This is not daily news so I think the articles should have a thread of their own.
Ginny Sandringham blogs from the road on the week the McCanns went from victims to suspects, and asks if forensics will ever really reveal what happened?
What do cutting edge DNA tests, a cuddly toy, a yacht, sniffer dogs, a diary, sedatives and around a thousand journalists have in common? The answer you might expect is Madeleine McCann, but in fact we don't know.
We don't know, because nobody knows if all these things are linked to each other or are just police suspicions, journalists' headlines, scientists' facts or suspects' - who might be victims - nightmares.
As team McCann keep reminding us, there are only two facts in this story: Madeleine went missing on May 3 and Madeleine is still missing. Up until a week ago there was another fact: The parents aren't suspects. This went out the window last Thursday when Kate McCann was made an 'aguido' by the Portuguese police.
This was the moment when the focus previously directed on the search for Madeleine and the comings and goings of the only other suspect in the case, Robert Murat, turned sharply on Kate and Gerry.
It was as almost as if the media had been waiting for this moment from day one. Suddenly there was a possible explanation for the behaviour we'd all found extraordinary.
Why did they seem so calm and controlled? Why did they launch a world tour leaving their twins behind? Why did they keep insisting Madeleine was alive when most experts gently pointed out that an abductor would have killed her within 24 hours? Why did they plan the 50 day anniversary two weeks in advance? Why did they refuse to publicly criticise the police despite the obvious mistakes at the start of the investigation?
This can of course all be explained if you see it in a different light: they were two grieving parents who'd lost their beloved child, who felt guilty about leaving her alone and were determined to make amends. As we have all said at some point in the last four months: "who knows how we would react in the same situation?"
It's starting to become clear, through the fog of all the 'misinformation' that we may never know the real story because of the failure of the police to investigate Madeleine's disappearance properly. If they had mounted a proper search and released Madeleine's description immediately a kidnapper could have been spotted within hours. At the same time, if, as they allege, Madeleine's parents hid her body nearby, they would surely have been far more likely to have solved the case in days.
As we as journalists are starting to realise, forensic tests are all well and good but the longer the samples have been sitting around the less they tell you about who was where and when and the easier they are to discredit in court.
British forensic scientists are the best in the world but ultra forensic tests lose their value unless they're recovered from an uncompromised crime scene.
Their good work could have all been for nothing as Portuguese police - not use to getting such sensitive results - did not apply the same rigorous standards of collection that we've grown used to in Britain.
It's now a week since the McCanns woke up in their rented villa in Praia da Luz to face the world which had offered them unconditional support, suddenly questioning them. Now they're back in England and working out their fight-back while all the time assuring us their main priority is to find their missing daughter.
Yesterday (Friday) they spent their day meeting lawyers and meeting their new PR firm. Their job will be to steer team McCann through the maelstrom of rumour, fact, accusation and conspiracy. Every 24 hours. http://www.channel4.com/news/a.....out+madeleine/804547
Face it: we need the McCanns to be guilty Janice Turner
Yesterday I passed a woman wearing a “Bored of the Beckhams” T-shirt. Rather passé, I thought, considering they’ve fled Britain to weary a whole new continent. The slogan that many people would choose to wear, although at least for the moment some residue of decency prevents it, is “Exhausted by the McCanns”.
I am not being glib here. This week, in common, I’d guess, with many of you, I have been agog at how easily sympathy can metastasise into accusation, how the qualities first admired in the McCanns – fortitude, respectability, religious faith – can be reappraised as emotional frigidity, bourgeois arrogance, weirdness.
How quickly a crowd’s cheers turn to boos. Found guilty then, without a trial, even though in order to conceal, then move, then move again a by-then suppurating corpse, leaving barely a trace, while tracked by the world’s media, the McCanns would surely need to be both poker-faced psychos and possessed of magical powers.
So why do newspaper mailbags and a legion of internet forums brim with bile? Why have 17,000 people signed an online petition calling for social services to remove the McCann twins? Why this sudden outburst of dark jokes in Private Eye and internet quips about how many children can be carried in a new vehicle called the “Renault McCann”? Is it really fury at what Kate and Gerry McCann might have done? Or is it that the possibility of their guilt has given many permission to vent, at last, emotions they have bottled up all summer long? Madeleine McCann: the key questions
Why do detectives want Kate McCann's diaries and laptop? Related Internet Links
* The latest full coverage of Madeleine McCann
Background
* Victims of the rumour mill?
* Madeleine: one fact, many lies, endless grief
* Lay off the McCanns
* Leaving children alone
Multimedia
* Pictures: searching for Madeleine
* Video: McCann family start holiday
Until this week, the only anti-McCann public expression was in early July when parents complained to the Advertising Standards Authority about a Find Madeleine campaign film screened before the start of Shrek the Third. How dare the McCanns scare our children, they protested, when we have strived to protect them from this terrifying story? But what they also felt, but could not voice, was: stop scaring us, stop ratcheting up our already thrombotic levels of parental paranoia, so we cannot even snuggle up with our toddlers during a Urated cartoon without the intrusion of your horror and grief.
