Police still pursue ‘critical leads’ in
BRITISH detectives working on the Madeleine McCann case are still pursuing “critical” leads as the 10th anniversary of her disappearance approaches, a Scotland Yard chief has revealed.
Metropolitan Police Assistant Commissioner Mark Rowley said there are “significant investigative avenues” that are of “great interest” to both the UK and Portuguese teams.
Officers have sifted some 40,000 documents and looked at more than 600 individuals since 2011.
In an interview nearly a decade on from the youngster’s disappearance, Mr Rowley also confirmed that four people considered as possible suspects in 2013 have been ruled out.
Madeleine vanished from the family’s holiday apartment in Praia da Luz in Portugal on May 3, 2007, when she was three years old. Her parents, Kate and Gerry McCann, of Rothley, Leicestershire, have vowed to “never give up” hope of finding their daughter.
Asked if police were any closer to solving the case than they were six years ago when the UK investigation was launched, Mr Rowley said: “I know we have a significant line of inquiry which is worth pursuing, and because it’s worth pursuing it could provide an answer, but until we’ve gone through it I won’t know whether we are going to get there or not.
“Ourselves and the Portuguese are doing a critical piece of work and we don’t want to spoil it by putting titbits of information out publicly.”
He declined to expand on the nature of the working theories or reveal whether any suspects were currently being considered, saying that disclosing further detail would not help the investigation.
Mr Rowley said: “We’ve got some critical lines of inquiry, those link to particular hypotheses, but I’m not going to discuss those because those are very much live investigation.
“We’ve got some thoughts on the most likely explanations might be and we are pursuing those.”
He described the possibility of a “burglary gone wrong” as a “sensible hypothesis” which has not been “entirely ruled out”.
The senior officer was asked about the theory of a sex predator being responsible for Madeleine’s disappearance.
Mr Rowley said: “That’s been one key line of inquiry. The reality is in the modern world in any urban area if you cast your net widely you will find a whole pattern of offences.
“You will find sex offenders who live nearby. And those coincidences need to be sifted out, what’s a coincidence and what may be linked to the investigation that you are currently