- Was this case blown
out of proportion?
- It's understandable
that the parents turn to the media in cases like this one but we
believe that on this occasion they have done it trying to create a
sense of victimisation to conceal what has happened. I agree with you
that there are cases that are very much more tragic which are not so
media focussed, that do not transcend to the entire world.
- They finished you
off...
- Certainly, I was
attacked, vilified and humiliated by some of the ignoble British
press which contributed to the interruption of the investigation with
their continuous onslaught and interrupted, therefore, the Justice.
Portugal was treated like a Third World country and there is one
thing where they behaved as such: when they removed me, the person
responsible for the ongoing investigation. There were no police, but
political reasons for this. The politics aborted the investigation.
- Is it the fact that
your investigation was contradicting their interests?
Of course. The thesis of
our latest work remained in the process and there it is summed up
that the minor died in the apartment, there was a simulation of
abduction, the couple is suspected of hiding the body, the death
could have been accidental and that there is evidence of negligence
in the care of the parents for leaving them alone even if they were
one hundred metres away.
- Didn't you rush
yourselves in having them imputed [constituted as arguidos i.e.
official suspects]?
How is it possible to
speak about haste when we only accused them four months after the
facts? On the contrary, we believe that one of the errors of the
investigation was to have treated the couple "with tweezers".
Soon enough we saw that there were things that did not match and they
were treated with privileges. They might have been imputed earlier...
Specialist equipment
and dogs to search for a living or dead Madeleine, hours, days and
months of police work in the middle of a huge international media
noise, vast numbers of followers or detractors... Can the public
finances destine so much money to the investigation of every case?
Amaral thinks that on the
Portuguese part there were no special expenses, except the hiring of
an English laboratory and the British police officers were paid by
their country. "Nevertheless – he says - the criminal
investigation has no price because citizens pay their taxes to have
their safety".
- You worked for 28
years in the police. You have worked with cases enough to write a
book of mystery...
- (smiles). True. For
example, I had interesting cases of drug trafficking, some of which
we worked with the Galician police, but those who have touched me
most, emotionally, were some that included children. A father who
killed his three-year-old son, for example, for jealousy. More tragic
than the Maddie case although it has not received such media
attention.
- To what extent can
the media interfere in police work?
That is a very complex
theme with many nuances. Our Judicial Police does not have a press
office to face the current challenges, nor does the general director
have an image consultant, or assistants that will examine what
appears in the press or on the internet. With this lack of resources
it cannot respond to a British press that seemed very channelled in
its constant barrage of information toward the abduction thesis that
influenced the investigation to stop.
Moita Flores (MF) -
Anyone who reads this conversation on these pages will say: there
it is! This guy went to TV to say what the other one told him and
it's going to be difficult to convince the gossipers that we had not
spoken to each other for years.
Gonçalo Amaral (GA) -
True. The last time that we chatted before I left the PJ, I was
stationed in the Azores.
MF - And how are
things now? The book that you wrote, "Truth of the Lie", is
out there. You have retired and people are calling for you from all
sides…
GA - Don't even mention
it. I'm exhausted. I came to have lunch with you because I had made
you a promise, and I'm on my way to Vigo. I know that there are
hundreds of persons waiting for me.
MF - Vigo, Madrid…
GA - I also presented the
book in Seville and Barcelona, in front of hundreds of readers and
the full force of the media.
MF - I read it in El
País and I saw you on one or two Spanish TV channels.
GA - Eight TV stations!
Can you imagine what that's like? The whole of the press. I didn't
know where to turn to anymore. Even Hola!…
MF - What about sales?
In Portugal, I know it's selling well. At least in the bookshops
where I usually go, I see it listed high in the best-seller lists.
GA - Here we have sold
180,000 copies and we're rapidly reaching the 200,000 mark. From
Spain I have no figures yet, but I know it's been selling well.
MF - And in England?
GA [laughs] - You're
joking…
MF – I'm serious. It
was where your life was most ruined, where you were insulted and
defamed…
GA [laughs] - It's over
now… The book will get there, you'll see…
MF - What about other
countries?
GA - It will be published
in Italy, in the Netherlands and in Denmark. I'm going over there
soon, because the Danish editor has mentioned the possibility of
distributing it into Norway and Sweden. We'll see…
MF - Your
determination is to get even with those who worked for the McCanns.
They've mistreated you.
