Citation

"Grâce à la liberté dans les communications, des groupes d’hommes de même nature pourront se réunir et fonder des communautés. Les nations seront dépassées" - Friedrich Nietzsche (Fragments posthumes XIII-883)

08 - AOÛ/SEP - Interviews Gonçalo Amaral



An interview in three parts with G. Amaral

IOL PortugalDiário – 03/04.08. 2008
IOL Portugal Diario a rencontré l'ex-commissaire Gonçalo Amaral. Ce lundi, l'affaire MC ne sera plus soumise au secret judiciaire et le dossier pourra être consulté par qui en aura fait la demande. IOL PortugalDiário pose à GA quelques questions dont l'objectif est d'essayer de faire la lumière sur certains aspects d'enquête très tôt mise en question.


Q - In your book, you write that you believe that Maddie died in the apartment, on the 3rd of May. When did you form the conviction that the child was dead?
A - It was with the dogs' work. That was when we were most convinced.


Q - But when did you sum "two plus two"?
A - That is part of the investigation work and the logics of the investigator. He joins things throughout time. There was atypical behaviour from the witnesses right away, which then transforms into indicia.Then one realises that people are lying. How can anyone who has the obligation to cooperate with the police, not do so?! All the person wants is to receive information and all that the person says is a lie?! Then it was necessary to understand why they lied. Were they afraid of the police? Of its reaction? Of the exposure and abandonment of the children? But when we asked, they said no, and insisted that the little girl had been abducted. This immediately caused strangeness and suspicion.

Q - According to your book, the body was preserved and you have already stated that you suspect it was frozen. If it were so, were could it have been hidden ?
A - Any investigator knows that when there is a group of people that is on holidays, foreigners or not, it is necessary to discover what means they had available to, for example, move the body. But the McCanns and their friends, at that point in time, only knew the route between the beach and the resort. To us, taking into account how little they knew the area, it would be normal that if they did anything, they would move towards the beach. Later on there is the Irish family, which guarantees that they saw a man walking towards the beach, carrying a child. It was something that matched our suspicions.

Q - Does that mean that from your point of view, the body may have remained on the beach?
A - Yes. But how long was it there for? It is unknown. It is true that the area was searched by the dogs. But some people say that the smell of salted water may lead the dogs not to indicate where the body was. There is also the possibility that the body was taken to another location on that very same night. It is materially possible. The body may have been moved three or more times.

Q - In your book, you also mention political and diplomatic pressures. Was the PJ ever contacted by the British government?
A - There was an intervention from the British government, even though it was somewhat clumsy. Mainly from the present Prime Minister, Gordon Brown. He spoke with Kate and with the English authorities that were involved in the investigation. And he also spoke with José Sócrates [Portuguese Prime Minister]. As far as I know, he never spoke directly with the PJ.

Q - But where did the alleged power of the couple, which you have been suggesting, come from?
A - On the first night, a dossier about the family was requested, which the English authorities never sent. It was said that they were connected to commissions that emitted opinion reports on nuclear issues, but none of that was ever confirmed officially. Connections to political parties were also mentioned.

Q - Did the British police send information about the McCanns and their friends?
A - No. They never sent the information that we requested. In fact, they did send only once, financial information. They stated that the couple had a mortgage and that there was no knowledge of any credit or debit cards. How didn't they have any? The registration of the rental car mentions the card numbers. Concerning the other members of the group, the information was also only that.

The former inspector speaks about what could have been done in the investigation and says that making Murat an arguido was not a mistake.

Q - The PJ's report dismisses the Smiths' testimony, due to the hour at which they say they saw the person with the child…
A - It cannot be that way, because nobody knows for sure at what time the things happened. The reconstruction was not made, therefore it is impossible to know for certain. The employees do not state that Gerry McCann was in the restaurant. They only say that people were sitting down and getting up from the table. Their testimony [Smith] is very credible. The way that the person walked, the clumsy manner in which the child was held. It is nothing that sounds invented. Is it evidence? Certainly not. It is information that has to be worked further.


