17 - Mai 02 - Searching for MMC (SkyN)

Searching for Madeleine - Martin Brunt (Sky News) - 03.05.2017




1ère partie

Martin Brunt : It's a case that has shocked, puzzled and divided the public like no other.

Kate MC : Please, please, do not scare her...

MB : For 10 years I've been following an investigation which many argue was flawed from the start.

Alan Johnson (ex-HO Secretary) : MMC deserved a proper police investigation.

MB : We talked to senior police officers who have been closely involved.

Jim Gamble (ex-director of ex-CEOP) : The only side I'm on is the side of MMC.

Pedro do Carmo (directeur-adjoint de la PJ) : We need to know, not only because the family needs to know but very much because we want to know what was done the right way and what should have been done in a different way.

MB : 10 years on we can now reveal details of a secret government report. It lays bare the failures of all the agencies involved in the search for Madeleine.

Colin Sutton (ex-DCI de Scotland Yard) : I'm not certain that it was investigated properly at the beginning and I still don't think it's been investigated properly now.

MB : It's 10 years since MMC vanished and I'm still fascinated by the mystery of what happened to her. I've come to Vienna to meet a man who once convinced Madeleine's parents he could find her.

(Échange de saluts) Dany Krügel also wants to hand over to me something of Madeleine's he needs to give back to her parents. Mr Krügel is a former South African police officer. This is the bizarre gadget he invented. He claimed it linked DNA science with satellite technology. Simply insert a hair sample and it can locate a missing person, alive or dead.

Dany Krügel : I've met Gerry and Kate in Praia da Luz, to assist them. I said I developped this technology, it's early stages yet but I would do my best.

MB : It was 2 months after Madeleine had disappeared and the Mcs were desperate. This is what Kate wrote later in her book : Desperation does strange things to people. We are scientists and we don't believe in hocus pocus or crackpot inventions. Since the investigation appeared to have ground to a halt it was worth trying anything. What else did we have ?

DK : Once Gerry came back with this specific brush and as you can see there's quite a lot of hair samples on the brush. We were looking for Madeleine, I had the first signal at 9 meters from the beach (rather inaudible), I knew she was there, so I did my findings I showed the area to the police and I gave them the map saying this was the area of priority to search.

MB : Police never searched the area Mr Krügel identified. 
Ce n'est pas exact, c'est même Mark Harrison qui a joué les avocats du diable, pourtant sans aucune conviction. Voir son rapport.

(s'adressant à DK) This is, you've read this, it is Kate's book, she says the police discussed it with the professor who described your machine as pseudo science fiction, this was the professor in Belfast. Logic, it seems, often flies off the window when you're under pressure and desperate for a result, any result.

DK : I know my findings, I know Madeleine was there, must probably still be, I've got nothing to prove for anybody, I've had a lot of successes, I've found a lot of bodies.

MB (reading) : There's one page on the Internet that says Dany Krügel is a visionnary real fraudster. Which is it ?

DK : Martin, I think there's one thing in life : the truth will stay and the lie will die.

MB : After 10 years the brush was on its way back to Madeleine's parents. Dany Krügel's involvement in the investigation illustrates some of the early themes of the MMC's story. The oddballs which attached themselves to the case, the desperation of the MCs to cling to anything that might help, the couple's disillusion with the police and the continuing fascination with the fate of a little girl who appears to have vanished into thin air.

MMC was nearly 4 when she disappeared from the family's holiday apartment in Portugal in 2007. Her parents, Kate and Gerry MC, both doctors, had taken her and her younger twin siblings for a week stay. Praia da Luz is a large village on the Algarve coast, an hour's drive from the airport at Faro. It's a quiet resort, popular mainly with British, German and Dutch holiday makers. The MCs had rented apartment number 5A, a ground floor corner property in the Ocean Club complex. The family travelled with 7 friends and their friends's young children.

We asked the former Scotland Yard cold-case expert to go over the investigation with us. Colin Sutton brought two notorious criminals to justice, serial killer Levi Bellfield and Delroy Grant, the so-called night stalker rapist who attacked over a hundred elderly women in their homes.

Let's look at the last few hours, this is the last known photograph of Madeleine, taken around 2:30 in the afternoon, she's sitting by the pool in the holiday complex. Later, at around 8:30, her parents joined their friends for dinner euh... within the complex, at the Tapas restaurant. They'd left the children asleep in one room in the apartment, at the top of this map, Gerald MC once said early on it was akin to sitting in your garden at home on a summer's evening, having dinner with the children asleep upstairs, it wasn't quite like that, was it ?