GA - Believe me, I feel
no rage, I'm not even angry. I have understood their game and you
also know how this game works. The lies about me, the manipulation is
not exactly against the citizen Gonçalo Amaral. They were against
the investigator who knew their weaknesses and was going to catch
them sooner or later. It was all a matter of time. The McCanns knew
that I was going to get them. As you could see, all it took was for
the process to be archived in order for everything to be finished. At
this moment in time, I'm convinced that they don't even remember my
name anymore. So the game is always the same. We want to catch them,
they want to escape, and that's it. Sometimes the bandits win,
sometimes the policemen do. This time around, and concerning this
case, it was how it was. They stopped insulting me, they stopped the
campaigns to find their daughter, it's over. They got what they
wanted and therefore, peace is back.
MF – And you launch
a "grenade" that is called The Truth of the Lie into the
midst of that peace. Whoever reads your testimony is left with few
doubts about the little girl's destiny. She died in the apartment.
GA – Do you doubt it?
MF – No. Neither I
nor the older people who used to work with me. When this happened, I
was in Greece and I heard the news through an English channel. The
story was so badly told, that only a naive or silly person would
believe it. As a matter of fact, when I arrived, I had dinner with
several already retired colleagues that worked in homicides, and
their opinion was the same. The detail about the window killed the
version. Nobody passes through that narrow window space carrying a
child.
GA – The window made me
doubt. And not only that.
MF – But I do insist
on the window. The mother said that she never touched it.
GA – That she never
even opened it.
MF – Now, when I
read the process, I realised that her fingerprints were on it. And
positioned in a manner that coincides with an opening movement.
GA – It was with that,
with Kate's fingerprints on the window that I wanted to catch them.
MF – That's the
truth of the lie.
GA – Among other
things. It was one of the best games that I ever saw played out, to
divert attention from what really happened in the apartment. The
manner in which they "worked" for the Smith was brilliant.
MF – The couple that
recognised the father carrying the little girl.
GA – Exactly. It was
done in such a manner that at one point in time, it was Gerry himself
who informed that someone had witnessed the situation, as if the
person that was recognised had been someone else.
MF – Wearing the
clothes that the friend mentioned for the photofit.
GA – Precisely.
MF – Do you still
drink beer, or did you stop drinking red wine after the news in the
English press?
GA [laughs] – I never
drank wine. I don't like red wine.
MF – What really
made them mad was being made arguidos.
GA – Now that you know
the process, tell me… Under the old Penal Process, how do I ask
Kate: "Are you lying when you say you didn't touch the window?
As a matter of fact, it was you who opened the window. We have
material evidence of that." A question like this forces the
constitution of arguido because it invades her sphere of
constitutional rights. I have to give her the right not to reply,
instead of lying. The only solution was to make her an arguida.
MF – Things were
different in my time. She would have been under such an attack that
before she realised anything, she'd be in jail.
GA – Right, but in your
time, in our old times, investigation was made with fuel. Now we all
move on honey. Apart from that, this is a process that is
uncomfortable for everyone. Nicely archived, nice and quiet, that's
how it looks better. Everyone was happy.
MF – And nobody was
tried.
GA – Not yet…
GA – It's too big and too serious a burden to be concealed by so many people for their entire lives.
MF – I also agree
with you. Now, tell me. Do we eat grilled squid or do we play the
premier league? There is bean and piglet casserole.
GA – You're crazy.
Grilled squid.
MF – It definitely
looks like things now move on honey.
GA – We're too old for
such a bean casserole. Today is my birthday and I don't want to die
of overstuffing.
MF – You're 49 and
you say you're old? What am I then, I'm six "minutes" ahead
of you on the scoreboard?! I’m 55, and on the 23rd of February I
receive another free one.
GA – Get sensible and
order the squid.
CLS: Gonçalo Amaral,
good afternoon.
Gonçalo Amaral : Thank
you very much.
CLS: Thank you very
much for being here with us today.
GA: Its my pleasure.
CLS: Well, in effect
you tackle the principal aspects of the Maddie case and have a very
bold thesis: do you agree?
GA: Well, I do not have a
thesis, the thesis is that of a team of investigators, composed of
Portuguese and English police officers, who in September of last year
prepared a report that is included in the investigation files, which
says that the girl died on May 3rd in the apartment, that the body
was concealed and that a crime scenario was simulated, that of
abduction.
CLS: That's clear. The
commissioner says the little girl died on the same day she
disappeared, on May 3, 2007, the body was concealed and abduction was
simulated. Pilar Cambre has a question concerning this.
