Daily Express
Pendiente de traducción...
By David Pilditch
SHOWN in a chilling artist’s impression, this is the face of the new prime suspect in the hunt for missing Madeleine McCann.The scar-faced stranger was spotted watching the holiday apartment where Madeleine was snatched two years ago.
The man was seen on five separate occasions by four witnesses in the days leading up to the little girl’s abduction.
One British holidaymaker was so scared by the figure she grabbed her own young daughter and protectively pulled her away from him.
The prowler – believed to be in his late 20s or early 30s – was described by one witness as being “very ugly, with pitted skin and a large nose”.
All four witnesses told police the man was monitoring the apartment where Madeleine was staying with her family in the Portuguese Algarve holiday resort of Praia da Luz.
The man – who was spotted with a white van – vanished after Madeleine disappeared and has never been traced.
The witnesses each reported the sightings to Portuguese detectives but astonishingly they were never linked despite the startling similarities.
Instead their statements were buried away in 17 volumes of police files which were archived after the case was formally closed.
Yesterday a team of British detectives working for Madeleine’s parents, Kate and Gerry, issued the artist’s impression of the acne-scarred suspect for the first time. The man is described as 5ft 10ins tall and slim-built.
Sources close to the investigation told yesterday how the evidence found in the police files has given Madeleine’s parents fresh hope of a vital breakthrough.
Former Detective Inspector Dave Edgar, who is leading the investigation, believes the sightings could hold the key to solving the mystery of Madeleine’s disappearance.
Mr Edgar and colleague, former Detective Sergeant Arthur Cowley, are convinced the man was a “watcher” working with Madeleine’s abductor in a carefully-planned operation.
The investigators also believe Madeleine was seen in the arms of an abductor by 13 people on the night she vanished.
Jane Tanner, one of the McCanns’ holiday friends, spotted a man carrying a blonde child away from the apartment shortly after 9.15pm on May 3, 2007.
And Martin Smith, a holidaymaker from Ireland, and 11 members of his family also saw a man carrying a sleeping child dressed in pink pyjamas at 9.40pm.
The dramatic findings will be shown in a Channel 4 TV documentary, Madeleine Was Here, to be screened tonight at 9pm.
In the film, Gerry McCann, 40, makes a direct appeal to an abductor, saying: “It’s not too late to do the right thing. Give her up.”
Last night the couple’s spokesman Clarence Mitchell said: “They are now highlighting what they believe to be critically important witness testimony which until now hasn’t had the attention it deserves.”
