Q: Do you regret
anything?
“I would do exactly the same [today that
I did then], with a small difference: I
would not leave the Polícia Judiciária.
It could be a problem for the Polícia
Judiciária. I did think about it then,
shall I leave or not, if I stay with the
police I’m a problem for the police, or
if I leave, I have all of the other
problems.”
“I don’t regret what I did, I did it
with conviction, I did it to defend the
investigation model, what a criminal
investigation is supposed to be.
Earlier, you spoke about the politically
correct, the politically correct
policeman. It is my understanding that
criminal investigations cannot be
politically correct, because they can’t
be concerned with politics. And what
happened, and continues to happen, is
that we have to be politically correct,
subordinate to the English power. That
happens, it happened on the 2nd of
October [of 2007] at the Lisbon Treaty,
there were discussions between José
Sócrates, then prime minister, and
Gordon Brown, the English prime
minister, who told the newspapers that
he had asked the Portuguese prime
minister about the [Maddie] case. So
even before that it was already a
political case. And when politics
intrude into a criminal investigation,
nothing will end well, whether the
criminal investigation relates to a
homicide, a burglary, a disappearance,
or corruption.”
“Going back to the beginning of the
question, I don’t have any regrets. I
don’t have regrets because although
principles and values don’t fill the
fridge, I feel rich in another way.”
Q: Was Maddie McCann abducted or
is she dead?
“Maddie McCann disappeared and since
that time she is – she died. She died
that night. Those are the conclusions
that are reached in the process itself:
In September of 2007, the Polícia
Judiciária concludes – and this is a
conclusion within an investigation that
was not over yet but has a principle
there – it’s a sequence of indications
that are collected which reaches the
conclusion that it is very likely that
she died. She died that night. The
circumstances of the death are still to
be determined. What mechanism – what
happened for that death to take place is
yet to be discovered.”
“And if the parents nowadays make us
believe that their daughter is alive, or
have to gamble on her being alive, they
forget that right after the
investigation it was them that were the
first to signal death. They were the
first to say that their daughter – that
it was necessary for a coronel from the
South African army to come with a
miracle machine to find the body. So
it’s the parents that invite him to come
to Portugal, to find a body.”
“Later, years later they say that she is
still alive. And now the Scotland Yard,
apparently already with their agreement,
or their tacit agreement, says that the
child is dead. That is the obvious. What
usually happens in this kind of
situation – for years they have
mentioned other cases – if a certain
child disappears and reappears after
several years, alive and even with
children, with the abductor, then
Madeleine may also probably be alive.
But they forget a small detail.
Actually, they don’t forget it, they
just don’t enlighten us, because these
people have all of the information, they
have staff that works with the entire
information, which is also a bit
strange, but they forget a detail: all
of those children that have reappeared,
whether in Austria or in the United
States, they weren’t three or four years
old when they disappeared. They were all
close to the age of 10. All of them were
girls and close to the age of 9, 10.
None of them disappeared aged 3 or 4.”
“When an abductor makes a girl his
slave, what we have seen is that the age
is not 3 or 4, but much closer to
adolescence. They forget that detail.”
“I have no doubts about what happened to
Madeleine McCann. Madeleine McCann died
that day, that night, in that apartment,
and her body disappeared.”
Q: On what do you base that
conviction?
“On many things. A series of
indications, a series of contradictions,
the witness statements of the parents,
the witness statements of their friends,
the traces that were collected with the
assistance of special English dogs that
never failed in the United Kingdom, they
now work with the FBI. They never
failed. At the time, we were introduced
to several cases and situations, all of
them they worked in and never failed.
The possibility is that they failed in
Portugal. Maybe it was the heat.”
Q: Was there human blood in the
car boot and inside the apartment?
“No doubt. Inside the apartment and in
the car boot. That human blood, the
English lab even says, there is a report
in the process, that says it’s the
daughter of – the daughter of Gerald
McCann, it’s a descendant of his. Later
on, they change the hypothesis, and say
that the combination of the DNA may be
from anyone. By coincidence, in that
case the DNA is very similar, 90%
similar to that of Madeleine McCann, but
it could be DNA built by myself, by
Júlio Magalhães or by you, and then it
would result in that DNA profile. But
the funny thing is that it results in
the DNA profile of Madeleine McCann. It
does not result in the DNA profile of
Júlio Magalhães, or of Gonçalo Amaral or
of Luís Filipe Menezes. Not even in that
of the doctor who performed the test.”
“We have no doubts, and this was
discussed even at the level of
Portuguese justice, at the level of the
Public Ministry, that there was an
alteration at the English lab. The data
was manipulated. The FSS, the British
lab, which was already questioned over
several situations, even concerning the
IRA in Ireland, over bomb attacks, those
traces, that way to find the DNA, to
examine the DNA with low copy number,
was called into question relating to
traces found on a bomb in an Irish case.
