It goes without saying that the man the Smith family saw carrying a child near the beach was not Gerry McCann. He may very well have resembled him but that is where it ends.
Let's take a step back to the evidence again. The McCanns claimed that Madeleine was abducted, taken by some stranger. They initially claimed that the shutter on the children's bedroom window had been forced, that the window had been opened, that some person had climbed in that window, lifted Madeleine and carried her out the front door.
Forensics showed this to be untrue. The shutter was not forced, nobody climbed in the children's bedroom window and the only prints found thereon were that of Kate McCann and a policeman. They didn't even find Gerry McCanns prints on the shutter or the window even though he claimed to have inspected them. This could only mean one thing and that was that the alleged abductor walked in and out through the front door. Amaral was unsure at this juncture as to what this all meant.
Then there was the conflicting statements, the flippant attitude towards any reported sightings, the refusal to answer questions, the cadaver dog alerts and the inconclusive forensic results and all the time this backstabbing of the investigation team and sniping by the Press which were being feed like piranhas by members of the Mccann family who in turn were being fed directly by Kate and Gerry! no wonder the PJ and Amaral were suspicious.