Madeleine sucked the carefree out of summer. If a child could be snatched from a blandly safe Mark Warner resort bedroom, clearly parents must now maintain the highest state of alert. Paedophile rings were stealing babies; but with only the vaguest information about their methods or likely power, it felt as if some older, primitive, unfathomable evil was at large.
Parents re-evaluated risk, canned dinners à deux or that late-night sneak down to the hotel bar for fear not just of loss, but of the purse-lipped fingerpointing of the self-appointed child police. Our already overconstrained kids were kept ever tighter at heel. Hysteria was almost tangible. When a friend mislaid her seven-year-old at the Hay-on-Wye literary festival, security guards at once barged aside bookish middle-aged folk and the building was put into “lock down”. (The child was browsing in the book shop.) But living in a perpetual Code Red makes you anxious, weary, resentful.
And there was no escape from that icon of parental inattention, Madeleine’s trusting face. No media campaign has ever been so overwhelming. What parents of a lost child, particularly a professional, well-connected couple such as the McCanns, would not project her face on to every website, windscreen, digital TV channel? And in order to master the media hydra, why not hire consultants and PRs? Why not hire new ones, as the McCanns did this week, use lobbying and spin and strategy, the war chest of the modern age? Why should Mr McCann not update his daily blog even as his heart breaks or address the Edinburgh TV Festival if doing so makes him feel he’s doing something, when there is really nothing left to do?
It is just this slick professionalism feels incongruous with the rawness of loss. And sometimes, as with the cinema announcement, it appeared the PRs had fallen into default mode: as if the object was to market Brand Madeleine rather than to find a little girl. After all, why harangue Shrek-going parents? No group on earth is more likely to be aware of and sympathetic to your cause. It was hard not feel manipulated, to wonder – then hate yourself for wondering – if Mrs McCann was twisting Cuddle Cat in her fingers for comfort or because she’d been told it would play well on TV.
All summer we have listened politely, tried not to think too deeply about the McCanns’ pain, not squirm at their ill-advised, too-private photo-ops – kissing their twin babies goodbye to meet the Pope – but no, in the end, we haven’t seen Madeleine, we’re sorry, we don’t know where she is. And our impotence, our strained sympathy, a sense of being pestered as if waylaid by a charity “chugger”, has darkened our mood, until we want to say – but cannot – please, please go away.
And in allowing themselves to be creatures of the media, the McCanns have become the Beckhams of grief, prey to the celebrity culture that trivialises all in its wake. Among their positive facets now being used against them are the McCanns’ good looks. A plainer couple would have received sufficient coverage, not this cult-like overexposure. In June I heard senior news executives joke about how much they fancied Kate McCann, even more hotly now that worry had unveiled her amazing bone-structure. A magazine editor said she was restraining herself from running a spread on Mrs McCann’s seemingly infinite supply of summer tops: her heartbreak wardrobe. And news on Thursday that her diary had been seized by police immediately provoked publishers to prepare for a bidding war.
But then their celebrity may be all they have left, now that even their profession is being used to damn them. At first being doctors was evidence of the McCanns’ irreproachable characters. Now it is twisted to suggest they would be insouciant about death, blasé about medicating their own children.
And perhaps in the end, we need the McCanns to be guilty. It is callous to say it, but how can a case that, by necessity, has engaged us so intimately not allow us a stake in its outcome. Given that Madeleine has almost certainly died one way or another, maybe it is easier to accept a parental accident. Yes, let it be a banal domestic: we can guard against that, or so we think. Anything but the cunning, predatory stranger we watch for constantly but can never see.
Russell O’Brien could be questioned over his statement
Saturday September 15,2007 By Padraic Flanagan in Praia da Luz
FRIENDS of Kate and Gerry McCann could have helped the couple get rid of daughter Madeleine’s body, it was claimed last night.
According to sources in Portugal, detectives plan to ask several of the McCanns’ dining companions to return to answer more questions about the night the youngster disappeared.
Police believe alleged discrepancies in their accounts demand fresh investigation. The friends have angrily denied the conspiracy “hurtful” theory.
Officers are thought to be working on the theory that some may have been involved in the four-year-old’s disappearance on May 3 or took part in a cover-up.
The revelation comes after it emerged sniffer dogs detected blood in a second apartment near the McCanns Ocean Club apartment in Praia da Luz.
Detectives are waiting for the results of samples sent to Britain’s Forensic Science Service, which they believe will show the body was hidden there. The McCanns were dining with seven friends just 40 yards from their apartment when Madeleine went missing from a ground-floor bedroom.
Prosecutors believe proving that Kate and Gerry killed their daughter and hid her body would be difficult or impossible without finding her body or suggesting where she was dumped.
A senior officer in the case, Luis Sequeira, said: “The fact that the sniffer dogs found the trail of Madeleine in another apartment in the complex is a very important one.”