Pilar Cambra: I have a
question, because you state that the parents gave the girl a
sedative, Calpol, because she had problems sleeping...
GA: Yes.
GA: It is in the book and is in the indictment, which points to death by accident, it was accidental. Death because cadaver odour and human blood were found behind a sofa, that is why it is considered that an accident could have happened.
CLS: In other words,
there was blood and cadaver odour.
GA: Exactly. This is what
we had in October of last year when I left the investigation. Also,
in addition to this, it was considered that the girl had a problem
with falling asleep and with sleeping and whether the parents, like
other parents in England were giving her Calpol to sleep. It is said
that there is a Calpol generation in England, because the mother says
that it is a medicine, paracetamol and there are experts who say that
it is an antihistamine with sedative effects.
It is true that we did
not find the body, but it is certain that those children were
sleeping, it is true that they did not wake up during all that noise
and it is also certain that the mother, according to a witness, Fiona
Payne, held her hand under the twins' noses to see if they were
breathing - what was going on there? She could have been worried
about the fact that the children were still asleep.
CLS: Surely she was
checking to see if the other two children were all-right?
GA: We do not state that
it is due to the Calpol, because the body has not been found, but it
is a hypothesis, a thesis that has to be worked on. What cannot
happen in a criminal investigation, is that course of the
investigation is cut off when we think about death, if there is the
thought of death, it is not possible to continue to think about
abduction, this is not possible. If we had continued with the
investigation, we and other persons who came to this conclusion,
surely would have been able to arrive at a point of inflection, and
have looked at the thesis that the parents could have had some
responsibility in this and concluded it was impossible, because now
we have found this or that, but we needed to investigate the death.
CLS: Concerning the
Calpol perhaps Dr Candela can tell us more.
Carmen Candela: Well,
I think... really what struck me most, as I was saying to you
earlier, is the lack of breaking down, in the statements, when the
father and the mother had to give statements, this struck me... this
is perhaps part of the structure of a certain personality, which will
not give way to anything, or, in other words, the lack of breaking
down by a mother with all the drama that these parents have had to
experience...
CLS: The coldness...
CC: The coldness, or
rather, the emotional
detachment from what was happening to her as regards her daughter,
that has made an impression on me, from the maternal point of view,
or, in other words I think as a mother. It is true that I am a mother
of six children, I am a doctor and I have given my children sleeping
solutions, and I being a doctor and knowing how to administer
sleeping medicine, the anxiety that Pilar was mentioning, of placing
your hand to see whether the child was breathing or not, always stays
with you. I remember when my children were babies, and they would
sleep for two hours longer before waking up for their bottle and you
would get full of anguish. In other words this hypothesis, for me, is
very credible, very credible. Above all, what has had impact on me is
that in a determined moment, because of all the evidence I have read
about, what has had most impact on me, was the search of the car by
the sniffer dogs...
PC: On the clothes, on
the cuddly toy...
CC: There were
accurate tests, or rather, they exist and everything else are
hypotheses without any proof. And what really annoys me is that with
all the means that exist, at the level of the police, which I do not
know about, is that he has been taken off the investigation, really
that just seems surreal to me.
I do not know if there
is a real greater power, interests, I get lost in this world, but
really the accounts of the officer make sense to me.
CLS: What explains
that they should have removed the officer from this investigation?
What is the power?
GA: In the book I say
that in this case there has been more politics than police...
CLS: More politics
than police...
CC: ... it is the only
thing that makes sense.
GA: As police officers,
we must always work in an objective manner, we base ourselves upon
the facts and try to understand the facts and what could have
happened. We do not worry what is politically correct, in this case
there have been many political pressures, there has been an
implication on the part of the British government, I do not know if
this is the same in other cases in England, a Prime Minister is
concerned about some parents who have lost a daughter and I do not
know if he does this for all children and all parents who lose
children, it is a domestic problem in England. I do not know why
with...
GA: ... why a spokesman of the British government leaves his position to become the spokesman of a couple. Why does he not work as spokesman for another couple? Why an Ambassador in Lisbon does not remain in Lisbon and speaks to the National Director of the Police. Why does he have to speak 24 hours later with the police officers who are working on the case? Why does he have to speak with us later? Why do we have to come out later with a press release saying that there has been an abduction, when we did not even know if there was an abduction? All this is very complicated.
CLS: Or, you
practically...
GA: ... this questions
the objectivity.
CLS: Practically you
were forced to say that there had been an abduction, without your
having any certainty...