Q - When you were removed from the case, they were planning to return to Portugal. But they desisted from the diligence…
A - The family should have come to Portugal and they didn't. It was not done on purpose, but a person cannot be left waiting to be heard over five months. That allowed for, according to what I have heard, the Irish family to be contacted and the target of coercion. Several people went there and they were not from the police. He even had to get himself a lawyer to try to get things into order. Before the police arrived to hear them, several persons had tried to speak to them. And they were not the only ones.


Q - In the book "Maddie Truth of the Lie" you mention a Polish lead and you say that it is a loose end… 

A - Nobody cares about that. We should have gone there or made a rogatory letter. They (Polish police) misunderstood the goal. They went looking for the child and we asked for an intervention to control them first. The issue was the photographs. The man never let go of the camera. We wanted to know what photographs were on the camera and if maybe there was one of Maddie.

Q - Despite your theory that the girl died on that evening, wouldn't there be a possibility that this couple "dispatched" the child within a few hours?
A - That is already speculation. We inspected the apartment where they were staying. Blood was even found inside the apartment and it was not Maddie's. We cannot forget that when we intervene, they are not in Portugal anymore.

Q - Could you have gone further with this couple?
A - We could. And if they were here in Portugal we could have done even more. But then the route of the investigation takes us elsewhere.

Q - Was it a mistake to make Murat an arguido?
A - No, it was not. A mistake would have been if we had not acted in the manner that we did and he would always remain a suspect without being able to defend himself. Now he has even received compensation. Have you noticed that nobody has requested the instruction of the process? He could have done that.

Q - Did the Joana case contribute to your removal?
A - It cannot have contributed. The national director knows that the issue are two social psychopaths – considered by the IML [national institute for forensic medicine] – that lie. The issue is my word and the word of a psychopath.

Q - May the noise of the case have had some influence?
A - When the first news came out I called for the attention of the director in Faro. What I said at that time was: maybe it's best for the process to leave Portimão, or for me to step aside from the investigation.

Q - Did you consider the possibility of leaving the Maddie case?
A - I did. And the feedback that I got was that I had full support.

Q - Don't you regret that you did not go to the location [on the night of the events]?
A - There are several ways to coordinate. And one of them is over the phone. No, I have no regrets.
 
Q - Don't you think that the result might have been different?
A - It is possible. At least there would have been someone, and I have a good memory, who would remember how they were dressed that evening.

IOL PortugalDiário allowed its readers to ask questions from the former PJ inspector Gonçalo Amaral. Among several that were received, here are the ones that were chosen by the editor.

Q - Could the tests have been made at another laboratory, like for example the FBI's? (question from Michael Williams)
A - That is another group decision. And it is decided in order to somehow compromise the other side. There was already that "bad posture", let's put it that way, from the English tabloids. The idea was for them to be compromised with the results. But yes, it could have been done at another lab, it didn't even need to go to the United States, there are some very good ones in Europe.

Q - Were the diligences the same in the cases of Joana and Maddie? (question from Luís Nogueiro)
A - The first diligences were the same.

Q - How do you comment on the statements from the former President Jorge Sampaio? (question from Fernando Moura das Neves)
A - I think it is a concern. Deep down, he is not against the publication of the book. Maybe what he meant is that it was not necessary to go this far.

Q - Was anything done about the church where the McCanns spent so much time and to which they had the key? (identified reader)
A - There were never any motives to question the Catholic church. There is no indice that points towards the child being there, at least up to the moment when she was transported in the car. Even because there are no freezers there, or cold spots that would allow for the body to be kept at that location.

Q - Was no cadaver odour or other indicia ever found on the father's clothes? (identified reader)
A - No. We don't know what he was wearing on the night of the disappearance. If it was him who was seen carrying the child, those clothes may even not exist anymore. He went to London and he might have washed it. As a matter of fact, we never knew what anyone of the group was wearing on the evening of the facts.

IOL PortugalDiário remembers that the process of the disappearance of Maddie was archived and that Kate and Gerry McCann and Robert Murat, stopped being arguidos on the 21st of July. Maddie's parents have made it known that they intend to sue Gonçalo Amaral, following the publication of the book "Maddie: Truth of the Lie".