Police in Portugal are examining the theory that Mrs McCann may have accidentally killed Madeleine and allegedly relied on her husband and friends to help dispose of the body. The friends, including doctor Russell O’Brien and his partner Jane Tanner, consistently deny any wrong-doing.
The McCanns vehemently reject any involvement in the death of their daughter but the exact sequence of events on the night she disappeared are shrouded in mystery.
It was reported yesterday that officers believe some of the accounts were deliberately falsified to help cover up a crime.
They are understood to be considering adding to the list of official suspects because of the conflicts and contradictions in statements, Portuguese newspaper Correio da Manha said.
Officers putting the case against Mrs McCann claim it would have been almost impossible for the couple to hide the body for several months before moving it and then covering up the death without the help of others.
“Straight after the disappearance it was noticeable how all the attention was focused only on the couple,” said a source close to the case.
“And in the months that followed, the McCanns’ every movement was covered by a battalion of journalists, so it would have been difficult for them to do anything in secret.”
The source said detectives are troubled by apparent inconsistencies in the timings given by the group, especially the child monitoring activities while they dined.
Investigators are reconsidering Ms Tanner’s claim that she saw a man with what looked like a child in his arms walking away from the apartment. She has always said that her version of events is true and correct.
Police in Portugal may send British police a list of questions they want the friends to answer, allowing some interviews to take place in this country.
THE mother of Madeleine McCann, the British four-year-old who vanished in Portugal, will be formally declared a suspect in her daughter's disappearance - a twist driven by stunning claims that the girl's blood was found in a car hired by her parents after her disappearance in May.
Mrs McCann was confronted with the claims during a gruelling 11-hour interrogation that ended early yesterday. She was also told she would be formally declared a suspect in the case, a family spokeswoman, Justine McGuiness, said.
"They believe they have evidence to show that in some way she's involved in the death of her daughter, which of course is completely ludicrous. They have suggested that blood has been found in a hire car that they hired 25 days after Madeleine was taken," she told the BBC.
Sky News in Britain quoted sources as saying Mrs McCann could be charged with the accidental death of her daughter. Mrs McCann's lawyer had warned her charges could be imminent, the network said, quoting a family friend.
Another family spokesman, David Hughes, said police had 22 questions that they wanted to ask Mrs McCann, which required her to be made a formal suspect. Under Portuguese law, the legal move grants certain protections to suspects - including the right to remain silent - but allows police more latitude in questioning.
In London yesterday, The Sun reported that the police had asked Mrs McCann whether she had given Madeleine sedatives on the night she vanished. A recent report in a Portuguese weekly claimed detectives believed the McCanns accidentally killed Madeleine with an overdose of sedatives.
Mrs McCann looked drained and exhausted as she left a police station early yesterday.
"She is shocked and surprised in several ways ... obviously she is concerned that such a line of investigation can become a distraction from further attempts to find Madeleine," a source said.
Mrs McCann faced a barrage of journalists and onlookers when she arrived for a second day of questioning yesterday, 10 hours after the end of the previous interview. Mr McCann was due to be interviewed for a third time yesterday.
The decision by Portuguese police to interview the couple for a second time appeared to stem directly from the result of forensic tests sent from laboratories in Britain on Wednesday.
Both parents have denied any involvement in Madeleine's disappearance. Police have previously insisted the couple were not suspects, and may have changed their status for technical reasons, in order to be able to ask new questions, rather than because they suspect their guilt. THE mother of Madeleine McCann, the British four-year-old who vanished in Portugal, will be formally declared a suspect in her daughter's disappearance - a twist driven by stunning claims that the girl's blood was found in a car hired by her parents after her disappearance in May.
Mrs McCann was confronted with the claims during a gruelling 11-hour interrogation that ended early yesterday. She was also told she would be formally declared a suspect in the case, a family spokeswoman, Justine McGuiness, said.
"They believe they have evidence to show that in some way she's involved in the death of her daughter, which of course is completely ludicrous. They have suggested that blood has been found in a hire car that they hired 25 days after Madeleine was taken," she told the BBC.
Sky News in Britain quoted sources as saying Mrs McCann could be charged with the accidental death of her daughter. Mrs McCann's lawyer had warned her charges could be imminent, the network said, quoting a family friend.
Another family spokesman, David Hughes, said police had 22 questions that they wanted to ask Mrs McCann, which required her to be made a formal suspect. Under Portuguese law, the legal move grants certain protections to suspects - including the right to remain silent - but allows police more latitude in questioning.
In London yesterday, The Sun reported that the police had asked Mrs McCann whether she had given Madeleine sedatives on the night she vanished. A recent report in a Portuguese weekly claimed detectives believed the McCanns accidentally killed Madeleine with an overdose of sedatives.
Mrs McCann looked drained and exhausted as she left a police station early yesterday.
"She is shocked and surprised in several ways ... obviously she is concerned that such a line of investigation can become a distraction from further attempts to find Madeleine," a source said.