GA: Yes, we had to form a
strategy, well, we are going to prove that there was no abduction and
next we will think about death. When the death thesis began to be
discussed, well, then the parents said... 'we're leaving'. They
decided to leave on the day that the dogs, the English dogs who are
only used as a means to locate cadavour odour (were brought in).
CC: And another (for
detecting) blood...
GA: ... and another for
blood and they left on the first day...
CC: I get lost when it
comes to Madeleine's mother. I imagine, as a mother, that if a child
of mine disappears and that the police accuse me, that this is the
most serious, it will destroy me and will annoy me, but I would say,
all right I am the guilty one, let's see it through until the end,
what I would not do is leave the story incomplete...
PC: No Carmen, but
look, I wanted to ask the ex-commissioner, for me he is the
commissioner, because I believe that it is something that is not
lost, the investigator's character, which, Carmen was commenting
about before saying that they have never broken down...
C: The McCanns.
PC: The McCanns. I
noticed, when they were declared suspects or charged...
GA: Yes...
PC: ... their entrance
into the police station, I did notice from the news images, a certain
collapse, or, rather an insecurity, in the sense that up to this
moment they had been the stars of this terrible drama, and in this
moment even if just by the way they walked, by the way they hid, yes
I did perceive that to be a definite change of attitude, do you
agree?
GA: Yes, this began on a
day when a colleague of mine went to the McCanns’ house, where they
were living in Praia da Luz, and notified them of the date when they
had to go to the police to be constituted arguidos, to be questioned.
The mother said, and it is written in the indictment, what she said
was this: "What will the press say? What are my parents going to
say"? Well, this is not a normal reaction.
But we do not work with
reactions of this type...
CLS: I have not
understood this: have you understood, Pilar?
PC: What was she going
to say to the press and what she was going to tell her parents?
GA: ... What the press
were going to say and what her parents would say.
CC: Ah yes,
GA: ... That is what the
mother said when the police notified her of the day they would have
to go to the police station to be constituted arguidos and to be
questioned: 'What will the press say?' and 'What are my parents going
to say?'
PC: What are they
going to say?
CLS: … The press and
my parents.
GA: We do not work with
this type of attitude, we work with facts. There is a very important
issue in this, we investigated the abduction thesis and all the other
theses, and when we came to the
hypothesis of investigating the death, the parents said that they
were leaving...
CC: That they were
going away...
GA: At that moment they
removed themselves from the case, because a criminal case, everybody
knows it, all the police officers know it, we can think things like
that, but tomorrow or the following day something else may turn up.
Why did we have to maintain the abduction theory? This was not
possible.
CC: No, it is
necessary to investigate another possibility...
CLS: And that a father
should bear, as Carmen says, being charged with murder himself whilst
the case of his child is solved. Therefore leaving the country,
saying I'm going, because they are going to investigate the
hypothesis of murder...
CC: One of them could
say, I cannot bear it, cannot take it, emotionally this seems to me
super cruel, and the other, because of course...
PC: I do not know if
you remember, Carmen, the interview in Antenna 3 with the two of
them, with the father and the mother in the moment in that he, who is
the coldest person of the couple, she is more vulnerable, you say
very well he is a surgeon, he is a man...
GA: Yes...
PC: ... accustomed, to
taking decisions, he, when the camera is about to continue filming,
says to her that she has lost her composure and started crying, "do
not say another word", that is to say that in this couple there
is also... commissioner, if the girl is dead, where is she, buried on
land or at sea?
GA: Well, this is
speculation, we do not speculate, they removed us from the case on
October 2 we were working on all that, trying to understand how the
death had occurred, in what circumstances and what happened to the
body, now in these moments I cannot tell you, the most difficult
thing this is...
PC: Of course, and why
did they remove you from the case, what did they say to you when they
told you: 'withdrawn from the case'.
GA: Before withdrawing me
from the case, a director came to see me, who knows me and who tells
me, 'look you have to think that there are cases that have no
solution'.
PC: But it seems to me
incredible... but it seems to me inconceivable...
GA: ... I have already
said so, we will arrive to where it is possible to arrive, this has
not finished for us, later it turned out that I did not give an
interview that was attributed to me at a given moment, it happened in
an interesting moment, when we were trying to bring the Smith family
to Portugal, who said that they saw Gerry McCann, with a possibility
of 80%... of having seen Gerry McCann carrying an inert girl towards
the beach.
CLS: An Irish family
that seems that they saw the father...
PC: The Smiths...
