6th August 2008
Daily Record
Revealed: Suspect images the cops never released in hunt for Madeleine McCann
PORTUGUESE police hunting Madeleine McCann kept two chilling images of possible suspects secret.The man in one of the pictures was seen staring intently at the tot's holiday apartment block hours before she was kidnapped.
But the bungling Algarve cops didn't release the image. And they also kept a second efit hidden, even though it was strikingly similar to the first.
Both efits were drawn on May 6 last year, just three days after Madeleine, three, vanished from the resort of Praia da Luz.
The police had virtually no other leads but they still decided not to act on the images.
Instead, they buried them in their files, which have only just been made public 14 months on from the abduction. Madeleine's parents, Kate and Gerry, never got a chance to see the efits at the time.
The first efit shows a man who was seen acting suspiciously outside Madeleine's apartment.
British holidaymaker Derek Flack, 64, was out for a walk with his girlfriend when he saw the man in the street outside at the Ocean Club resort, where Madeleine was staying with her parents and her twin brother and sister.
Derek, of Ilford, east London, was struck by how suspicious the man looked.
And when he heard that a child had been snatched from the Ocean Club, he took his concerns to the police.
The police file from their interview with Derek says: "He realised the man was staring fixedly at the area in question, very focused on what he was doing and did not notice Flack's presence."
The suspect appeared to be looking at a van, which was parked near a path that led to the back of the McCanns' apartment. The police report says: "Flack concluded that the man was monitoring movements near that path and into the apartment.
"The man looked suspicious, he was watching the apartment.
"Flack said he does not remember seeing the man there before, or anywhere else in Luz, or since Madeleine's disappearance."
Derek said the suspect was suntanned and looked to be aged between 25 and 35. He was convinced the man was not a tourist.
On the same day Derek spoke to the police, a second witness came forward to tell them about a man he had seen hanging around Praia da Luz.
British expat Lance Purser, 45, said he had spotted the man in the town several times about a fortnight before Madeleine was taken.
He described the suspect as thin and scruffy, aged about 35 to 40 and usually dressed in dark clothes.
Lance added that the man "looked like he could have some slight psychological problems".
The police used Lance's description of the man to draw up a second efit. The suspect in the picture had the same sunken eyes and thin nose and lips as the man described by Derek Flack.
It's not clear whether the police had shown Derek's efit to Lance.
If they had been published, the efits would have been seen by millions of people around the world.
But the cops decided to suppress them because of Portugal's strict judicial secrecy laws and because they were worried about prejudicing any future inquiries in the case.
Instead, they released a bizarre image described at the time as "an egg with hair". British journalists presented with the meaningless sketch could not believe what they were seeing.
Critics of the Portuguese cops will be staggered by their actions.
British police routinely publish efits, particularly in the most serious cases, because they know the public respond to them.
The search for Madeleine dragged on for more than a year but the cops got nowhere near finding her.
Instead, they wasted thousands of hours hounding her parents and innocent British expat Robert Murat.
The sheer scale of the police failure is revealed in a damning report by Portuguese prosecutors, released along with the police files.
The prosecutors, Jose de Magalhaes e Menezes and Joao Melchior Gomes, said the cops uncovered "very little" about what happened to Madeleine.
They added: "The investigators are fully conscious that their work is not exempt from imperfections.
"They worked with an enormous margin of error and achieved very little in terms of conclusive results.
"This includes the most dramatic thing, ascertaining whether Madeleine is still alive or dead - which seems the most probable.
"This is not, unfortunately, a detective novel, a crime scenario fit for the efforts of a Sherlock Holmes or Hercule Poirot, guided by the illusion that the forces of law and justice can always re-establish order." Madeleine vanished while Kate and Gerry ate with friends at a tapas restaurant near the apartment.
There was talk at the time that the couple could be charged with child abandonment. But the prosecutors concluded: "It is obvious neither of the defendants acted with intent.
"Although they left their daughter alone with her siblings in the apartment, sometimes for extended periods, it's true that, in any case, they were keeping an eye on them.
"The parents are already paying a heavy penalty - the disappearance of Madeleine - for their carelessness in monitoring and protecting their children.
"It seems obvious to us that the crimes of exposure or abandonment can be eliminated."
The Portuguese authorities shelved the inquiry last month and confirmed that Kate, Gerry and Murat were no longer "arguidos" - formal suspects. The move paved the way for the release of the police files.
Lawyers for Kate and Glasgowborn Gerry were given access to the files last week. They are now sifting through the papers for leads to pass on to the private investigators hired by the family to carry on the search for Madeleine.
McCann family spokesman Clarence Mitchell said Kate and Gerry "draw strength" from the lack of evidence in the files that their daughter is dead.
He added: "They hope against hope she is being held somewhere."
The release of the files has added fuel to claims that the police tried to frame the McCanns.
Kate and Gerry were targeted after British experts told the cops they had found DNA that could be Madeleine's in the family's hire car.
The couple didn't hire the car until 24 days after Madeleine vanished.
Among the police files is an email written by a senior British scientist which warned that the DNA findings were not conclusive.
The expert, John Lowe, wrote that the test results were "too complex for meaningful interpretation".
He added: "We cannot answer the question, 'Is the match genuine, or is it a chance match?'"
But later, when the Portuguese cops interrogated Gerry, they told him that Madeleine's DNA had definitely been found in the car.
Angry friends of the McCanns say they may sue the cops for trying to force Gerry into a false confession.
'This is not, unfortunately, a detective novel, a crime scenario for the efforts of a Sherlock Holmes or Hercule Poirot'
http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/uk-world-news/revealed-suspect-images-the-cops-never-986130
