PJ Officers Statements

Processos Vol 15

Pages 3862-3864


Witness Statement
Date 04/12/2007 Time: 14H00



Vitor Manuel Martins



Occupation : PJ Officer


He is an inspector with the PJ and currently works at the Porto PJ Directorate.

That he was placed on a service commission to the Criminal Investigation Department in Portimão, for 3 years, from 09 November 2004 to 09 November 2007.

On the night of 3rd May 2007 he was on duty at the Portimão DIC, in the company of Inspector Manuel Queirós, who was acting as head of the station.

When questioned he confirms the integrity of the service information drawn up from the station’s inquiries carried out in the early morning of 04/05/2007, adding that he arrived on the scene about 30 – 40 minutes after the phone call from the GNR, at about 00.40/00.50.

At the scene, there were already some elements from the GNR and some people walking around the OC grounds, searching for the child.

In the apartment where the family was staying, there were different persons, including the friends of the girl’s parents, who were immediately invited to leave the apartment, in order to preserve the scene.

Inside the room that was indicated as being that of the missing girl, there were two children, babies, who appeared to sleeping in two cots placed in the middle of the room.

A request was made to the OC services director for the family to be re-allocated and accordingly the babies were taken out of the room, so that the site could be searched.

The OC services manager introduced him to the missing girl’s parents, who looked quite tired and anguished, particularly the mother who appeared more upset and was therefore less receptive to conversation, which led the witness to converse only with the girl’s father.

After the site had been isolated, he proceeded to make an inspection, together with the inspection and photographic report carried out by Deputy Specialist João Barreiras.

He states that he always maintained telephone contact with his superiors, in order to inform them of the inquiries carried out, until, at a time he cannot recall, after having completed the inquiries requested, he received orders from his superiors to return to the Portimão DIC, where the report was subsequently compiled.

He then states that upon leaving the apartment was locked, leaving the space preserved for the GNR elements that were stationed next to the apartment.

He does not recall having seen Robert Murat on that occasion.

When questioned he states he does not remember how light it was that night, nor does he remember the climatic conditions, given that quite some time has passed since the event.

That Gerald McCann, the missing girl’s father, informed him that the children of the couple’s friends were in another apartment and that they were being looked after by the mother of one of the friends, who was never present in the apartment whilst the inquiries were being carried out.


Finally, he states that the photograph of the missing girl was handed to him by Gerald McCann, the girl’s father, he does not remember seeing the photo in the possession of any other person.

Reads, ratifies, signs.

Processos Vol 15

Pages 3856-3858

Witness Statement

Date: 2007/11/20 Time: 14H00 DIC Portimão

João Franciso Páscoa Luis Trigo Barreiras

Occupation: PJ Deputy Specialist

Place of work: Criminal Investigation Department Portimão

He is a specialist in the area of Criminology for the PJ and works in the Criminal Investigation department in Portimão.

His professional responsibilities are to carry out examinations at crime scenes, such as detecting finger prints, biological examinations as well as the identification, signalling and collection of other traces. He is also responsible for making photographic reports and sketches. On the date of the events – 3rd May 2007 he was on duty at the Portimão DIC.

At about 00.10 on the morning of the 4th, he had just finished filing a report about a fire, when he was informed that a child had disappeared in Praia da Luz.

He was brought into service together with an Inspector from the station. It was the inspector’s duty to take notes of the services as well as all the information relating to them. The inspector who accompanied him on that date, Vitor Martins, informed him that the case in question was that of the disappearance of a small girl, of British nationality,who was staying at the OC with her parents.

The immediately left for the scene and arrived about 30 – 40 minutes later, at about 00.40/00.50.

When they arrived at the scene, which they immediately identified due to the presence of GNR officers, as well as quite a lot of people who were walking around the street searching for the child, they immediately went to the apartment in question, where they found several people, including some GNR officers, as well as the head of the Lagos GNR station.

He states that the people inside the apartment and close to it, entered and left the building and circulated in the whole apartment, completely freely, in other words, without there being any restriction or care in preserving the scene. .

He said that these people were the friends of the parents of the missing girl and a lady responsible for the resort called Silvia.

He was shown the room the child had disappeared from, having noticed that people also entered and left that room without any care in the sense of preserving traces. Inside this room there were two children, babies, sleeping in two cots placed in the middle ofthe room.

It was requested that the babies were moved, which was done accordingly, the witness having subsequently put his gloves on to begin the on-site inspection.

At that moment one of the GNR officers told the witness that they had already searched for the girl in the wardrobes and other places in the apartment without having taken any care as to leaving their own traces or for destroying or adulterating any traces that might be of interest to the investigation.

After the arrival of the witness and his colleague Vitor Martins the scene was isolated and the inspection began, namely the collection of statements and inspection of the scene, the respective reports that were subsequently attached to the process documents.

