The Press and Journal (Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire)
McCanns deny letter claiming Maddie is dead
Crime: Couple say media reports causing anxiety
The parents of missing Madeleine McCann have denied receiving a letter from German investigators “that states there is evidence or proof ” she is dead.
Kate and Gerry McCann posted a statement on the Find Madeleine website to say reports of the correspondence had caused “unnecessary anxiety to friends and family and once again disrupted our lives”.
The statement read: “Since the recent police appeals regarding Madeleine’s disappearance there have been many inaccurate stories reported.
“The widely reported news that we have a received a letter from the German authorities that states there is evidence or proof that Madeleine is dead is false.
“L i k e m a n y unsubstantiated stories in the media, this has caused unnecessary anxiety to friends and family and once again disrupted our lives.
“As we have stated many times before, we will not give a running commentary on the investigation – that is the job of the law enforcement agencies and we will support them in any way requested.
“Furthermore, we do not have a family spokesperson nor are we actively paying any lawyers.
“Any recent comments attributed in the media have not come from us unless they have been posted on our website.
“If there are important developments that can be made public, they will be issued through official police channels.”
German prosecutor Hans Christian Wolters, who is leading the investigation into the main suspect in Madeleine’s disappearance, told the PA news agency that a letter had been written to the couple but would not reveal what it said.
However, according to The Sun newspaper he said: “We have written to the McCanns to tell them Madeleine is dead and explaining we just cannot say what the evidence is.
“We have concrete evidence that our suspect has killed Madeleine.
“British police have been informed but don’t have all the evidence we have.”
German investigators believe Christian Brueckner, 43, killed Madeleine soon after abducting her from a holiday apartment in the Portuguese resort of Praia da Luz in May 2007.
Brueckner is in jail in
Germany for drug dealing and is appealing against a conviction for the 2005 rape of a 72-year-old woman, also at Praia da Luz.
He has not yet spoken to investigators, who say they are convinced that he has committed other sex attacks.
Brueckner is a suspect in a string of unsolved crimes, reportedly including an attack on a 10-year-old British girl in Praia da Luz in 2005, one of a string of such incidents where young girls were targeted.
He is being investigated over the disappearances of Rene Hasee, who went missing at the age of six while on holiday with his family in Portugal in 1996, and Inga Gehricke, who was five when she vanished from a forest in the SaxonyAnhalt region of Germany on May 2 2015.