As Gerry McCann was due to testify today (June 16) in the long-running civil action for defamation that he and wife Kate have taken out against former detective Gonçalo Amaral, damning new claims about his behaviour on the night three-year-old Madeleine disappeared have appeared in the Portuguese press.
On Sunday, the headline of a story carried by Correio da Manhã proclaimed “Gerry searched for Maddie drunk”, while in the evening the policeman whose inconvenient theory the couple is demanding over a million euros in damages for went on television to describe how a key witness had placed Gerry McCann on Luz beach on the night Madeleine went missing – but how that witness’ testimony has since been “wiped from police records”.
The first story hinged on an account from farmer and former fisherman Cândido Furtado who lives a short walk from Luz church overlooking the beach.
Furtado told journalists how he had seen Gerry McCann “totally drunk” calling Madeleine’s name in the street in the early hours of the morning after she reportedly vanished.
“The father was walking at 1am with a bottle of wine in his hand,” Furtado told CM.
“He was calling the child’s name outside my door, and I asked him ‘what kind of noise is this?’ He said: ‘Menina, menina, embora, embora’.”
Father and grandfather Furtado said he told Gerry McCann to call the police, and then went fishing.
But as CM adds, “he had no doubts that Gerry McCann was drunk”. “You could see it instantly, by the way he was walking,” he told the paper.
Intriguingly, hours later, former police inspector Gonçalo Amaral went on air on CMTV to say Gerry McCann had also been seen on the beach on the night Madeleine went missing – but that the witness who placed him there (a British tourist) had her testimony wiped from police records.
“We have tried to recover the testimony and the documents that related to it. They simply disappeared. Still today we don’t know who this person is, or where she is,” he told the news channel.
Even more intriguing perhaps is a letter received in The Resident offices today claiming that Madeleine’s body is indeed buried in Praia da Luz, but not in any of the places searched so far.
Madeleine will be found under a nearby driveway to a private house, “very possibly inside a missing carry all tennis bag”, wrote South African investigator Martin Van Wyk, who maintains the truth lies with the Tapas 13 – not the Tapas 7 “as everybody was made to believe”.
Adding that he knows his email, sent to a number of news sources and investigating police, “will be pushed to one side”, Wyk advises recipients “do not delete it, as you will later refer back to it and be calling me”.
As we wrote up these developments, Sky News reported that Gerry and Kate McCann had not yet been able to give their “victim impact assessments” to the Lisbon court. There has been a “delay in the proceedings”.
Whatever happens today however will not lead to any instant verdict. The case, which was brought out against Amaral in 2009, will need “a few weeks” consideration before the judge contacts the legal teams on both sides with her final decision.
By NATASHA DONN [email protected]