CS : It's about 80 yards as the crow flies to the Tapas restaurant, there are shrubs there alongside the alley, there's no real way of monitoring that apartment from the Tapas Bar.

Il est incontournable que les enfants n'étaient à portée ni d'oeil ni d'oreille.

MB : According to the MCs and their friends, every half an hour or so somebody from the group was going to check on their own children. Now the MC children were all in the same room which was the front bedroom of the apartment.

CS : The patio doors were left shut but unlocked and then the journey throught here to the children's room and Madeleine was in this bed here, the twins and the cots in the middle, the important thing there is that when Kate came up to look, this door which had been left just ajar was wide open.

MB : Yes it was 10 pm when Kate made that final journey back to the apartment, it was her turn to go check on the kids, crucially, and there was no sign of Madeleine.

L'heure "22h" n'est pas confirmée par d'autres témoignages.

If you look at the crime scene photo here, which was taken shortly after on that night, you see Madeleine's bed here, you see her pink cuddle car sort of security toy, there you see the cots where the twins had been and then you see the window and the window is important as well because Kate MC said that when she went in, she found the window, which had been shut, was open and a shutter had been raised. 

Personne d'autre que les MCs n'a vu cette fenêtre et ce volet (roulant) ouverts.

Sky News infos : Just hearing the search is underway for 3 year old British girl who has gone missing in the Algarve area, Portugal.

Journalist Dan Mason : She's named Madeleine or Maddie, though a few police and police dogs have been seen, there doesn't seem to be much activity at the moment.

MB : Let's look at the initial police response in that golden hour. What exactly does the "golden hour" mean ?

CS : It's really the initial opportunities to find intelligence information, look through systems and see what action can be taken to resolve whatever it is as quickly as possible. I mean that things that are done or are not done often can have a very large impact on the way the investigation of the incident proceeds thereafter.

MB : Particularly the collection of forensic evidence ?

CS : I can well understand that the initial officers that responded to it will see as their priority to look for her, to try and find her, and they won't be thinking of forensic evidence, they won't be thinking major crime scene, they'll be thinking "let's find this little girl !".

MB : Local police, the GNR, did respond on the night and by the next morning there was a great deal of police activity.

CS : The GNR, the gendarmerie, they're kind of soldiers effectively who police through parts of Portugal, they are geared up to search for a missing child, but they're not geared up for a high-tech 21st century major crime investigation. It's a question of time, it's a question of how long that goes on and how long somebody has got grip of the situation you know, the supervisor leader who says "do you know what, you know, we've been searching now for 2 hours, we need to go back and make sure we preserve that scene because we could be looking at something much more long-term and much more serious here. We mustn't apply our standards in the UK too strictly to what goes on in other places, they have a different system, they have different police forces doing with different aspects of the law.

PdC : At least during the first moments after the disappearance of Madeleine MC, it was not really a criminal investigation, it was more a rescue operation and it was very much in everyone's mind the familu but also the police officers, neighours, anyone that attended the place and was looking for a child that was missing.

Fernando Pinto Monteiro (alors procureur général de la république) : When the investigation began, hours had already passed, I don't know if seven, eight, and this is enough for evidence to vanish. If she was abducted in those 6/7 hours, they had time to take her to Spain or put her in a plane or in a boat.

MB : It's accepted, not enough was done to collect vital evidence. That didn't happen for weeks. In fact the apartment was let out to others families twice before it was sealed off for a full forensic examination. 

Ce n'est pas vrai. La police scientifique et technique a commencé à travailler sur la scène du crime vers 1h30, après avoir demandé aux gens qui s'y trouvaient de sortir. La collecte de prélèvements divers a continué le lendemain, l'appartement ayant été mis sous scellé et confié à deux gendarmes dès le départ de la PJ, vers 4:30.L'appartement a été rendu à sa propriétaire le 11 juin, après quoi 4 familles y ont habité avant l'arrivée des chiens britanniques le 31 juillet.

In the first investigation, the Portuguese took the lead. 

SY ne manque jamais de le dire : la juridiction de l'affaire revient au Portugal. 
Back home, Leicestershire Police coordinated the response, but numerous UK agencies became involved once the search for Madeleine escalated into a criminal investigation.

JG : From Leicester Constabulary to CEOP through all the different Police Officers Associations right up to the Home Office and the Home Secretary himself, everyone was wanting to do something and to help. I think that in the chaos that followed, we lost some ground.