And that lab was called into question.”
“But there is a situation, concerning
the lab, which has to be taken into
account. There are the registers that
are performed by the technicians, by the
scientists that examine, and we have to
look at those registers, at what they
wrote. On an everyday basis, as they
examined the evidence, the traces that
were sent over, what they wrote along.
And then we see the result in that
report that they sent over to Portugal.”
“Then there’s another situation. It is
still possible to find out or to collect
indications of whether or not the dogs
failed. If inside that car boot – I’m
referring to the car that was rented by
the McCanns some 15 or 20 days after the
disappearance – blood traces were found,
traces that the lab says may be,
although there is no full certainty,
that may be from Madeleine McCann, hair
was also found. Hair which the
laboratory says, from its coloration,
which is how this used to be done in the
old days, by comparing the coloration,
if it belonged to the person or not.
Nowadays it is possible to perform, and
then it was already possible, to perform
DNA tests on hair. Some say it’s only
possible to identify the DNA profile
with the root of the hair, the English
lab says it’s not possible because these
have no root, therefore they don’t
perform the test. That hair is in
Portugal, it was returned to Portugal.
They are next to the process. It’s
simple: the Public Ministry, that has
the investigation, should take that hair
and send it to a lab in Europe or
elsewhere, where that type of test is
done, without the need for the root of
the hair.”
Q: That was never done?
“That was never done. It was never done
and what is said is that there may have
been a contamination. But we end up not
knowing whether that hair belongs to
Madeleine McCann or not. That’s another
doubt to discuss, to clarify. Now, there
cannot be a piece of evidence while
we’re here talking about the man who
died under the tractor and quit his job
a month before because there was 5 euro
missing –“
Q: Why did neither the PJ nor
the SY question the
Smith family?
“It was on the day of the Lisbon Treaty,
which happens to be my birthday, on the
2nd of October of 2007. It was the
Lisbon Treaty, it’s my birthday on the
2nd of October, and I was “fired” from
Portimão on the 2nd of October. And that
is the time when we were preparing for
the head of that family, a family of
approximately 5, it was him, his wife,
his son, his daughter-in-law, his
daughter, to come to Portugal. On the
night of the 3rd of May, at around 10
p.m., when they were returning from a
restaurant in Praia da Luz, they crossed
paths with an individual who was coming
down a certain street towards the beach,
carrying a child with her head on his
shoulder, as if she was asleep. Later on
they say that - they see the news,
because on the following day they
returned to Ireland – they say it may
have been Madeleine McCann and the
person who was carrying Madeleine
McCann.”
“These people were heard within the
process right away in May/June, they
came to Portugal, they were heard, they
gave a description of the person,
physically, how he walked, they
described his clothes, whether he was
Portuguese or not, they said he’d be a
tourist because he was tanned, not a
Latin man, they also indicate the
person’s age, the age of the child,
approximately, according to her size,
and that was it.”
“It was only later, when Gerald McCann
and Kate McCann leave Portugal to go to
England, in September, after being heard
as arguidos, when they flee, literally,
they fled to England, and the English
police followed suit, because they were
here cooperating with us but then they
also disappeared, and we concluded that
the English police was in Portugal
merely to somehow protect that couple.”
“But when they arrive in England,
there’s an image that went around the
world, which shows Gerald McCann coming
down the stairs of the plane, the stairs
that access the plane, and walking on
the runway with one of the twins in the
same position, in his arms with the head
here [on the shoulder]. And what that
family says is that this individual,
from the way that he walks, the way that
he carries the child, is the person that
they saw on the night of the 3rd of May.
They don’t say anything else. What
happens? We initiated the diligences to
bring them to Portugal, to hear him, it
would be the father of the family that
would come over, he was available to
come, and everything was prepared.
Authorizations from the PJ’s national
director for them to come to Portugal,
the tickets were about to be emitted, we
still had to book a hotel, so it was
only a matter of logistics.”
“And on the 2nd of October, after I was
questioned by a paper, Diário de
Notícias, about what I thought of the
English police saying that Madeleine had
been sighted in Morocco, I unburdened
that they should worry about what really
had happened to Madeleine instead of
worrying about other situations because
when the English police left Portugal,
what was agreed upon between the
Portuguese police and the English police
was that the investigation had to move
forward in terms of understanding how
the death had occurred. The death of
Madeleine McCann. And what had happened
to the body.”
“We were not discussing abductions or
that the child had been taken to become
a sex slave, none of that. We were
speaking about death and concealment of
a body. And it’s on that 2nd of October
that I leave. I left the investigation,
it’s on that 2nd of October that Gordon
Brown speaks with José Sócrates – it
would be good if Mr José Sócrates would
explain, if he is able to explain what
happened – I think that his stance was
one of – from what I could understand at
that time, a stance of distance from the
investigation, he didn’t give a lot of
importance to Gordon Brown’s statement –
Gordon Brown tried to involve the
Portuguese prime minister in that
controversy, so to speak.”
