the australian newspaper article ( i have a online Subscription )

Madeleine McCann e-fit pictures overlooked for 5 years

   Dominic Kennedy
   The Times
   October 28, 2013 11:01AM

   
   New McCann appeal involves e-fits
   Madeleine McCann

FIVE years have been wasted in the hunt for Madeleine McCann while pictures of the prime suspect in her abduction were suppressed.

The e-fits were produced by a private detective agency hired by Madeleine's parents, Kate and Gerry. The investigators based their pictures on a description provided by an Irish holidaymaker in Praia da Luz, Portugal, where Madeleine vanished shortly before her fourth birthday in 2007.

The Irishman's account was overlooked at the time because it clashed with an earlier sighting by Jane Tanner, one of the McCanns' dining companions. Scotland Yard has now established that Ms Tanner's description appeared to match an innocent holidaymaker who had been collecting his child from a creche.

The e-fits were produced as part of an unpublished report by the private detective agency Oakley International that has been seen by The Sunday Times. They were finally broadcast on a BBC Crimewatch program this month, attracting 1,000 telephone calls and e-mails, some naming the same man.

One of the Oakley investigators told The Sunday Times: "I was absolutely stunned when I watched the programme. It most certainly wasn't a new timeline and it certainly isn't a new revelation. It is absolute nonsense to suggest either of those things. And those e-fits you saw on Crimewatch were ours."

The McCanns declined to renew Oakley International's $843,000 contract in 2008 after suggestions that it was too expensive. The firm's founder, Kevin Halligen, was alleged to have failed to pass money to an investigator on the McCanns' case, although he denies this. This summer Halligen was jailed for 41 months by a US judge for an unrelated multimillion-dollar fraud.

Nonetheless, Oakley's e-fits have now become the centrepiece of Scotland Yard's investigation. The Oakley report deduced that a sighting of Madeleine by Martin Smith from Drogheda, Co Louth, was credible. Mr Smith, returning to his apartment in Praia da Luz about 9.50pm, saw a British-looking man carrying a motionless, barefoot girl in pyjamas. Madeleine was noted to be missing by her mother at 10pm.

The Oakley investigation concluded that an over-emphasis had been given to Ms Tanner's account. She described seeing a man about 9.15pm. There was a potential difficulty with Mr Smith's version. He estimated that he was 60 to 80 per cent certain that the man he saw was Mr McCann. Mr McCann's movements for that time have been established: he was seen by witnesses to be in a tapas restaurant.

Mr Smith's suggestion that he might have seen Mr McCann carrying Madeleine shortly before her disappearance was seized on by Goncalo Amaral, the Portuguese detective leading the search. The McCanns are suing Mr Amaral for alleging in a book that they might have faked their daughter's abduction.

An Oakley source told The Sunday Times that the Find Madeleine fund's lawyers had required the report to remain confidential.

The Portuguese authorities formally cleared the McCanns and have just reopened their investigation.

The e-fits were in the possession of both Portuguese police and Scotland Yard for some years before this month's publication.

Scotland Yard said yesterday: "Where we have been able to make massive steps forward is by drawing together all the material gathered to date and reviewing it as a whole."

The Sun newspaper claimed yesterday that the e-fits resembled the Scottish paedophiles Charles O'Neill and William Lauchlan. Both are serving life sentences for murdering a woman to prevent her from reporting them for child abuse. At the time of Madeleine's disappearance they were living in Spain and using false passports. Leicestershire police questioned them about Madeleine in jail in 2011.

intresting that murdoch allowed this isnt it??

Justiceforallkids wrote:

Mr Smith's suggestion that he might have seen Mr McCann carrying Madeleine shortly before her disappearance was seized on by Goncalo Amaral, the Portuguese detective leading the search. The McCanns are suing Mr Amaral for alleging in a book that they might have faked their daughter's abduction.

So Mr.Amaral was right to 'seize' on this sighting as SY have now done 6 years later!