MB : The early confusion was detailed in a secret report ordered by the Home Office and we've got a copy of it. It reveals an astonishing catalogue of mistakes, accusations and growing distrust. What do you make of it ?

CS : I think we say in there that the various agencies and parties that were involved in the early parts of the investigation had different priorities and they sometimes competed against each other and I think we will see that they hampered the investigation from the very start.

2è partie

MB : It's been 10 years since Madeleine MC vanished without a trace from...

(en reportage) : In the last few minutes we've seen Mr and Mrs McCann been driven away by what we think were police officers.

The first Portuguese investigation got off to a poor start and it never recovered. Early on tensions grew between the MCs and those who were trying to help them.

Olegário Sousa (porte-parole de la PJ) : Things are not equal in legal system in the UK and in Portugal. It's not my fault, it's not your fault.

 MB : I've got hold of a secret government report that details the problems that arose from the beginning, not just in the Portuguese investigation, but in the reaction of the British authorities too. The then home secretary Alan Johnson commissioned the scoping report in 2009. It led to the involvement of Scotland Yard.

Martin Brunt a déjà mentionné en 2014 ce  rapport "secret", commandité par Alan Johnson à l'instigation de Jim Gamble en 2009, puis remis à Theresa May qui a succédé à l'Intérieur en mai 2010. Le rapport n'étant pas une priorité, il n'y avait aucune raison, avant d'en prendre connaissance, de solliciter SY. 
AJ : With due respect to the Leicestershire Police the way the Constabulary is working you know...  there's the Metropolitan which is huge and has huge resources and huge expertise and there is the rest. So Gerry and Kate McCann felt that Leicestershire just didn't have the wherewithal to conduct this problem properly.

MB : The Home Secretary turned to child protection specialist Jim Gamble to advise him. Was it worth getting Scotland Yard involved ?

JG : I suggested that we carried out a scoping review to identify whether there were any investigative opportunities that had been missed and deliver a better investigation. Officials euh.. were set against it I think that's fair to say..

AJ : So much of this had been haphazard in the way it had been investigated, particularly those early Portuguese investigations, that actually MMC deserved a proper police investigation and she hadn't had one up to that stage.

MB : The confidential report said that relationships were strained by cultural procedural and legal differences and the UK was accused of acting like a colonial power.

JG : That was about resentment..

MB : About the attitude of British ...

JG :  The kind of, you know, hierarchical approach, perhaps a condescending approach.

MB : It was in that context that the rest of the initial Portuguese investigation played out. In the first week police chased false leads and mistaken sightings, the MCs held numerous impromptu news conferences.

GMC (reading) : Words cannot describe....

MB : The search area expanded around the village and beyond. On the 11th day, police formally questioned Robert Murat, apparently on little more than a journalist's warning about his odd behavior. He was later cleared of all suspicion. They also interrogated his girlfriend, Michaela W and a business associate named Sergei M. Robert M was helping the police as a translator. He's an expat, he was living at the time 150 yards up the street.

CS : Historically, people who have kind of inserted themselves into the center stage of the investigation have been viewed with some suspicion by the police and rightly so, in some cases...

MB : The next morning, when he was released, he wouldn't appear on camera, but he told me that he was innocent, he said that he felt he was been made a scapegoat and his real fear was that this was going to ruin his life and of course he was eventually let go with no further action.

CS : Yes.

MB : As the search of Madeleine went on, her parents put their faith in God, the village church became an almost daily refuge. In Fatima, Portugal's holiest site, they prayed at the shrine of the Virgin Mary. In Rome they met the Pope, he blessed a photograph of Madeleine. Thousands of supporters tied yellow ribbons to await Madeleine's safe return. While all this was happening, Portuguese detectives were making a crucial error, according to the author (Jim Gamble) of the secret Home Office report : 

I was shocked first and foremost when the MCs went immediately under the Portuguese system considered suspects. That was the first critical mistake, it was unfair and for the investigators unfair with regard to the integrity of the forensic evidence that would be captured and unfair to the MCs themselves. Clear the ground beneath your feet first and foremost.

MB : According to the Home Office report, statistics suggest that in the majority of cases where very young children go missing and are later found dead, the family is involved. In addition to not questioning the MCs as suspects, the report says the UK team felt more could have been done by the Portuguese police to record quicker the details of all employees and there was a lack of confidence that enough work had been done around potential witnesses and suspects.