Mrs McCann faced a barrage of journalists and onlookers when she arrived for a second day of questioning yesterday, 10 hours after the end of the previous interview. Mr McCann was due to be interviewed for a third time yesterday.
The decision by Portuguese police to interview the couple for a second time appeared to stem directly from the result of forensic tests sent from laboratories in Britain on Wednesday.
Both parents have denied any involvement in Madeleine's disappearance. Police have previously insisted the couple were not suspects, and may have changed their status for technical reasons, in order to be able to ask new questions, rather than because they suspect their guilt.
Mrs McCann, a GP from Leicestershire, had emerged about 1am yesterday from the Portimao police station after her 11-hour interview. Accompanied by her lawyer, Carlos Pinto de Abreu, she looked exhausted and made no comment, but Mr de Abreu told reporters she had been interviewed as a witness.
In a statement released before her interview, Mrs McCann said she believed her daughter was still alive.
"I miss Madeleine so much," she said. "Gerry and I want to appeal again to the person or people who took her ... to do the right thing. It is not too late - please let her go or call the police.
"We came to Portugal an ordinary family of five. We just want to know what happened on 3 May and want to be able to go home one family, reunited."
Mrs McCann's brother-in-law, John McCann, said the family wanted "to see exactly what the Portuguese police are saying. We cannot believe the line that they are going down - we just find it unbelievable".
The McCanns have campaigned for months to keep Madeleine's disappearance in the public eye. They have travelled extensively in Europe, even having a meeting in Rome with the Pope.
Celebrities rallied to their cause, with the soccer star David Beckham, the Harry Potter author J. K. Rowling and the Virgin boss Richard Branson lending their names and enormous sums of money to the campaign.
It began under a relentless media spotlight and the McCanns won widespread public sympathy. However, as the months passed questions were raised over why they had left their daughter alone and there were signs the focus of the investigation was shifting.
Last month a senior policeman said Madeleine might be dead - contradicting the family's belief, often repeated, that she would be found alive.
Mrs McCann will become the second formal suspect. The first was Robert Murat, a British man living near Praia da Luz. He has not been arrested or charged.
The McCanns have recently considered returning home. Mr McCann, a cardiologist, said he would return to work while his wife looked after their two-year-old twins, Amelie and Sean.
The father of missing British toddler Madeleine McCann says he and his wife are innocent and "fighting for our lives" after they were named as suspects by police.
Gerry McCann told London's News of the World tabloid that he and wife Kate's lawyers had told them police had enough evidence to "move forward against us", and spoke of their eagerness to return with their young twins to Britain.
Madeleine McCann, who would now be aged four, disappeared from the family's holiday apartment in the Algarve resort of Praia da Luz on May 3 as her parents ate an evening meal with friends nearby.
The couple have now both been named as formal suspects by Portuguese police.
"We're entirely innocent. But now we're fighting for our lives," Gerry McCann, a cardiologist, told the newspaper.
"We thought we were in our worst nightmare but now it just keeps getting worse and worse.
"It's such a vulnerable position. It's appalling. We've never had to say it until now ... but we did not kill our daughter. I never thought it would come to this.
"But when the paranoia sinks in, you're under severe pressure and things are going down a certain line, then it does look bad.
"In a system that you don't know and you don't really trust, it's incredibly frightening."
Maddie McCann's blood found in parents' car boot - report Article from: AAP September 11, 2007 07:50am
BREAKING NEWS: DNA from blood found in the boot of a car hired by the parents of Madeleine McCann has reportedly matched that of the missing four-year-old.
A report on Sky News UK said Portuguese police had found a full DNA match in the car's boot, which indicated Madeleine had been inside it.
The car was hired by Madeleine's parents, Kate and Gerry McCann, who last week were named as suspects by Portuguese police five weeks after she disappeared from a hotel in southern Portugal on May 3.
Sky News UK cited unidentified sources and authorities would not confirm the information.
Both Kate and Gerry McCann, who returned to England on Sunday, have denied playing any role in their daughter's disappearance.
Maddie case to be handed to magistrate Article from: Agence France-Presse From correspondents in Portimao, Portugal September 12, 2007 05:03am
PORTUGUESE prosecutors will submit the case of British girl Madeleine McCann, whose parents are suspects in her disappearance, to an investigating magistrate, an official said overnight.
"The public ministry will transmit the dossier to the investigating magistrate," a ministry spokeswoman said without mentioning when.
Portuguese prosecutors had been studying the police case against British couple Kate and Gerry McCann, who said they were in an "unending nightmare" over suspicions that they were behind the disappearance of their daughter.
Investigators had sent their report to prosecutors after the national police director admitted that blood traces found in a car rented by the couple did not give a 100 per cent match to four-year-old Maddie, who went missing in southern Portugal on May 3.
The McCanns were made formal suspects in the case on Saturday and two days later returned to Britain with their two year-old twins.
They have strongly attacked Portuguese police, insisting on their innocence and saying they no longer trust the investigators. Some British media have also attacked the police work.