 
Gonçalo Amaral interview
'El Mercurio' – 10.08.2008

Portuguese Gonçalo Amaral, ex-Chief Inspector on the case, insists on his theory of 2007:
"There is strong evidence that Maddie is dead"
Traces of blood and of a body detected by dogs in the belongings, flat and car occupied by the couple were part of the proof collected during the period of time when Gonçalo Amaral was in charge of the search for Maddie.
Last October, one month after the McCanns were declared suspects, he was removed from the case – "without any explanation" he says – and two weeks ago he published the book "Maddie: The Truth of the Lie", wherein he considers it proved that the British girl died and that her parents are lying.

Q - Who supports your theory that Gerry and Kate McCann are the guilty parties in Madeleine’s disappearance?
A - In September 2007, the investigation, Portuguese and British police, reached the conclusion that Maddie had died and that the parents were responsible and were involved in the crimes of hiding a body and simulating a kidnapping and potentially the crime of abandonment.

Q - You have said that the child died when she fell from a sofa – why are you so sure of this?
A - First of all, there is strong evidence that Maddie is dead. When I left the case, the investigation was pointing at the sofa, due to the cadaver odour and blood tracked on the floor behind this piece of furniture.

Q - Which are the clues that indicate that the McCanns simulated a kidnapping?
A - The thesis of the kidnapping was based upon two issues. The first, the testimony of Kate's friend Jane Tanner, who said she saw a man carrying a child, while none of the other witnesses mentioned this fact.

Q - However, one of the suspects was the man recognized by Tanner, Robert Murat.
A - I involved him because of his behaviour. Later, Tanner said she recognized him during that night. And also according to statements from other friends in the group holidaying at Praia da Luz.


The second issue…
That Maddie's mother is the only person who says that the window was open. When she calls to the other members of the group, she goes out leaving her twins, exposing them once again, to danger. Further proof is Kate's finger prints that describe the movement when she opened the windows – we know that the window was cleaned the previous day -. However, Kate says she never opened the window. And most importantly, there were no signs of breaking in.

Q - You have been under pressure from the McCann family lawyers.
A - I felt strong pressure from the British press. I think that nobody has ever seen such a tendentious campaign such as this one, with the sole purpose of denigrating the Portuguese police and myself.

Q - After publishing the book, have you received any threats?
A - Before publishing it, I received some warnings. Afterwards, these became legal threats. In any case, I am not afraid, because this book presents only data and facts.

Q - This week, the McCann's accused the Judicial Police of having withheld crucial information at the time you were Director, regarding a witness who said she had seen Madeleine last June.
A - It appears that the McCann family is playing their part defending the thesis of a kidnapping. The Dutch police evaluated this evidence, which proved to be ridiculous. We are aiding the marketing of a kidnapping which, obviously, does not fit within a modern law system.

Q - Do you believe that what happened that night was an accident?
A - When I left the investigation, all evidence was leading us in that direction.




Focus magazine – João Vasco Almeida and Frederico Duarte Carvalho 13.08.2008

The inspector of the McCann case demolishes the abduction theory: "The sightings are marketing". He explains, for the first time, what remains to be done in order to find the body
Gonçalo Amaral has already sold 140 thousand copies of his book 'Maddie: The Truth about the Lie'. The former coordinator of the investigation into the case that shocked the country explains his theory to Focus.

Focus – A newspaper reported that your book could be summed up as "murder, the dog wrote", given the fact that it was the cadaver odour and the blood that were found that led you to sustain the theory that Madeleine McCann died. What do you actually know beyond the dogs?
Gonçalo Amaral – That comment only reveals the ignorance of the person who wrote it. The technique of residue collection using special dogs like these, CSIs, is usual in England, in the United States and it has already led to more than 200 condemnations. The laboratory where the samples [of blood, cadaver odour and DNA from Maddie] were analysed has corroborated these experts' work.

F – It has corroborated it, but it does not specify that they belong to Maddie McCann.
G.A. – They can only match that from Madeleine McCann, because the lab had the twins' DNA and it was not a match. Those are 15 out of 19 markers that match.

F – What else sustains the theory?
G.A. – There is evidence from indicia, which is possible in this country, as long as the prosecutor possesses the conviction and the elements that indicate that, in court, there will be a condemnation. The Public Ministry has to value this evidence that was collected. This time, the Public Ministry considered that the indicia are not sufficient and archived the process.