CS : One of the big holes in what went on in the investigation.. In these sorts of cases what you need to do, what you want to do is to snapshot the area. Leicestershire police, had it be the decision at the time, would have had reasonably easy access to all the British people that were either working at the complex or were there on holiday.

MB : Not looking properly at staff who were working at the complexe, set all the people you need to talk to..

CS : Particularly where you've got people who haven't got roots in the area, don't live nearby, but are there temporarily.

MB : It's easy to criticize the original Portuguese investigation, but is it entirely fair ?

JG : We looked at how could you compare and contrast what might happen on a sleepy night in Bournemouth if a Portuguese couple had lost a child, so we tried to compare it more like with like, but you know this isn't about being territorial but the Portuguese system didn't come up to the standards that we would expect. It simply didn't.

MB : Such criticism of the original Portuguese investigators by their British counterparts still irritates today.

PdC : Everyone that was involved in the investigation did their best and was very much committed in doing their job the best way they could.

FPM : Everyone did all they could in the investigation. Let me tell you, in the world there are millions and millions of cases that are never solved, it is difficult to solve the abduction of a child or a disappearance.

MB : Almost 2 months after Madeleine disappeared, a news report revealed a pact of silence. It said police were suspicious of the parents' involvement. The article in the weekly paper SOL said the MCs and their friends were thought to be hiding something. This was the first public indication of where the early investigation was focused. Portuguese police asked the British authorities to bring ober two specialist dogs, 

Ce n'est pas vrai, l'idée des chiens vient de Mark Harrison (expert en personnes disparues du NPIA, la police des polices d'alors) que la PJ avait appelé à l'aide en juillet 2007 après avoir pris connaissance du rapport du profiler criminel du NPIA, Lee Rainbow. À cette époque les OPJ avaient à peine conscience de l'existence de chiens "cadavre", maintenant les gendarmes en dressent.

one who detects dead bodies, the other traces of blood. The dogs reacted in the MC apartment and in the family's rental car which wasn't hired until 3 weeks after Madeleine disappeared. Forensic swabs were taken and sent to the UK for analysis. The leaked results or at least the Portuguese interpretation of them caused a sensation.

Il n'est pas moins intéressant de prendre en considération les endroits où les chiens n'ont pas alerté. Les chiens ont été déployés dans deux appartements occupés par les MC (l'un avant, l'autre après la disparition) et dans les trois appartements occupés par leurs compagnons de voyage. Les chiens n'ont alerté que dans l'appartement où Madeleine avait été vue vivante pour la dernière fois.

(reportage) : In the car the scientists have also found another, a second full match and police say that is the most damning evidence that's been returned by these forensic test results.

The dogs the forensic tests that followed, that was the turning point, wasn't it ?

CS : It was the turning point for the arrests, yes, certainly, but we need to remember that the dogs are there to indicate areas where proper forensic tests, evidential tests should be made. Dogs certainly in the UK are not used as evidential things, it's just indication to focus the search for forensic materials.

MB : 4 months after their daughter vanished, her parents were questioned and then released. Their formal status, arguido, meant they were suspects.

Avocat (sept 2007) : No charges have been brought against them...

MB : A devastating turn of events which did nothing for their poor relationship with the police. It simply got worse. According to the secret Home Office report, the MCs complained of a lack of clarity and communication with the Portuguese police, and they said they were left for hours waiting to speak to someone. They described the situation as inhumane, it led to a long-lasting distinct lack of trust between all parties, the MCs, the Portuguese police and the UK authorities. This criticism is that the Portuguese reject.

PdC : It was not a contest, it was not a show, so we weren't really looking for approval from anyone, we just wanted to do our job the best way we could.

MB : KMC describes in her book her struggle with the disappearance of her daughter and everything that followed.

KMC reading :  On the whole Gerry and I have managed to dig deep and remain focused, although the temptation to shout the truth from the rooftops has always been there. (There have been many times when I have struggled to keep myself together and to understand how such injustices have been allowed to go unchallenged over and over again). I have had to keep saying to myself: I know the truth, we know the truth and God knows the truth. And one day, the truth will out.

Entre parenthèses la partie du texte qui a été supprimée dans le documentaire. On se demande quelle est cette vérité que KMC voudrait crier sur tous les toits, mais on se demande surtout pourquoi elle ne le fait pas.