The McCanns insist Maddie was abducted while she slept and they ate a meal with friends at a tapas bar in a hotel complex in the Algarve region of Portugal.
I read also that it was not blood but DNA evidence which could mean saliva transferred from a toy or clothing, from Maddie. We will not know truly what happened to Maddie until she is found. I believe that Maddie was dead before she was even reported missing. Like our own Daniel Morecombe from here on the Sunny Coast, only their remains will be found, one day.
If they are found guilty of her death, I wonder what happens to all that money.
Quoted from SuziH
In trust for the surviving children would be a good idea.
McCanns won't tap fund for legal bills 6:46a.m. 13 September 2007
The parents of missing girl Madeleine McCann won't use a public fund set up to help find their daughter to pay their legal bills, a family spokesman says.
Gerry and Kate McCann have raised a million pounds from well-wishers since launching the fund in May after the four-year-old went missing while on holiday in Portugal.
"We are not seeking support from the fund," spokesman David Hughes told reporters outside the McCanns' family home in Rothley, Leicestershire.
The couple do not want to upset people who think the money should not be used to pay their legal bills, he added.
The fund's trustees said they had decided not to allow the money to be used to pay lawyers' fees, despite receiving expert advice that it would have been legal.
"The fund's directors realised there is not only a legal answer, but recognised too the spirit which underlies the generous donations to Madeleine's fund," Esther McVey, one of the fund's directors, told a news conference.
"For this reason, the fund's directors have decided not to pay for Gerry and Kate's legal defence costs."
The McCanns, both 39, returned to England on Sunday after detectives in Portugal questioned them for hours as formal suspects in the case.
On Tuesday, Portugal's public prosecutor passed the case against them to a criminal judge who will decide whether there are grounds for charges.
The judge can decide whether there is enough evidence for a trial or reject the case for having insufficient evidence.
Lindy Chamberlain warning on McCann case Article from: AAP September 12, 2007 07:54pm
PORTUGUESE police and a public hungry for the truth might derail the investigation into the disappearance of British toddler Madeleine McCann, Lindy Chamberlain has warned. Madeleine McCann, 3, vanished from her parents' room at a hotel in Portugal's Algarve region on May 3 as her two-year-old twin siblings slept and her parents ate at a tapas bar with friends nearby.
But her parents, Kate and Jeremy McCann, were last week named by police as suspects and returned to Portugal for lengthy questioning, but were released again two days later.
Police have handed their 10 volumes of reports and evidence to prosecutors, who have now submitted it to the investigating magistrate to consider any further lines of inquiry.
Lindy Chamberlain, now Chamberlain-Creighton, said there were many similarities between the McCann case and the disappearance of her daughter Azaria while on a family camping holiday to Uluru in August 1980.
Ms Chamberlain-Creighton has always insisted a dingo took nine-week-old Azaria from the family's tent.
She was convicted of Azaria's murder in 1982 amid intense public and media speculation, but was exonerated six years later.
"It's certainly looking like it (the McCann case) is having far more echoes of mine than I would wish on anybody," she told the Nine Network tonight.
"Answers are going to come from somewhere or another - whether it is the right answer is a very worrying problem."
There was immense pressure for police to solve the case, Ms Chamberlain-Creighton said.
"The public want answers, and if they haven't got them, they are going to invent them," she said.
"And the police are under pressure and have been trained to find answers.
"I certainly wouldn't want to go through it again and be in their shoes.
"There's nothing you can do, but I think as the public, we want to be careful not to run ahead."
Madeleine may have died from sleeping pills: report
British girl Madeleine McCann may have died from an overdose of sleeping pills, newspaper reports say.
French newspaper France Soir said scientific analysis of the bodily fluids found in the boot of the car hired by parents Kate and Gerry McCann proved "the little girl had ingested medicines, without doubt sleeping pills, in large quantities".
A report outlining how the four-year-old met her death was already with Portuguese prosecutors, said France Soir, in a report picked up by several British newspapers.
British forensic experts have expressed doubts about the claim, saying the fluid is only a partial match to Madeleine's DNA and the sample is not strong enough to determine the presence of drugs.
The report supports theories published in Portugal that Kate McCann was involved in Madeleine's death while on holiday in Portugal, and that her husband helped her dispose of their daughter's body.
The couple's supporters have dismissed the theories as "rumour-mongering", fuelled by sources in the floundering police investigation, London's Daily Mail newspaper said.
Madeleine went missing from the family's holiday apartment in the Algarve resort of Praia da Luz on May 3.
Other unconfirmed reports say Portuguese police want to reinterview both Mrs McCann and some of the friends on holiday with the couple when Madeleine went missing.
Both parents have been named formal suspects in their daughter's disappearance.
Portuguese newspapers have suggested Mrs McCann could face charges of homicide by negligence and concealing Madeleine's corpse.
