New suspect unveiled
McCann mystery
A German paedophile who is a chief suspect in the Madeleine McCann case is alleged to have discussed her disappearance in an internet chatroom.
The serving prisoner first appeared on the radar of German police in 2013 but was not a suspect among the 600 people of interest in the Metropolitan Police investigation until an appeal on the tenth anniversary of the disappearance in 2017. Media coverage of the appeal led to the police receiving ‘‘significant’’ information about the man.
Goncalo Amaral, the head of the original Portuguese police investigation into Madeleine’s disappearance, said last year that the focus of the inquiry was on a German paedophile. He claimed that the suspect had been ruled out of the inquiry in 2008 but later jailed in Germany for child sexual offences.
‘‘Many years later, it appears that in an internet chatroom there is a conversation between that person and another person where they talk about Madeleine,’’ the former detective said.
The suspect had been staying around Praia da Luz since 1995. On the night of the disappearance on May 3, 2007, he is believed to have been in the beach resort where Madeleine, three, was sleeping in a room at the Ocean Club complex with her twin siblings, Sean and Amelie, then
18 months. Her parents, Kate and Gerry McCann, doctors from Rothley, Leicestershire, were at a nearby tapas bar with several British friends.
The suspect’s mobile, which had the Portuguese number +351
912 730 680, received a call from another Portuguese number, +351
916 510 683, between 7.32pm and
8.02pm. Madeleine is believed to have been taken an hour later.
The caller, who has not been identified and was not in Praia da Luz at the time of the conversation, has been described by detectives as a ‘‘highly significant witness’’ rather than a suspect.
German police believe that the suspect broke in to the McCanns’ apartment to burgle it but opportunistically kidnapped Madeleine instead. The force is treating the case as a murder and said that other people may know ‘‘the place where the body was left’’.
Christian Hoppe, a senior inspector at the German Federal Crime Agency, said that the suspect had been wanted in connection with burglaries in the area earlier that year. He had been living an ‘‘itinerant lifestyle’’ on the Algarve, often sleeping in a VW T3 Westfalia campervan that was registered in Portugal. He had been using the van from April 2007 until sometime after May 2007 in and around Praia da Luz. Police said he may have been driving it on the day Madeleine disappeared.
The suspect also owned a 1993 Jaguar XJR6 with German plates seen in Praia da Luz and nearby areas in 2006 and 2007. On May 4, 2007, he asked someone to contact the German authorities to reregister it. Both vehicles have been seized by German police, who released photographs of them and of two homes in southwest Portugal linked to the suspect: a bungalow between Praia de Luz and Lagos and an empty house about 16km from the Ocean Club.
Until a year before the disappearance the suspect lived in a rented farm building on a hill above a footpath leading to a beach the McCanns visited. A former neighbour told Sky News: ‘‘He arrived in the mid-1990s and rented the place from the English owner. He went back to Germany at one stage and moved another German guy in to look after it, then came back and threw him out on the street. He was always a bit angry, driving fast up and down the lane, and then one day, around 2006, he just disappeared without a word. I think he left some rent unpaid.’’ – The Times