3è partie

MB : I'm Martin Brunt and for the past 10 years I've been reporting on the disappearance of MMC from her holiday apartment in Portugal. Her parents, Kate and Gerry, were questioned by detectives who suspected their daughter had died accidentally and they had disposed of her body. 48 hours later the MCs left Portugal and flex home to Leicestershire with their two younger children.

GMC (reading at arrival in Midlands airport) : (inaudible) return to the UK without Madeleine, it doesn't mean we're giving up her search for her.

MB : They were still suspects in that first Portuguese investigation, a position that would remain for another ten months. In July 2008, the investigation was closed. The MCs were told there would be no further action taken against them. 

Qui leur a dit cela ? Leur avocat Rogerio Alves ? C'était vrai, mais leur a-t-il dit que ce n'était pas un certificat d'innocence ou les a-t-il laissés dans le flou ou comprendre ce qui leur convenait ? Ils ont déclaré avoir fait traduire tout le dossier de la PJ et donc l'ordonnance de classement. L'ont-ils lue ? Elle dit clairement qu'ils ont manqué l'occasion de faire la preuve de leur innocence en ne participant pas à la reconstitution des faits de la nuit du 3/4 mai. Le documentaire de MB ne dit pas un mot sur l'échec de la reconstitution.

FPM : It took me a long time to close the case until finally I convinced myself that at the time there was no evidence at all.

PdC : In 2008, when it was closed, at this time that didn't mean that the PJ wasn't going to keep looking got information, keep looking for some kind of clue.

MB : According to the secret Home Office report, the MCs felt the original Portuguese investigation was inadequate and so they had to take matters into their own hands. The MCs sued the Leicestershire police because they felt they weren't telling them what was being done to find their daughter. The force eventually agreed to give them some information. The MCs had already been using a number of different private investigators. The confidential Home Office report reveals that the private investigators working for the MCs gathered a large amount of information which does not appear to have been shared fully with Portuguese or UK police. The report recommends the MCs are encouraged and persuaded to share this information. The document adds that it's "unusual" for private investigators and police to work together but, because of the "unique nature" of the case, it would be good to do so. 

The MC hired their investigators because for the best part of 3 years there was no official inquiry, but that changed in 2011, when Portuguese police decided to review their first investigation. 

Les MC ont engagé leurs premiers "privés" (Metodo 3) en septembre 2007, alors qu'ils étaient témoins assistés et que l'enquête criminelle se poursuivait (elle allait se poursuivre pendant plus de 10 mois).

PdC : We thought that after all those years it was time to just go back and look at it and to see if we had missed something.

MB : The Home Office report commissioned by Alan Johnson recommended that Scotland Yard get involved and that's what happened. First the Metropolitan Police reviewed the case and then launched their own investigation, Operation Grange, in 2013.

Les MC ont envoyé une lettre ouverte, publiée dans The Sun, à David Cameron pour le rappeler à ses engagements et demander un ré-examen du dossier. David Cameron a obtempéré en raison de la pression exercée par Rebekah Brooks, menaçant de critiquer Theresa May quotidiennement à la une. C'est ainsi que SY a été sollicité, les fonds provenant du Home Office.

AJ : However it was related to the Portuguese, you know, joint operation or whatever it be, SY was now putting an awful lot of resource and expertise into this.

Mark Rowley  : This case is unusual, it’s not in Scotland Yard’s remit to investigate crimes across the world normally. In this case, in 2011, the Portuguese and British prime ministers were discussing the case and agreed that Scotland Yard would help.

MB : Some detectives greeted it as a challenge, others considered it a poison chalice.

(s'adressant à CS) Colin, in 2010, your name was being talked about to head up the Scotland Yard investigation. What happened ?

CS : I did receive a call from a very senior Metropolitan police officer who knew me and said that it wouldn't be a good idea for me to head this investigation on the basis that I wouldn't be happy conducting an investigation where I was told where I could go and where I couldn't go, and things I could investigate and things I couldn't.

MB : What do you think your caller was getting at ?

CS : The Scotland Yard investigation was going to be very narrowly focused and that focus would be away from any suspicion of wrongdoing on the part of the MC and their Tapas friends.

MB : Now you're not saying that you were aware of any evidence against them and they had been ruled out by the Portuguese investigation, but why would it have been important for you to have included formally interviewing the MCs and their friends.

CS : If you are conducting a reinvestigation, it starts at the very beginning, you get all the accounts, all the evidence, all the initial statements and go through them and make sure they stack up and they compare (ils sont cohérents et font le poids).

