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Posted on 12/01/2007 6:54:30 AM PST by UKrepublican
Madeleine: Police to question McCanns 'over Exeter Connection that links Murat and their friends'
Kate and Gerry McCann's hopes of being quickly cleared as suspects in their daughter's disappearance appeared to suffer a setback yesterday.
It emerged that Portuguese police want to question them again.
Detectives are preparing to return to Britain next week to speak to the couple and other members of the "Tapas Nine" who dined together on the night Madeleine vanished.
One line of questioning could be a coincidence - dubbed the Exeter Connection - linking suspect Robert Murat, 34, a British expat living in the village where the little girl vanished, to two of the nine.
Murat stayed with his sister in Exeter in the spring, and returned to Portugal two days before Madeleine disappeared on May 3, The Sun reports today.
Two of the Tapas Nine, Russell O'Brien, 36, and Jane Tanner, 37, who says she saw a man carrying the child away, live less than a mile from Murat's sister, Samantha.
Dr O'Brien and partner Jane are neighbours of James Gorrod, 34, and wife Charlotte, 32, who were also in Praia da Luz when Madeleine disappeared. None of them are suspects.
"There are many pieces to the jigsaw, but they all seem to add up to Exeter - we want to know why," a police source told The Sun.
The McCanns had hoped police would lift their status as official suspects after DNA tests failed to find any evidence to prove they were involved.
But Portuguese officers have told a public prosecutor they need to speak to the Britons again.
Sources told the Portuguese news channel SIC that a team of detectives and the prosecutor would fly to Britain next week for the interviews.
They will deliver letters of appeal to British police, asking them to interrogate the Britons again with Portuguese officers present.
The Portuguese police would need the permission of the Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, if they wanted to re-interview Kate and Gerry McCann or their friends on British soil, a police source said today. ,p> "A request would have to be sent to the Home Office in writing and would have to be approved by the Home Secretary."
A spokeswoman for the Home Office said: "If the Portuguese police were to require to travel to the UK then they would need to apply for mutual legal assistance from the Home Office."
The McCanns' spokesman, Clarence Mitchell, said he could not confirm that they were to be interviewed again because the family's legal team had not seen such an application.
But he added: "Kate and Gerry and their friends have consistently said they are more than happy to be reinterviewed if Portuguese police feel it is necessary.
"Indeed their friends are keen to be reinterviewed, if that helps to clarify any inconsistencies the police feel may exist in their original statements, and if it leads to Kate and Gerry being eliminated from the inquiry.
"Their friends, like Kate and Gerry, have absolutely nothing to hide."
There is a possibility that the interviews could simply be a formal step towards removing the couple's status as suspects.
The McCanns, both 39, and their friends have always denied that they were involved in Madeleine's disappearance, or that they agreed a "pact of silence".
Four members of the Portuguese investigation team flew home from the UK yesterday after meeting British forensic experts to discuss DNA samples collected for the inquiry.
Tests are said to have been carried out on blood samples, bodily fluids and hair found in the McCanns' holiday apartment and the car they hired 25 days after their daughter disappeared.
Both Leicestershire Police, the McCanns' local force, and the Birmingham-based Forensic Science Service called the meeting "routine".
Portuguese police also met their public prosecutor for more than three hours yesterday to discuss the DNA tests.
The new British ambassador to Portugal, Alex Ellis, was also at the police station in Faro, but the Foreign Office insisted his visit was pre-planned and "unrelated".
Newspapers in Portugal quoted police sources as admitting the forensic evidence was "very tenuous" but saying it was not the only strand of the investigation.
• Portuguese police have returned items including a computer and a diary they seized from suspect Robert Murat's girlfriend, Michaela Walczuch. Detectives were said to have found 'no trace of any crime'.
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I never believe in coincidences
Were they all couples except for one person?
Who in the hell leaves three children under the age of 5 alone so they can go off boozing with their friends? Yes, a child kidnapping is a remote occurrance, but what about a fire?
I hate to say it, but if this happened in America, I’d hope these parents would be locked up for child endangerment, at a minimum.
I think the parents done it.
You think Madeleine died before the parents went to dinner, then they went to dinner and were perfectly calm and normal, then came back and called the police?
I think the Portuguese police are incompetent beyond belief. Recently it came out that they believed for a time that the parents had sold Madeleine to a criminal gang to ease financial worries. Then as they started to try to prove that, oops, they found out that the parents are very well off doctors. They have had so many theories without any evidence that they have no credibility left with me.
The latest was that a would-be abductor killed Madeleine in the apt. That must be theory number 20.
Yes, I do. They killed the little girl and then set their friends up to be alibi witnesses. There’s no evidence of anyone else there - and again, how in the Hell do you defend parents leaving three children under the age of 5 alone in a strange place in a foreign country? It’s not like they were on the patio or even next door.
Even if there’s not yet enough evidence to charge them with homicide, there’s plenty of evidence of child neglect/endangerment. Lock ‘em up on that, and one will implicate the other. Neither of them have any business being doctors, either, as careless as they were with their own children.
For goodness sake; why don’t they just find this little girl.
I DON’T defend their leaving the children alone. But that doesn’t mean they killed Madeleine.
As for no evidence of anyone being there, the police admit that they completely botched the crime scene. They allowed dozens of people to trample upon it, destroying crucial evidence. So no one knows if there is evidence of an intruder.
One of the friends does report seeing someone carrying a small child away, who she believes was Murat. There are reports of Murat and his girlfriend at the hotel doing suspicious things at various times. Also a report that the husband of Murat’s girlfriend works as a pool cleaner there. Sightings of Murat’s girlfriend with Madeleine in Portugal and of both of them separately in a town in Morocco. Murat and his gang do look very suspicious to me.
They are responsible for their child’s disappearance, period.
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