COVER UP

Coordinated between a female prosecutor in Portimao and her counterpart in Braunschweig, Hans Christian Wolters, around 10 German BKA detectives worked with over 20 Portuguese police and ‘up to five’ detectives from Operation Grange, in London.

During the course of the 72-hour search at least three sacks of materials were sent back to the BKA’s headquarters in Wiesbaden. Sources claimed photos of main suspect Brueckner had appeared of him beside the lake, while police were allegedly specifically looking for fibres of the pink pyjamas Madeleine was wearing on the night she vanished.

While sources in Germany told the Olive Press the new tip was ‘entire- ly credible’ and came from a totally different source, it ties in closely with ‘underworld sources’ who had told Correia about the lake in 2007.

The lawyer had first heard the claims that Madeleine had been killed and dumped in the lake within 48 hours of her kidnap, on Sunday, May 6, just three days after she vanished.

He had first visited the lake with Spanish investigators from Metodo 3, based in Barcelona, in December that year and had finally identified the site where he thought she was dumped on December 10. While he immediately told police investigating the case he claimed they ‘did nothing’. He also claimed (and sued the Portuguese Post Office) that a recorded letter with information on the kidnap which he sent to the McCanns’ home in Rothley, in the UK, had been seized by Portuguese police.

This week, he once again recalled his anguish, revealing: “The clues I received shortly after Madeleine disappeared pointed to her having been kidnapped, raped and murdered and her body thrown into a lake in the Algarve.

“I didn’t know at the time which lake it was, but I soon communicated all this data to the Portuguese Judiciary Police, who completely ignored it, and then to Metodo 3, which did its best to search for Madeleine and discover what had happened to her.

“The work that Metodo 3 was carrying out in the field gathered several clues from different sources that also reinforced that Madeleine had been kidnapped and murdered and she would never have left Portugal.

SHINING A LIGHT: All the hard work and investment by lawyer Marcos Correia into Maddie’s disappearance (which unearthed a bag of bones and a child’s sock, left, in Arade lake), was ‘totally ignored’ by Portu- guese detectives

“After exhaustive research, I therefore hired a private company of divers from the Algarve to carry out searches in the Arade lake, however, as we did not have the support of the Portuguese police (although I had requested this), our means were quite limited and the budget I had offered quickly ran out, so a few days later we were forced to abandon the search.

“However, very suspicious material was found, such as bags with small bones tied with heavy stones, which was handed over to Method 3.” The searches, that had cost €1,200 per day, took place in February and March, 2008 and included mostly British divers, who lived in the area. Among items found was a child’s sock (left) and a 17-foot long piece of ‘knotted cord’ that Correia believed could have been used to tie up the toddler.

Metodo 3 later said they believed Madeleine had been switched from one vehicle to another at a parking spot nearby on the main road between Arade and nearby Silves.

A truck driver had later come forward to say he had spotted a woman passing what looked like a small child to someone at the time.

Concluding, the length of time it has taken to return to the lake, Correia insisted the Madeleine case had taken ‘far too long’ to solve and was a ‘abandoned at the highest level by the Portuguese State, and her parents, clearly innocent, were persecuted’.

“Thank you very much for your interest in the work I have done over the years,” he added. “Many people directly donated money to Madeleine’s parents. I donated my work, time and also money. After the searches again at Arade dam, I hope you can disclose everything in the name of public interest and bit by bit more of the truth will come out.”