MB : Detective Chief Inspector Andy Redwood led a Scotland Yard team of 29. They examined 40 thousand documents and identified 600 individuals of some interest. The new investigation came after a personal appeal by the MCs to the then Prime Minister, David Cameron.

Non, voir plus haut.

DC (July 2013) : They say that there is new evidence, new leads to follow new things to be done, it was a case that did shock and still shocks the nation.

MB : Scotland Yard began its investigation in July 2013. 3 months later detectives used the BBC's Crimewatch show to announce they had made a breakthrough. At the top of the program DCI Andy Redwood explained he was going right back to the start.

AR : We analyse and reassess everything, excepting nothing.

Il mentait donc alors, mais pour sauver la face de SY ou pour tromper le public ?

MB : But we have established that he didn't do that. We found Scotland Yard's original remit statement, it sets out its purpose like this : this will entail a review of the whole of the investigations which have been conducted into the circumstances of Madeleine MC disappearance. So far neutral language, but then it goes on to say it is to examine the case and seek to determine as if the abduction occurred in the UK. It appears that right from the start the British investigators had the same narrow focus that concerned Colin Sutton. They had accepted Madeleine was abducted and so her parents were never questioned formally.

MR : The parents' involvement, that was over the time by the recent investigation by the Portuguese that all the material we're happy that's completely dealt with, she wasn't old enough to make a decision, to set off and start her own life. However she left that apartment, she has been abducted. Après s'être dit satisfait de l'investigation des Portugais en fait d'exonération des MC, MR prouve le contraire en utilisant l'argument de l'âge ! Il n'est pas fréquent qu'un petit enfant prenne la décision de partir de chez lui, mais cela arrive.

MB : Unlike Scotland Yard, the Portuguese police believe there could be other explanations.

(to PdC) Do you accept that she was abducted ?

PdC : We don't know what happened and we have to be prepared to deal with different scenarios.

MB : A revelation made in BBC's Crimewatch program was about this picture (sketch de Tannerman). For a long time this artist's impression was thought to be vital evidence. The man was seen by one of the MC friends, Jane Tanner, carrying a child at 9:125 pm, 45 minutes before Madeleine was discovered missing. She didn't think anything of it at the time, but later believed she could have witnessed Madeleine's abduction. But Andy Redwood appeared to rule out the sighting all together.

AR : A night creche was operating from the main OC reception and 8 families had left 11 children in there and one particular family we spoke to they themselves believed that they could be the Tanner sighting. We're almost certain now that this sighting is not the abductor.

MB : So if our mystery man was picking his child up here at the night creche and Jane Tanner sees him walking across the top of this T junction going in that direction, that must mean that he's had to take a long route all the way round here and, if he's going in this direction, why didn't he just simply walk through one of the paths from there.

CS : We saw DCI Redwood there say "I'm almost certain that this man from the creche is the man in the sighting", I'm not convinced.

MB : Confusingly, despite being ruled out by the police, the drawing is still prominent on the official MC website and is the subject of an appeal for information. Scotland Yard focus then settled on a different suspect and 2 artists' impressions of a man seen carrying a child toward the beach at around 10:00 pm. The Scotland Yard investigation looked broadly at 2 theories, 1) a planned abduction. Witnesses told the police they'd seen a number of men acting suspiciously in the days before. Some of the men claimed to be charity collectors.

Authors Anthony Summers and Robin Swan researched the case for their book and highlighted the mystery charity collectors.

AS : A man or two men asked if they could have a contribution to an orphanage that they said was in a village nearby called Espiche. I've been to Espiche and it turns out that there is no orphanage there.

MB : A second SY theory was a burglary gone wrong, the idea that Madeleine had woken up and disturbed a thief who, instead of fleeing, had attacked her and carried her off. To the public it may sound unlikely, it certainly did to the Portuguese police, but not to their British colleagues.

AR :  In my experience, if you try to apply the rational logic of a normal person sat in their front room to what criminals do under pressure, you tend to make mistakes, so it was a sensible hypothesis, it’s still not entirely ruled out.

MB : But my sources in Portugal told me the burglary gone wrong theory pursued by SY was never considered seriously by Portuguese detectives. Portuguese and Scotland Yard had different suspects and we tracked down one of them.

4è partie

MB : Ten years on the police seems no nearer to solving the mystery of Madeleine's disappearance. I've been looking at what's gone wrong. A key source of evidence in any modern crime investigation is mobile phone data. In this case, according to the secret Home Office report, there was lots of it, but it was badly handled by Portuguese investigators. The report says "a vast amount of cell site data has been gathered.. There is no evidence to indicate that the data has been fully investigated or analysed.. The Portuguese should be encouraged to accept UK help".