Two friends of the mother of missing Madeleine McCann have defended her against suggestions she was involved in her daughter's disappearance. Linda McQueen and Nicky Gill, who have known Kate McCann since childhood, said she and her husband Gerry were "the most loving, family-oriented couple"...
Hope for McCanns as law on secrecy is eased By David Harrison in Praia da Luz and Adam Lusher Last Updated: 1:29am BST 16/09/2007
Gerry and Kate McCann may be on the edge of a breakthrough in clearing their names after a shake-up in Portuguese secrecy laws.
The McCanns have announced an £80,000 campaign to help find Madeleine
The country's legal system is being overhauled, lifting the veil on documents concerning their daughter Madeleine's disappearance.
The move could see an end to the swirling of rumour and speculation that has surrounded the inquiry and may also make it harder for the Portuguese police to obtain authorisation to tap the telephones of the McCanns and their confidants.
Friends of Dr Matthew Oldfield, an endocrinologist at Kingston Hospital in south-west London who was dining with the McCanns when Madeleine went missing on May 3, have told The Sunday Telegraph he is sure his mobile phone is being bugged.
Gerry McCann is reported to have told friends: "The police are listening to every word we say."
advertisementThe eavesdropping has proved particularly distressing to the McCanns, with one Portuguese newspaper claiming secretly recorded evidence has convinced detectives that the couple believe their daughter is dead.
It has also emerged that police are planning more searches in areas used by the McCanns and their friends in Praia da Luz, including wasteland behind the Milenio restaurant and the route they took to the beach.
The searches will be based on records of mobile phone calls used to pinpoint the whereabouts of the couple and their friends when the calls were made.
Officers also hope to stage a reconstruction of events on the day Madeleine disappeared.
The couple have renewed their attack on the rumours as they announced an £80,000 advertising campaign to help find Madeleine.
The campaign, due to start within the next fortnight, will be interpreted as a reassertion of the McCanns' insistence that they are innocent and that Madeleine may still be alive.
The McCanns' move came amid a welter of further developments, including Portuguese newspaper reports that Kate McCann will be interviewed about Madeleine's disappearance by British detectives on Tuesday or Wednesday.
Another report claimed a senior detective had suggested Madeleine's body was dumped at sea in a bag weighted with stones. Police were even said to be considering whether the McCanns hired an accomplice to help smuggle the body.
The 24 Horas newspaper, however, claimed that a "high ranking" officer in the Policia Judiciaria, Portugal's criminal investigation department, had admitted there might not be enough information to charge the McCanns.
"We have nothing concrete," the official was quoted as saying. "There are a lot of indications, but … even if the traces in the car or apartment were confirmed to correspond 100 per cent to the girl's DNA, that wouldn't prove anything."
The changes to Portuguese law follow complaints that investigating officers have been "hiding" behind the secrecy rules to conceal basic errors made since Madeleine vanished from apartment 5a of the Mark Warner Ocean Club Resort in Praia da Luz.
Previously, all information in police investigation files had to remain secret, and Mark Williams-Thomas, a former Surrey child protection detective now in Praia da Luz, told The Sunday Telegraph that officers had used this as "an excuse for not doing proper detective work".
He said: "They said they could not do a televised appeal because of secrecy laws but that was not about secrecy, because secrecy refers to details of the investigation."
Carlos Pinto de Abreu, the McCanns' family lawyer and a prime mover behind the new legislation, hailed the legal changes as "an important step towards a more open system that will benefit all parties".
Many blame the official "information vacuum" under the old secrecy rules for encouraging leaks which last week included claims about forensic evidence in the McCanns' hire car, rumours that police thought Madeleine was killed by a sleeping tablet overdose, and suggestions that Kate McCann's diary shows frustration with her three "hysterical" children.
The leaks drew vehement responses from the McCanns' supporters.
Alex Cayless, their former neighbour in Queniborough, Leicestershire - where they lived until summer 2006 - told this newspaper: "I never heard Kate or Gerry raise their voices to their children or anyone else. They went through the emotional hell of IVF to have Madeleine. They adored her."
Meanwhile John McCann, toured television studios to protest his brother's innocence, and two of Kate McCann's closest friends travelled to London to issue public statements of support.
The Portuguese law was officially changed yesterday but will not come into force until tomorrow, the first working day after the weekend.
It could allow the McCanns access to investigators' files, running to 4,000 pages, within days.
The new law means that all suspects and third parties, including the media, will have access to police documents in any investigation - unless the public prosecutor decides that secrecy will benefit the inquiry or protect the rights of the accused. The prosecutor's decision has to be ratified by a judge within 72 hours.
The Sunday Telegraph understands, however, that the police have already anticipated the rule change and have prepared an appeal to the public prosecutor to keep the Madeleine file secret.
In the McCann's home village of Rothley, Leicestershire, the family announced that £80,000 from the Madeleine Fund, established to search for the four-year-old, will be spent on newspaper, television and billboard adverts in Spain, Portugal and other parts of Europe.
The announcement comes after the family said it would not spend fund money on the McCanns' legal costs.