“But the person that later substituted
me understands that it is not relevant
to bring the Irish to Portugal. And that
was it. So never again were the Irish
heard, they were heard through –“
Q: How is it possible that the
English prime minister’s spokesman quit
Tony Blair to become the McCanns’
spokesman within 24 hours?
“That’s another mystery within the
mystery. And if we understand that
little mystery, maybe we can understand
what lies behind, not the disappearance,
not the child’s death, but behind the
protection – why protect this family,
this couple?”
Q: Have you noticed that
couple’s power?
“Yes, I have. I even notice it in my
bank account, in what I receive at the
end of every month. This is what has
been happening.”
Q: Is it true that one of the
group’s members had been denounced
earlier on by another friend over
behavior that could indicate some
extravagant behavior in terms of a
tendency towards pedophilia?
“There is a mysterious figure, it’s
another part of the mystery that may
even be related to Clarence Mitchell
leaving the British government to
support the couple. You can say it’s a
conspiracy theory, but it’s not. There
is a British couple, also doctors, who
went on holiday with the McCann couple
two years earlier, with the children,
with Madeleine, and with other couples
of doctors, including a gentleman called
David Payne. David Payne is the last
witness. He is the witness that says
that on the 3rd of May he went to the
apartment and he saw those children and
that they looked like heavenly angels,
they were very clean, very white,
something truly heavenly.”
“This is the person that bathed, during
these holidays that he organized, he
bathed the little girls aged 2 and 3.
Not only his children, but also the
other couples’ children. And it’s under
those circumstances and in comments that
he makes during a holiday period, and
according to the statement of Dr
Katherine Gaspar, this is the name of
the person that denounces, the statement
is in the process – and this is
something, if we have time, that I’ll
try to explain.”
“What she says is that he made gestures
and asked questions about Madeleine
McCann, to Gerald McCann, in front
Madeleine McCann herself, who was then
aged 2.”
Q: Did the investigation never
explore the possibility of that person
being a paedophile?
“Exactly, this is the question. That
statement arrived in Portugal after I
left the investigation. I left on the
2nd of October, they arrived a couple of
months later. It’s a statement from
Dr Katherine Gaspar and her husband,
to the British police, on the 16th of
May of 2007, two weeks after the
disappearance, statements that the
Portuguese police was not informed
about, and which arrive in Portugal by
mail, not by fax, underneath other
documents, and those statements are
loose, and someone with the British
police, what he did was, here’s these
statements, now you go and investigate,
question. And never did anyone at the
Portuguese police, those who substituted
me, they didn’t question anyone. Neither
did the Scotland Yard. Nobody
interrogates, nobody investigates what
is happening there.”
“Dr Katherine Gaspar, who denounced Mr
David Payne to the British police, was
never heard within the Portuguese
process. And she was never included in
the rogatory letter that was sent by the
Portuguese authorities. This is the
truth. We have abductions and
burglaries, but the things that are in
the process are not investigated.”
Q: This is never going to be
solved, is it?
“I think that it will be solved. It will
be solved as soon as there is the
political will on both sides.”
Q: If it turns out that
Madeleine McCann was in fact dead, do
you want to be compensated?
“Well, if I use the McCann couple’s
strategy, it has already been
recognized. The Scotland Yard has
already said that she is dead.”
Q: If you had the same financial
resources that the McCann couple has
with their fund, would you have found
the perpetrators?
“I would have done a lot to try to find
the perpetrators. There is plenty of
information that remains unexplored. But
in our country it is difficult to
investigate, because a private person
cannot investigate.”
Q: Were you removed from your
post and sidelined until you left the
Judiciary Police because you were too
close to finding the truth?
“No, no. I left the investigation, I was
removed from the investigation because
the case had to be dominated
politically. Just that. Because I
opposed the archiving. I told directors
in the Police directly that I did not
agree with the archiving. They suggested
to me, they told me that there are
processes, there are investigations that
do not end, that have no result. And
that I shouldn’t do a lot. That I should
consider the case had ended. I always
opposed that. That is why I left the
investigation, not because I was close
to anything. I don’t see my leaving as
being the result of someone fearing
anything. The question was that the case
is political. Only politics. It’s
politics that is driving this matter.
When politics enters the investigations,
when investigations are politically
correct, we get nowhere.”
Q: Who do you think is the
author of the crime?
“We can remain simply in the area of an
accident. There’s people who are
responsible. Those who were the
guardians of the child certainly have
some responsibility. What kind of
responsibility, I don’t know.”
Q: Maybe in seven years we meet
for another follow-up…
“It’s a cycle. Seven years are a cycle
in people’s lives. So they say.” |