(to Colin Sutton) How vital to the original police investigation would that have been a more thorough analysis of the mobile phone data ?`

CS : So it could have been very helpful indeed. You know mobile phone trafgfic analysis is vital to many, many investigations these days. There are 3 reasons for that, you know, if you get the opportunist who forgets to switch the phone off and so you have the data which shows that the criminal was present at the time or whatever. Secondly you've got the criminal who does understand and know about mobile phone data, he simply forgets to turn it off. And thirdly even if they do turn if off, sometimes that itself can be evidential, because if you've got somebody who's using their phone all day every day, not just for calls but for textos as well and suddenly there's a gap when they switched the phone off, the only time when they ever switch the phone off is when the crime happens, there's some evidential value in that too. It's led to some people I think they wanted to speak to.

MB : SY had four suspects, they were linked by the use of mobile phones, their backgrounds and their location on the night Madeleine disappeared. The Metropolitan Police asked the Portuguese to invite them and others to be interviewed in 2014. The four were questioned and made arguidos, suspects. José Carlos da Silva was one of them, he was a driver at the holiday complex when Madeleine vanished. He and the others were interrogated by the Portuguese police with questions supplied by SY.

MR : We had some descriptions to work with, and that led to us identifying amongst the 600, a group of people who were worth pursuing, (have they been involved in this activity, have they had a role in Madeleine going missing? Because what the hypothesis was, then) we’ve got some searches, we’ve worked with the Portuguese, they were spoken to, and we pretty much closed off that group of people.

Entre parenthèses, éliminé au montage.

MB : Another of those questioned was a Russian born computer specialist, Serguei Malinka. It was not the first time Mr Malinka had been questioned, he was interrogated soon after Madeleine vanished, but was never made a formal suspect then. He spoke to Sky News 10 years ago.

SM : They confirmed I'm a witness, not a suspect, so basically I'm just going to wait for investigation going on.

MB : The new Portuguese investigation focused on a series of sex attacks on young sleeping children at resorts along the coast. There were 3 here at Albufeira, 2 at Carvoeiro and another at Silves.

AS : In most cases the child involved was 8, 9, 10 years old, but in one case the child was just 3 years old. 

On aimerait une source pour une telle affirmation.

RS : There were some 50 odd files on sexual predators that have been forwarded to the Portuguese police by the British police that the British were not convinced had all been thoroughly investigated.

Depuis quand une victime, au lieu de porter plainte dans la juridiction où le délit a été commis, ne dit rien et, une fois dans son pays,  dépose plainte ? Depuis quand la police du pays de la victime fait-elle suivre la plainte, pour investigation, à la police auprès de laquelle la victime aurait dû déposer  ?

MB : A former OC waiter, Euclides Monteiro, was identified by the police as a suspect for the sex attacks and possibly for Madeleine's abduction. 

Il a été prouvé que EM n'avait jamais attaqué personne sexuellement.

PdC : We've thought at the time that there were enough reasons for us to believe that this could have been the work of one person and that one person could also have been responsible for Madeleine MC's disappearance.

MB : DNA tests eventually ruled out Mr Monteiro, but even before he'd become a suspect he was dead, killed in a tractor accident in 2009.

(to CS) : What this shows is that we've got two police forces working hundreds of miles apart and pursuing different suspects. 

CS : It's difficult for two adjacent UK police forces to have a joint investigation. When you multiply the differences over a language barrier, cultural differences and two different criminal justice systems, then I think you're always going to come up with a tension and then possibly with different results.

MB : What if Madeleine wasn't the victim of a crime ? What if she had simply woken up, wandered off and fallen into a roadwork trench, which was left open that night. Former RAF navigator John Ballinger who lives nearby had alerted the police to the possibility.

JB : The most likely thing if she had been in there was that she fell on the spoil and the whole lot slid down and she was covered by all the soil and things that had been excavated.

On ne sait pas où se trouve cette plaque d'égoût.

MB : Portuguese authorities insisted that all roadworks had been inspected the next morning before they were filled in. In June 2014, SY checked part of the sewage system nearby. For all theories Madeleine's parents cling to one simple fact : there is no evidence their daughter has come to any harm. It gives them hope that she is still alive.

KMC (BBC) : You have to keep going, especially when you've got other children involved. You know some of our subconcscious I think your mind and body just take over to a certain extent. One of our goals is still to find Madeleine and was to ensure that Sean and Amelie have a very normal happy and fulfilling life.