F – And what are those indicia that you understand as sufficient?
G.A. – The atypical behaviour of the parents: The fact that the lady says that she had three children sleeping in one room, that she arrives and one is missing, the window is open, she mentions it's a cold night, the shutter is up… and she goes away, leaving two children asleep, with a possible abductor around. I know that [the reports from the PJ and from the Public Ministry] didn't give any relevance to the contradictions and didn't expose the falsehoods and the false testimonies that exist there from all the persons who intervened. That, deep down, is the evidence that indicates that everyone is lying and those lies cannot be understood.

F– And who took the child from her bed?
G.A. – That is the question that we were investigating on the 2nd of October 2007, when I left. From that moment on, little investigation was carried out in that apartment. The parents should have come over for a reconstruction and they didn't. That was necessary to understand what happened.

F – Which was…
G.A. – The death of the child in the apartment. The Public Ministry even mentions homicide. The abduction theory has been dismissed due to everything that has been made public.

F – How do you defend the "accidental" death?
G.A. – There is indicia behind the sofa [of the McCanns' living room]. The sofa is under a window that looks onto the street, which is three or four metres high. It is normal behaviour, and justice deals with normal behaviour, that the parents would have moved the sofa away from the window, given the fact that they had small children and alone at home. The window was easy to open and the shutters were not functioning…

F – But why "accidental"?
G.A. - I don't say it's accidental. Up to that moment, we could only reach an accidental death, because we had not worked on the rest yet. We had yet to understand what had happened there. Cadaver odour and blood from the child appear next to the sofa. Death has presumably taken place there. There are no doubts that it is a death and that it took place on that spot. We are not going to say that the mother did this or that, that would really be speculating, the only hypothesis is the accidental death. In the continuation of the investigations is where we could go further or not.

F – You said that the mother can't be accused of having done this or that… How far can you deduct?
G.A. – As far as we could deduct on the 2nd of October. I believe, and so did my colleagues in the investigation, that if we had continued into the same direction of the investigation, we might eventually have gone further. We might even have reached a point where we dismissed any suspicion concerning the parents. Investigations that only go half the way is what leaves things as they are now.

F – Are Madeleine McCanns' parents responsible for their daughter's death?
G.A. – No. There is a neglect in the guard [of the children]. There are no doubts that those children were not safe, because if they were, one of them wouldn't have disappeared. Now, saying that "the responsibility of the death belongs to…" We had to understand, to collect data about what happened from there on. The reconstruction is essential. I did not understand, but I accepted the decision from a hierarchical team that I was part of, why the reconstruction was not done right away. The possibility of trying to make a new reconstruction was opened, but the arguidos had already left Portugal. A thing like this is only done with arguidos. The ideal is to have everyone, but even only with the couple, that were arguidos at that point in time, the reconstruction could have been carried out.

F – And with actors?
G.A. – No. It would be enough to tell them: 'You say that you did this and that, then do it, where did you enter, were you having dinner, weren't you having dinner, what did you order for dinner…? Where did you touch and where didn't you?' All of this. It was important for Kate and Gerry McCann to come over, but the Irish witnesses could also come…

F – Those who say that they saw Gerry McCann carrying a child, down the street, on the night of the disappearance.
G.A. – Yes, those who assert that they saw, with a certainty of seventy, eighty percent, Gerald McCann carrying a child, walking in the street, it was already night-time.

Focus – You suggest that the little girl was frozen or conserved in the cold. How do you reach that?
G.A. – There is a bodily fluid, inside a car boot, above an "embaladeira" [note: metallic piece of the car that reinforces the lower part of the doors], from a child that presumably died on the 3rd of May. The car was rented 20 days later and was even new. It had been rented two or three times. Taking into consideration the circumstances of the climate, the temperature, the decomposition of a body… A body, in order to leak a fluid in that manner, a body with more than a month of decomposition had to be preserved.

F – Did it have to be close by?
G.A. – And why?