Maddie's body 'dumped in the sea' Saturday Sep 15 15:00 AEST By ninemsn staff
Portuguese police believe Madeleine McCann's body was dumped at sea from a British-owned yacht, according to newspaper reports.
This latest theory contends that the body of four-year-old Madeleine was thrown into the ocean in a weighted sack, The Sun reported today.
This would mean the body was unlikely to be recovered and severely hamper any case against Madeleine's parents, Gerry and Kate McCann, the paper said.
Portuguese police have formally named the McCanns as suspects and want to question them again over their daughter's disappearance.
Reports circulated in the past two days that toxic levels of sedatives had been found in bodily fluids belonging to Madeleine.
The fluids, along with a quantity of hair, were reportedly recovered from a car hired by the McCanns.
But British experts have cast doubts on the veracity of this evidence.
Gerry McCann has meanwhile granted an interview to the News of the World, in which he tells the newspaper that he and his wife are "fighting for (their) lives".
"It's such a vulnerable position. It's appalling. We've never had to say it until now, but we did not kill our daughter. I never believed it would come to this," Mr McCann said.
"But when the paranoia sinks in, you're under severe pressure and things are going down a certain line, then it does look bad."
Madeleine McCann disappeared from a holiday apartment at the Portuguese resort of Praia da Luz on May 3 this year. Her parents said they were eating at a restaurant about 100m away at the time of her disappearance.
I am sorry if this sounds callous but to leave three tots in a bed in a motel room alone, while you are 100 m away, not even within ear shot, is just plain stupid! I thought it was a 'few' meters, not 100 odd. This whole story is bizzare.
Branson pledges 100,000 pounds for McCanns' legal fees September 16, 2007 - 9:22PM Source: ABC
Virgin boss Richard Branson has pledged 100,000 pounds for a legal fund to defend the parents of missing British toddler Madeleine McCann, the Sunday Times reported.
Gerry and Kate McCann have been named as formal suspects by Portuguese police investigating the disappearance of Madeleine in May.
"Sir Richard wants to ensure the McCanns get access to the best legal advice," the weekly newspaper quoted a source close to Branson as saying.
"He has a good instinct on these things. It will help to ensure that they get a fair hearing and that all of the facts become available."
The paper added that Branson, head of the group that includes Virgin Atlantic and Virgin Mobile, has been in regular contact with the couple since their daughter went missing.
"A number of other individuals will be involved. The fund's size is potentially unlimited," the source was quoted as saying.
"It will initially look to raise about 1 million pounds, but it will be as much as it takes to make the McCanns' case."
Madeleine, then aged three, vanished from the family's holiday apartment in the resort of Praia da Luz on the Algarve in Portugal on May 3 as her parents ate an evening meal with friends in a restaurant just metres away.
Gerry McCann, a hospital cardiologist, and Kate McCann, a family doctor, flew back to Britain with their two-year-old twins last weekend after spending nearly four months based in Portugal coordinating a search for their daughter.
The couple this weekend launched a new publicity campaign in Europe to help the search, and their friends have sought to shift the focus back onto this aspect of the case and away from speculation about the parents.
Friends of Kate McCann, 39, came out Sunday to insist she was an exemplary mother who would never harm her children.
Newspaper speculation in Portugal and Britain has flown since the McCanns were named as "arguidos" - formal suspects - in Madeleine's disappearance.
The status means they can no longer speak about the police investigation.
According to the family, Portuguese police suspect Kate McCann was involved in the accidental death of her daughter and both parents then tried to cover it up.
I think some of the problem with this case is the amount of Law and Order, Criminal Intent, CSI etc that is on our screens. We are given a first hand Hollywood account of what goes on in investigations of crime. So, we tend to believe the media stories when the real CSI's find evidence in a real life case like this one, and when the real criminal detectives come up with exciting scenarios. We also find ourselves saying 'Yes! It makes sense! It sounds familiar, so it must be true!' unaware it was actually a fictional storyline we saw on several crime shows over the years. I'm sure 20 years ago, the majority didn't think like we do now, concocting wild stories of what may have happen using our knowledge gained from Hollywood. Well, that's MHO as to why everyone seems to have suddenly turned on theMcCanns. They won't ever get a fair trial if the media doesn't let up.
The old addage, 'never let the truth get in the way of a good story' is so accurate in this case. In my old home town of Cowra NSW there was an axe murder of two women in the 1980's. There was the truth and then there was all the rubbish published in Newspapers across the country. The truth was sensational enough but the fantasy stories the newspapers ran sold even more papers. They never 'caught' the killer. Rumour has/had it that the police knew who did it but had no evidence. I find even that hard to believe.
Doubt in case against McCanns September 18, 2007 07:57am
SERIOUS doubts are being cast on a crucial part of the police case against Kate and Gerry McCann.
Portuguese police began to suspect the couple after a sniffer dog trained to detect "the scent of death" reacted strongly to their hire car and Madeleine's Cuddle Cat toy.
