulo Rebelo, the senior Portuguese policeman who has taken over the Missing Madeleine inquiry.
It is an indication that he has not ruled out the allegation - categorically denied by the couple - that they accidentally killed Madeleine after sedating her to get her to sleep.
Detectives have been asked by Portuguese police to dig into the their backgrounds as far back as their university days 20 years ago.
British officers have been asked to contact known friends and old friends of Madeleine's parents to establish if there is anything in either's background which may shed light on the four-year-old's disappearance.
The first interviews are to be carried out as soon as next week, police sources say.
Kate and Gerry met as junior doctors in Glasgow's Western Infirmary in 1992, just after both had finished their degrees.
Now Strathclyde police have been asked through Europol to begin comprehensive trawls of the couple's past.
The Europol request was relayed through the Scottish branch of the Association of Chief Polirce Officers, ACPO.
A Strathclyde police source said: "It's a back-to-basics check. We've been asked to trawl the backgrounds of the McCanns to build up a full picture of their lives right back to university. It is a full check on their lives to see exactly what type of people they are."
Gerry, the son of an Irish-born joiner, studied at Glasgow University and shared a flat with five pals after moving out of his parents' modest tenement flat in Govanhill.
He was a promising schoolboy athlete and footballer who became Scotland's under-19 1,500-metres champion.
Kate, from Liverpool, whose maiden name is Healy, studied at Dundee, where she
was known to fellow medicine students as "
hot lips Healy". She arrived at Dundee University medical school, attached to Ninewells Hospital, as a 19-year-old.
The student handbook for 1992, when she was in her final year, gives a tongue-in-cheek review of her time there. It says
she was part of a gang of firstyear friends referred to as the H G Girlies, who enjoyed drinking sessions. The book offers a quote, cheekily attributed to Kate, saying: "
I hate sleeping on my own."
The full entry reads: "
Renowned for frequently indulging in alcoholic binges and dance-till-you-drop nocturnal activities, she immediately led the rest of her colleagues astray.Hot Lips Healy maintained a consistent Friday night appearance in the union throughout the whole of first year..."
Kate ranked an impeccable attendance score on the social scene, which incidentally she was unable to reproduce for other more trivial activities of lower importance" - such as, it says, "dull areas of study".Though they worked in different departments at the Western Infirmary, Kate and Gerry became part of the same crowd.
But they didn't officially start dating until 1996, when Kate took a job in New Zealand. Smitten Gerry decided to follow her there, turning down a prestigious offer in America.
When they returned to the UK a year later, friends said they were inseparable and they married in Liverpool in 1998.
The McCanns are taking legal advice about suing over the claims Madeleine died in the their holiday apartment, rather than being abducted.
The theory, leaked by police to the Portuguese press, was were pursued vigorously by bungling chief inspector Goncalo Amaral. Boozing Amaral, who had day-to-day control of the inquiry, was ordered off it for claiming British police were colluding with the McCanns to cover up their purported guilt.
He was demoted just days after the Sunday Mirror reported how he was taking long lunches washed down with beer and wine and working as little as four hours a day while supposedly looking for Madeleine.
Now he has been replaced by Mr Rebelo, who is drafting in experienced colleagues.
'It's to see exactly what type of people they are'