F – It could have been taken to Lisbon, Oporto, Badajoz…
G.A. – That was what we were taking care of at that time. The body could have been moved, but nobody knows when the body was transported in the car. The car ran several kilometres [around 3000, according to the process]. And given the fact that it is not known when the body was transported, according to the analysis of the fluids, we have to attend to where the car went through. The McCann couple and their relatives. For example, the relatives later state that they transported garbage, a package with meat from the supermarket, but the dogs can tell those things apart very well.

F – There is a contradiction in the valuation of the dogs' evidence.
G.A. – What happens is that the Public Ministry devalues it. In Portugal, we are all very skeptical towards this form of collecting indicia.

F – You state that you have not told everything that you know.
G.A. – And I haven't.

F – Why?
G.A. – Because I am a jurist, too. Let's see how the situation evolves.

F – And how can the situation evolve?
G.A. – The things that are missing are important in terms of the investigation, but they are ours… When it is said: these are your convictions… This is the understanding of a work team and even with the English police. And with documents. It's this kind of thing, for any action that may be coming. I don't believe, but who knows.

F – Does the English police agree, then, with that "understanding" about what you are saying?
G.A. – The work with the English police went very well. Then, certainly due to a mere coincidence, when the McCann couple leaves, all the English policemen leave as well…

F – You are convinced that someone made the process reach the hands of the English.
G.A. – I have that idea. I think that it even fits into that marketing campaign that is saying that the little girl is alive.

F – But don't you admit you may have doubts if there is a sighting?
G.A. – How many sightings have there been? Thousands. It's been a year. I stopped giving them a lot of importance on the day that the dogs confirmed the cadaver odour and the blood.

F – But you did start with the abduction hypothesis.
G.A. – If you look closely, right in my first document, the process mentions "abduction" followed by two question marks.

F – Then, you were thrown out…
G.A. - … that is a good expression…

F – … because of the reports that mention that you drink whiskey at lunch or because, in your work, you believe that there is a death?
G.A. – I don't drink whiskey. I drink beer at lunch time, if they had written that, they would have been right. Before I left, a weekly magazine says: "That person does not last beyond October as the head of the investigation." This happened a month or two before. And then I was given a speech like that one from the Attorney General: 'Not all investigations can be successful, or the authors of the crimes are not always discovered…' What may have hurt many people was my will to discover the material truth. And when I left, I was naturally closer to the truth. Two examples: Apart from our need to know who the friends of the McCann couple were, or if they knew anyone in Portugal, or who drove the car… if they eventually visited another apartment, if they used to meet someone, if they deposited someone… just for us to understand. Towards the end, I was informed that they had visited people at a villa in Praia da Luz. We went to check it out. Then, we were informed that the McCanns had visited an apartment block near the cemetery. And we were working on that, in order to confirm whether it was them or not. This was how we were trying to understand where the body was. And there are many persons who were not investigated, who were not in the process.

F – So are you going to let this entire case pass into the clear? Don't you at least want to be sued by the McCanns over everything that you leave in the air…
G.A. – So we can have a chat…? (smiles)

F – Are you going to sue the McCanns?
G.A. – No, as far as I know the McCann couple has not been speaking, the one who has been speaking is their press advisor, Mr Clarence Mitchell.


El Mundo – Silvia Taulés – 08.09.2008
* The apartment window always stayed shut, in spite of what Kate McCann said
* The girl might have fallen from the sofa; there could have been an accident because of the sleeping pill (sic: solution)

MADRID - He arrives late, with a certain 'star' look. His book (Esquilo, 2008), which will be officially presented on the 9th of September, has sold 120,000 copies in two weeks, a record in Portugal.
This, once begun, was unstoppable. Gonçalo Amaral, the visible head of an investigation that had thousands of people in suspense, tells why he remains insistent that it was Madeleine's parents, Kate and Gerry, who were responsible for her disappearance.


Question – You defend the theory that the parents are responsible for what happened to Madeleine McCann.
Answer – No. That is not in the book.

Q - However that is the theory that one can understand from reading it.
A - The summary also draws the same conclusion of the book.

Q - What are the points, that you believe, implicate the McCanns in the disappearance of their daughter?
A - The first thing is that they always defended the theory of the abduction. The mother said that the window of the room was open when she saw that the girl was not there. That is not correct, the window was closed and it is impossible for the girl to have left that way. We worked in the apartment and the window was closed. The parents have always argued that the girl was alive and they were the first to raise that Maddie could be dead.