However similar evidence has been dismissed as unreliable in a US murder trial where experts found the dogs had a poor record and were wrong seven or eight times out of 10.
Unreliable evidence
The dramatic development came as:
* FORENSIC experts continued to pour scorn on the reliability of the DNA evidence;
* THE official police spokesman quit in a row over the way his colleagues had leaked material hostile to the McCanns;
* THE Archbishop of York said the couple had been treated "unjustly and inhumanely"; and
* THE examining magistrate in charge of the case made an unprecedented appeal to be allowed to speak publicly, apparently to defend police.
Precedent already set
The McCanns' legal team is in touch with American lawyers to obtain case papers in which a US judge rejected sniffer dog "evidence". Sources called the papers "important and relevant".
It was a decision to bring over a sniffer dog from South Yorkshire several weeks ago which persuaded Portuguese police the McCanns may have been involved in their daughter's death.
During police interviews the couple were shown videos of the animal "going crazy" when it approached their Renault hire car.
Fresh doubt was yesterday also cast on claims Madeleine's hair was found in the car.
It emerged the hair is by no means certain to be Madeleine's. It cannot be matched to her DNA - the fragments found did not even allow the scientists to establish the sex or age of the individual.
British sources also questioned the reliability of other DNA evidence, pointing to possible contamination. They have already said it would not stand up in a UK court.
Portuguese police are said to be considering a thorough search of the area where Madeleine disappeared on May 3.
It is a move British police said should have been made immediately. Just 200m from the room where Madeleine was last seen there was a row of industrial sized wheelie bins.
They were there on the night she vanished and were emptied about four days later without being searched.
Senior police in the UK have long believed that, if Madeleine was dead, her body would be found close to the scene.
Back in England, the McCanns on Sunday went to Mass at their local church for the first time since they returned from Portugal.
Kate McCann allowed herself a rare slight smile as they talked to friends in the village of Rothley, Leicestershire.
The couple, who are determined to live as normally as possible, held hands as they walked the 200m from their home to the Catholic Church of the Sacred Heart.
There was not enough room in the tiny church for everyone who wanted to attend and the congregation spilled out of the door as its members said prayers for Madeleine's safe return.
Nappy evidence could clear missing Madeleine's parents 12:02PM Thursday September 20, 2007
Kate and Gerry McCann, carrying twins Sean Amelie, on their return to England. Photo / Reuters
Kate and Gerry McCann could be cleared of suspicion over the disappearance of their daughter Madeleine by some nappies, according to The Sun newspaper.
The soiled nappies, worn by the couple's twins Sean and Amelie, were packed into the McCann's Renault hire car when they quickly switched apartments in Portugal.
DNA from the twins and their nappies could have easily been left in the car's boot - and would have been almost identical to missing Madeleine, the newspaper reports.
Up to 30 other people used the hired Scenic before police searched it.
The revelation was made as the couple gave their first interview since returning to Britain, and could seriously effect any case that Portuguese authorities have against the embattled couple.
Other reports indicate that further forensic tests are being undertaken in Britain.
The Sun says the tests are looking for Madeleine's DNA on material gathered from Praia da Luz, including alleged blood samples found in an apartment close to where the couple was staying.
the Forensic Science Service Laboratory in Birmingham is expected to send evidence to Portugal in a matter of days.
A statement released this morning by a Portuguese prosecutor said that the McCanns were not likely to be questioned again as recent interview had failed to make more progress in the case, the LUSA news agency reported.
"New elements of proof - after interrogations on September 7 - have not gathered anything to justify new questioning, so it is not planned," Verao told the agency.
A millionaire businessman has joined Virgin boss Richard Branson in providing financial backing to the parents of missing Madeleine McCann as they attempt to clear their names.
Brian Kennedy, who is estimated to be worth about 250 million pounds ($581 million), says he feels compelled to help Gerry and Kate McCann fight the "incredible accusations" against them.
The McCanns' daughter went missing from the bedroom of their holiday apartment in Praia da Luz, in the Algarve, Portugal on May 3 days before her fourth birthday.
Portuguese authorities declared the couple formal suspects earlier this month after questioning them separately for hours, but they have filed no charges against them.
Cheshire-based Kennedy, who owns the Latium Group and rugby union team Sale Sharks, said in a statement: "In light of the quite literally incredible accusations against Gerry and Kate McCann, which are clearly exacerbating their emotional torture, I felt compelled to offer - along with other like-minded businessmen - financial support and the full logistical support of the Latium team."
Virgin boss billionaire Richard Branson said last Sunday (local time) he would donate 100,000 pounds ($232,500) to create a fund to help pay the couple's legal bills.
Mr Kennedy says his company has given the McCanns the help of its in-house lawyer Ed Smethurst and was paying for their new official spokesman, Clarence Mitchell.
"This will relieve the McCanns of the daily pressure of co-ordinating the legal teams that will expedite the clearing of Gerry and Kate's names, allowing all parties to refocus on finding Madeleine," Mr Kennedy added.
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