MADELEINE McCann went missing from the holiday apartment she was staying at with her family in Portugal and there have been a number of suspects over the years. Despite a global search for the youngster over 12 years she has never been found and no arrests have been made. Who has been suspected? There have […]
MADELEINE McCann went missing from the holiday apartment she was staying at with her family in Portugal and there have been a number of suspects over the years.
Despite a global search for the youngster over 12 years she has never been found and no arrests have been made.
There have been countless theories over the years about what happened to Madeleine, including ones thinking she could have fallen down a well to her death.
One theory thinks Maddie’s abduction could be down to a burglary going wrong.
It was thought an intruder panicked and snatched her after she woke up. While Scotland Yard looked into this theory it has always been dismissed by cops in Portugal since nothing else was taken from the apartment.
Investigative journalist Danny Collins thought one possibility could be that Maddie could have been abducted by child abductors, either inside or outside the apartment, and then sold on, possibly to gypsies or to some couple who were grieving over the death of their own child.
At the time then Scotland Yard detective Colin Sutton said this was the most likely scenario.
US think tank The Rutherford Institute said Maddie could have been taken by a sex trafficking gang after studying how kids are abducted and abuse in the sex industry.
The institute’s John Whitehead also believes these gangs could be aided by “predator cops” – although there is no evidence suggesting Portuguese police were involved in assisting with Maddie’s kidnapping.
An English-speaking sex fiend who wears a surgical mask is said to be the most recent lead.
Detectives have discovered a creep carried out nearly 30 attacks within a 40-mile radius of the holiday apartment in Praia da Luz where Maddie vanished from 12 years ago.
A judicial source is reported to have confirmed the unnamed man was definitely in Portugal at the time the three-year-old suddenly disappeared.
Portuguese cops are believed to be working on a tip off from Scotland Yard about an alleged foreign paedophile.
The suspect, who has not been named, is said to be no stranger to Portuguese police.
One of the key suspects in the mystery disappearance of Madeleine was a heroin addict who died in a freak tractor accident.
Jailbird junkie Euclides Monteiro was sacked by the Ocean Club in Praia da Luz, Portugal, the year before the three-year-old disappeared.
The 6ft 2in ex-waiter is feared to have kidnapped the toddler after being disturbed as he broke into her family’s apartment.
Monteiro, known to his friends in the popular holiday resort as Toni, died after being run over by a tractor in 2009.
But phone records have placed him near the flats at the time she vanished.
It is believed he may have been raiding guests’ rooms to feed his heroin habit.
Woodhouse died at Channings Wood jail in DevonA child rapist who was once grilled by detectives investigating the disappearance of Maddie eventually died in prison.
Anthony Woodhouse “died of natural causes” while serving a 17-and-a-half year sentence at Channings Wood jail in Devon.
The 71-year-old had spent more than ten years in hiding in Portugal after raping and impregnating a 14-year-old girl in Herefordshire.
In 2014 a source told how Woodhouse had been grilled over Maddie’s death.
The pervert was living with his wife and kids on a campsite in May 2007.
He is understood to have run a cleaning business in the Algarve when Madeleine went missing.
In 2012, police launched a fresh probe into whether now dead paedophile Raymond Hewlett had anything to with the disappearance of Madeleine.
The 64-year-old pervert was living just an hour’s drive from where the youngster disappeared in the Algarve in May 2007 while she was on holiday with her parents.
Scotland Yard detectives tried to track down a couple who the child molester befriended while they were on holiday and who allegedly told them gypsies had approached him asking to buy his children.
Hewlett later moved to Germany and refused to answer questions when confronted by private detectives hired by the McCanns.
But he reportedly wrote to his estranged son saying Madeleine had been “stolen to order” by a gypsy gang.
The British-Portuguese property consultant was named as the first “arguido” in the case and lived at his mum’s house near to the holiday apartments in Praia da Luz at the time of Maddie’s disappearance.
Robert Murat always denied any involvement in Maddie’s disappearance.
In the docu-series The Disappearance of Madeleine McCann, Murat says he was subjected to a lengthy police interrogation designed to get a confession out of him.
He said: “I actually felt I was being set up. I felt like they would do anything and everything to make it me.”
Even though he was never arrested, Murat became the subject of intense scrutiny from the media and in 2009 he claimed the pressure came close to destroying his life.
But no evidence ever emerged that Murat was linked to Madeleine’s disappearance and he was officially no longer deemed a suspect on July 21, 2008.
He later successfully sued many newspapers which had wrongly linked him to the crime, winning £600,000 in libel damages.
Murat had remained mostly silent about his experiences with the Madeleine McCann case until his appearance in the recent docu-series.
He was totally cleared of any involvement in her disappearance.
Madeleine’s parents Kate and Jerry McCann have also been put under suspicion.
They were made “arguidos” in September 2007 by the Portuguese police, with detective Goncalo Amaral then in charge of the case.
Amaral alleged that Maddie died in her family’s holiday flat the day she went missing in a book called The Truth Of The Lie.
In a documentary for Portuguese television he claimed there was no abduction and the McCanns had hidden her body.
The allegations proved to be hurtful to Maddie’s parents who then took legal action against the disgraced copper.
A court in Lisbon awarded the McCanns £209,000 each in damages in 2015 but this decision was later overturned by Portugal’s Supreme Court in 2017.
But both Kate and Jerry have always strenuously denied that they had anything to do with their daughter’s disappearance and have maintained their innocence.
Police in Portugal lifted the “arguido” status in July 2009 and cops have since stressed that Maddie’s parents are not suspects.