GMC : Before Madeleine, euh was taken, we felt we'd managed to achieve a little perfect nuclear family of five and that was for a short period and then you have a new normality and unfortunately for us the new normality is a family of four.

MB : They are not alone in their hope, children missing for longer than Madeleine have been found and brought home. The campaigner who more than anybody has kept the MCs from complete despair is Ernie Allen. He's the former president of the US National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and he knows that miracles can happen0,.

EA : It is realistic to think that MMC is still alive. Somebody knows and if we can find that one person, even 10 years later, who has information they were not willing to share 10 years earlier for whatever reason, and ask them to come forward now, at a minimum we can provide some sense of justice for Gerry and Kate MC.

MB : There is no British equivalent of Ernie Allen's missing child center, but the Home Office report did recommend one to avoid the confusion and ill feeling that so dogged the first Madeleine investigation.

JG : So in a national center of that source, you would have officers from different European forces, you would be working with them on the ground training, applying the lessons, building the bridges, so that actually when something happened we were moving as a collective, as opposed to individuals in a team sport.

AJ : Nothing's happened in the ensuing 10 years that suggests that if it happened again there'd be any better, more coordinated response.

MB : Today there is little to remind anybody of the tragedy that happened here. At the village church prayers are said for Madeleine every week, but gone are the photographs, the posters, the appeals for information? There's graffiti, but it's negative.

Paul Luckman : What these people will say "why did they leave their children alone, we don't do that, we take our kids with us to the restaurant", it's not fair but it's the way that it is, people look up to a portion of blame, they're trying to understand, there is nothing, we don't know what happened.

MB : Over the years, Kate and Gerry MC have been the target of extraordinary internet abuse, some of which includes death threats. Recently the picture of the couple and their children eating at a restaurant was shared on social media. It prompted a range of comments suggesting spitting in their food and throwing beer in their faces. The police have never taken action against any of their online attackers.

JG : I hope those people that have said and done things that were cruel and unkind and unnecessary in the absence of evidence reflect on the part they have played, including a legacy of vile on the Internet.

MB : It's difficult to understand the continuing widespread hostility towards the MCs, they've acknowledged they were wrong to leave the children on their own and two police forces have found no evidence that they played any part in their daughter's disappearance. In our investigation we discovered nothing to suggest otherwise. The mystery of what happened to MMC is still just that, a mystery. There's no firm evidence to explain what happened. There's no happy ending, no tragic ending, there's no ending at all. 

Parmi bien d'autres étrangetés, rappelons le mytérieux refus de KMC, faite témoin assistée, de répondre à 48 questions destinées à aider la police à retrouver son enfant et ne mangeant pas de pain, comme qu'avez-vous vu dans l'appartement quand vous êtes entrée ? Quels objets avez-vous touchés ? C'était le conseil de son avocat, qui du reste avait prodigué le même à Gerald MC, qui n'en fit rien.

To CS : If you were in charge today, what would you be doing, what more could you be doing?

CS : Here and now, where we are now I would be saying "we need to start this again from the beginning and look at absolutely everything, because unless that's done I fear the SY investigation will just peter out (s'essouffler) and we may never know.

MB : So are you saying that the past six years and 12 million pounds has all been a waste ?

CS : I suppose I am, because we're not really any further forward, we're not any closer now to knowing what happened to Madeleine on that night, and I think we could have been.

MB : The Portuguese and the Metropolitan police both admit their relationship has sometimes been fraught, but they now say they're working closely together.

MR :  I know we have a significant line of enquiry which is worth pursuing, and because it is worth pursuing, it could provide an answer, but until we have gone through it, I won’t know whether we will get there or not.

What area is that focus on ?

??????????????????? we can fish around this, as much as you want. Ourselves and the Portuguese are doing a critical piece of work and we don’t want to spoil it by putting titbits out on it publicly.

PdC : The relationship between the Metropolitan police and the PJ is let's say cooperative. Our two investigations are not dependent on each other, but it is important for us to have the Metropolitan police working side by side with us.

MR : I wish I could say, I so wish I could say that we will solve this.

GMC : My point of view, you know, somebody knows what's happened.

KMC : Whatever it takes for as long as it takes, you know, but there's still hope that we can find Madeleine.

MB : If you would like to explore more of the details of the Madeleine MC case, including material from the original investigation, go to our website at news.sky.com