GA: It was part of the
investigation and they removed me, and three or four months passed
until the Smith family speaks for the indictment, and this procedure
occurs in Ireland, not in Portugal as we had wished. During this
time, it is said that this family has been the object of several
visits, I do not want to speak about pressures, they have been the
object of visits by persons who...
PC: Two or three
months passed, these Irish...
GA: ... had to change
their phone number, it is said that they had to move house and resort
to the services of a lawyer.
PC: As if they had
received pressure …
GA: To avoid these
persons... It is sad that this has happened this way, that shouldn't
have happened... and now it has been withdrawn from the
investigation.
PC: Well, that's
the point I wanted to arrive at.
GA: In the book, the book
begins by saying that the indictment was going to be filed, and I do
not mean that this was when the case has been already filed, but at
the beginning, months earlier, because we knew that it was going to
be filed.
CC: It was known that
it was going to be filed... because you saw that you would not be
able to conclude it.
GA: Yes, and because of
facts...
PC: Because of
political pressure...
CLS: It is incredible,
because it is also an insult to the skill of the Portuguese police,
the McCanns in a certain moment say that they are not capable of
solving it, an insult to Portugal and in this sense the book is a
real apology, or rather I believe that Gonçalo Amaral has done very
well in putting in white on black or black on white all that is known
about the case and that now all our listeners can know.
We have asked this
evening's listeners to make their opinion about whether the parents
are guilty or not, if they were involved in the disappearance of
Maddie's body and 36 % of our listeners say that they are not guilty
but, listen to this: 64 %, a large majority of listeners, say that
yes, Maddie's parents are involved, the thesis you have already
heard, the other two children had been conceived by IVF, the McCanns
had had reproduction problems for a long time, it had been difficult
for them to have children and the British authorities are very tough
on parents who commit negligence in the case of having given sleeping
solutions to the children and would have taken the children away,
withdrawn custody of the other two ...
PC: And they were
doctors...
CC: I find that hard
to believe, I don't know about the legislation over there...
CLS: Its very tough in
Great Britain...
CC: ... but even so I
can't imagine it...
GA: Only a minute is
necessary, not hours... in one minute...
PC: It is possible to
demonstrate that, with them both being doctors...
GA: It is negligence...
CC: But it is possible
to prove it, it is not negligence the fact is that we are not
machines, from the medical point of view, that is very easy, we are
not machines.
CLS: Yes, but in Great
Britain...
CC: The same
medication, for one person...
PC: No but, but what
the inspector says is that a minute is enough, then it is possible to
demonstrate that it was an accidental death, but with the sole
fact...
GA: They are English...
CC: If they
administered a sleeping solution to the children and that as a
consequence of this medicine, British legislation would take the
children away in a minute, as he says, the paternal custody and the
children would be taken away.
GA: But you do not even
need the medicine, it is enough to leave them alone as they did...
CC: That is, that they
went for dinner and left them alone...
GA: ... another thing,
its all of the children, not only Madeleine who has disappeared, but
the twins who were also left alone, all the children of other friends
also. They were all left alone. And it is not possible to say that
these children were not at risk, that there was no danger, because if
they had not been in danger Madeleine would not have disappeared.
CC: Of course.
CLS: Certainly, and it
is even possible that the McCanns might have been helped by this
group.
CC: No, what the
inspector says is that all the other couples who went to have dinner
with them did the same. They left the children alone and they could
also have the custody of their children taken away from them.
CLS: Therefore the
group of British couples who met for dinner leaving their children
alone, very probably could have helped the McCanns to make the body
disappear, of course there are so many people involved.
GA: I do not say to make
the body disappear, but at least to invent the story of the checking,
to give the impression that the children and Madeleine were safe. It
is said that they went every five minutes...
CC: They went...
GA: but that night, only
that night, they all went to see the girl. This is interesting
because the McCann couple never went to check the others' children.
CLS: OK.
CC: They were going to
see Madeleine, all of them, every five minutes and why not the
others' children who were also sleeping alone.
PC: As the
commissioner says, it seems to be of a crushing logic.
CLS: OK. Everything
seems quite logical and clear, in this sense, 64% of our listeners
say they have clear criteria. Anyway, we now thank Gonçalo Amaral
who at least tries to clean the reputation of his country and of the
police of his country, I believe that this is a very noble desire and
a very noble motive, to explain... to write the book and, in any
case, he has provided this text from the publishers Esquilo: Maddie:
The Truth of the Lie, which as I say has sold more than 200,000
copies in Portugal.