The witness carried out finger print testing on the inside of the bedroom window, where the girl had been sleeping, leaving other examinations for the following day given that on that occasion these tests could not be carried out in the best technical conditions. For this reason, the apartments and the surrounding area were sealed off, watched over by the GNRofficers who remained on site.

As far as he knows, after the first examination, other members from the finger print detection service and also officers from the LPC Crime Scene arrived at the scene.

The witness states that, at a given moment, the father of the missing girl led him to understand that he had already contacted the Sky News TV station and informed them of the situation.

As much the father as the girl’s mother looked quite worried with the situation and he can even confirm that the mother was very agitated and out of control, crying a lot and shouting in an uncontrolled manner, saying in English “They have taken her”.

He remembers that he remained on the scene until about 04.00. There were many people in the street. He does not remember having seen Robert Murat there on that occasion.

When questioned, he says that it was a fresh night with some breeze. It was not a clear night, nor was it very dark. Referring to the light conditions aroundthe apartment, he says they were very dark, and thinks that even on a bright night there would always be little light around the apartment because of the trees and lack of street lights.

Reads, ratifies and signs.

Processo Vol 15
Pages 3860-3861

Witness Statement
Date: 20-11-2007 Time: 16H30 Place: D.I.C. de Portimão
Officer responsible: Paulo Ferreira, Inspector

Manuel Joaquim Pessoa de Lencastre Queiroz

Profession: Inspector with the Polícia Judiciária


On the 3rd May, at about 08.30, I went on duty at the station until 08.30 on 4th May.
At about 00.10 a call was received from the GNR in Lagos to communicate the disappearance of a British girl who was on holiday with her parents at the OC in PdL.

Almost half an hour later, Inspector Martins accompanied by Assistant Specialist J. Barreiras left for the scene to carry out any inquiries that were necessary, including a Judicial Inspection of the scene..

At the beginning the possibility was considered that the child had left the apartment of her own will, and that she couldn’t have gone far from the scene and that she would be found wandering/lost (at this time there were already dozens of people looking for her).

However, a little more than an hour later, about 02.00/02.30, as the child had not been found, he decided to contact SEF at Faro airport with the aim of alerting them in case anyone would board accompanied by some child, whoever she was and those accompanying her should be duly identified, however the various calls made were not attended. In the face of this situation I contacted the Faro Station from the police and told them what was going on and asked them to alert the SEF.

I also decided to alert the GNR in Lagos so that they would send out a warning so that the car and foot patrols that were out on the ground would pay attention and identify cars with people out driving at that time who were accompanied by a child (children).

During the early morning in question I received some telephone calls from people whom, with the exception of one, expressed themselves in Portuguese to ask whether an English girl had really disappeared in Lagos and about what was being done with relation to this and I informed them that this was true and that inquiries were being made in order to find her. One of these calls, from the person who did not express themselves in Portuguese but in English and which was received between 04.30 and 05.30, was made by someone who identified themselves as being from the Sky News TV chain and who requested the same information mentioned earlier.

No more is said. Reads, ratifies and signs.

Processos Vol XV

Pages 3898 – 3900

Witness Statement

Ricardo Manuel Gonçalves de Paiva

Date : 2007-12-14

The witness exercises the function of PJ Inspector since 1999 and currently works in the Portimao Criminal Investigation Department, since 2004.

Since 4th May 2007 the witness was deployed to become part of the investigative team in the inquiry into the disappearance of Madeleine McCann.

During the course of the investigation, within the sphere of police collaboration, different resources normally used in the investigation of similar cases in the UK were made available by the British authorities.

Within this context various inspections of different sites related to the case were made, with recourse to the specialised forensic methods used by the British police, which resulted in the collection of samples, some of which were being analysed by laboratories in the UK, namely the FSS in Birmingham.


On 29th November 2007 at the Leicestershire Police HQ there was a working meeting attended by the witness, several British officers investigating the case as well as scientists from the FSS.

During this meeting, the witness asked a question about the use of cadaver odour and human blood detection sniffer dogs in situations of criminal investigations, namely as auxiliary means, used a complement to the technical and scientific means of collecting biological samples from crime scenes, as Dr Lowe had said that the FSS have no scientific support about the use of the dogs as a tool in the collection of biological samples and that they normally take as certification the words of the handler who assures that the dogs are more sensitive than any chemical technique or other normally used by local crime scene technicians and that effectively in the past, where dogs recuperated biological samples from the crime scene, which the technicians had not been able to detect and that there had been confirmation from the FSS laboratory by DNA analyses by means of the Low Copy technique, that DNA belonging to the victims existed.

However, the witness was told that there are cases, even a recent case since the disappearance of Madeleine, in which, despite the positive indications of the dogs, in the laboratory it was not possible to identify any DNA profile from the samples collected.

Reads, ratifies, signs.