Q - Other evidence?
A - The witnesses, there were several inconsistencies between their statements. Those that had dinner with the McCanns that night, their friends, invented the system of monitoring of the children. Why? There are many details that lead one to think about the culpability of the parents. There are two different lists about the monitoring system.

Q - You talk about inconsistencies in the statements about the monitoring system. The book also indicates that the nine people who had dinner together drank an average of eight bottles of wine, four of red and four of white. Isn't there the possibility that, between the disappearance and the alcohol, they were confused and that they did not remember the exact minutes in which they watched the children?
A - Okay, but then there is the window where we found Kate's finger prints, the mother of the girl. She said that she had never touched that window, and the cleaning lady assured that she had cleaned it on the previous day. And above all she said that the window was open when it was closed, it doesn't add up.
Q - Would it be possible that the mother or the father closed the window later, when returning to the room to search for the girl?
A - There are three people who say that they walked in front of the apartment and saw the window closed. They did not state that it was open? Which left? And there are other things. The mother says that she entered the room and the windows were open and the shutters were raised. No one else saw that. They simulated an abduction. They wanted us to say that someone entered the apartment with the intention of theft and when they saw the girl they killed her.

Q - That could have happened?
A – It is very complicated.

Q - Why?
A - Let us return to the people who passed in front of the apartment. Nobody saw anything strange. We investigated all the people who were involved in theft in the area. There were no unknown fingerprints in the apartment, of course they could have used gloves, that is true, but that could not be. In addition, the parents were the first to talk about death. And it is normal to think that their daughter could have died, but they have never admitted this in public. But I do not believe that the parents killed her.

Q - So, what are we talking about?
A - About an accident. The child could have fallen from a sofa, could have had an accident with Calpol (a sleeping pill (sic: solution)). We never had access to the girl's medical history, so we don't know whether she was healthy or not. We can only speculate. There are many very strange details.

Q - What do you think could have happened that night?
A - Both the British and Portuguese police, and even the prosecutor, who has already changed his mind, thought the same. We talked about death by others, not murder. In the room, blood and cadaver odour was found just below a window where a sofa was. The father was talking to a friend just outside that window for a while. The girl was not a heavy sleeper, that's what the parents said. Perhaps she heard her father and climbed to the sofa below the window. But the parents, for the girl not to go out, moved it away from the wall. Madeleine could have fallen.

Q - The girl falls from the sofa, dies with the blow and the parents find her.
A - The mother. It is the mother who finds the girl dead.

Q - But I am trying to think out an idea. How can a mother who has just found her daughter dead on the floor decide to hide the corpse? And how do you hide the corpse of a girl of nearly four years old so that no one can find it?
A – This is what we were investigating when I was dismissed from the case. I want to recall that there is an Irish man who claimed to have seen Gerry McCann with a girl in his arms, on his way towards the beach that same night. That testimony has been hidden. The dogs specialised in finding traces of blood and odour of cadaver, found both on the wall of the apartment and in the boot of the car that the McCanns rented 23 days later.

Q - Did Gerry McCann bury his dead daughter on the beach and then unearth her and put her in the boot 23 days later?
A - We do not know. The Irish [witness] that I have told you about saw Gerry on television with a child in his arms arriving in the UK and stated that it was the same image they had seen back in May in Portugal. That man spent two days without sleeping when he realised what he had discovered, but nobody has talked about them. And what one of the Irish has said is logical, a man with a child in his arms toward the beach.

Q - But this implies that the whole group, the nine people who ate dinner that night, had agreed to lie.
A - All of them. Because, if you do not know, the British law regarding negligence and child welfare is very strict. They left their children alone in the apartments. In the UK, if you leave a child alone for half an hour, you lose custody. After Madeleine's death, if it had been made public that it was an accident, everyone could have lost custody.

Q - So you consider that one of the reasons for the parents and friends to have lied is because they feared losing their children's custody.
A - Yes, yes. Nobody has opened legal proceedings for what happened, for the negligence, and we have asked the British authorities why. Have they answered? Of course not.

Q – Let's go to the day of the disappearance. 17h30 is the last time that neutral witnesses saw Maddie alive. At 20h30, her parents sit down, composed, at the table for dinner with friends. In the middle, Gerry even plays tennis. Is there enough time for the girl to fall from the sofa, killing herself, for the parents to realise, to decide to conceal her, for the siblings to be sleeping, and for them to arrive undisturbed and sit at the table as if nothing had happened? Even more, for them to sit down at the table after having convinced the rest of the group that they mustn't report the death of the girl?
A - In those three hours there are inconsistencies between witnesses. Some said that the checks lasted half an hour, others said 30 seconds...

Q – It is obvious that they contradict each other, but did they have time to do everything you say they did?
A - Yes, of course they had time. Some say that Gerry had a strange behaviour at the table.

Q – Did they?
A – They said that he spoke too much, gesticulated a lot, quite the opposite from the previous days. For me this is a very real hypothesis.

Q - You have a long career as an investigator, years in which you have faced criminals and innocents. What do you see when facing the McCanns?
A - They are two persons with much fear. I do not know if they fear to be discovered or fear the police of an unknown country.

Q – It was said that Kate was very cold. But I've seen her cry.
A - So did I. She is not cold. There was a moment, in a meeting with them, when we set out the sofa theory. Kate put her head down, looking distant, and, after a few seconds, she looked up again as if nothing had happened. She looked like she was escaping from the role that she was interpreting.

Q - When you raised the hypothesis that the girl might have died after falling off the sofa, did Kate McCann answer?
A - She did not answer, she just dropped her head for a moment, as if she was about to faint. She had an emotional collapse that lasted just a moment.

Q - And Gerry McCann?
A – He is a very strong person, dominant. He's a surgeon, a man capable of making decisions very quickly. That was good for him to be able to decide over Madeleine. If you have to hide the body, you must decide quickly. And it could only be hidden on the beach, and you have to take her on foot. This is where the statements from the Irish witness is important, the one that no one has taken into account.

Q - What is your opinion?
A - To me, Gerry hid Madeleine's body on the beach. And after a few days he moved her with his car. We work following this lead. Trying to find out the date of the switch, some details, but we were on the way. The Irish [witness] was about to arrive in Portugal, but everything was delayed too much, he even received external pressures. In the end, he didn't testify for the Police.

Q – They [McCanns] have appeared in all the media to announce the disappearance of their daughter and if it ends up that they have done it, what are they, psychopaths?
A – No, they are human. If the McCanns admit that their daughter is dead, they can no longer collect money from the Maddie fund, and that's a lot of money, over one million pounds. That's why they say that the girl was abducted.

Q - What if they do not want to lose hope? It all seems very morbid. 
A - It is. If they admit that she is dead they will lose their style of life. They are human, not psychopaths.

Q - You said that the girl was frozen.
A - For there to be vestiges in the boot of the car rented 23 days later, they must have preserved the corpse in some way. I believe that when they put it in the boot, with the heat of those days in the Algarve, a similar situation happened with that of shopping bags, which melt, and then the water is transferred to the car.

Q – Couldn't the traces be transferred from the room to the parents clothes and after to the car?
A - But if you have blood on your clothes it is because you've seen it. And the blood that the dogs found was washed blood, it was remains not clear spots.

Q - Neither you nor Alípio Ribeiro (former director of the Judicial Police), nor Olegário Souza (former police spokesman), are still on their posts. You have even pre-retired.
A - There were too many pressures. The McCanns have many contacts and nobody was interested in knowing the truth.

Q - Is it the British Empire against Portugal?
A - Yes, it seems so.

TRACES OF DNA IN THE CAR'S BOOT
The Scotland Yard dogs detected, in the boot of the car rented by the McCanns 23 days after the disappearance of the girl, traces of DNA which could belong to the girl; for the Portuguese Police more evidence, that Maddie was not abducted but that she died in the Ocean Club apartment.


Note: Mr Amaral does NOT actually describe Calpol as a 'sleeping pill'. It is El Mundo who describe it as such: Firstly, in the headline teaser and secondly, in brackets to describe to Spanish readers what Calpol is, after Mr Amaral has simply mentioned it by name.