'Answer to Maddie kidnap lies yards from flat'
THE key to solving Madeleine McCann’s disappearance may lie within 500 yards of her family’s holiday apartment in Praia da Luz, investigators believe.
The hunt for the missing youngster has dramatically switched back to Portugal, where investigators last night said they were focusing their probe on a predatory paedophile still living in the area.
Investigators who have carried out a major case review have said all the clues to solving the mystery of Madeleine’s disappearance more than two years ago centre on the popular family holiday resort in the Algarve.
A source close to the investigation said: “All the evidence points to Praia da Luz, not Morocco or Spain or elsewhere.
“We think the answer to Madeleine’s disappearance lies within 500 yards of the holiday apartment. They say there is no evidence that a vehicle was used in the abduction, shortly before her fourth birthday, or that she was spirited away out to sea."
The breakthrough comes after a series of new leads received by private detectives working for Kate and Gerry McCann.
The source said: “Of the four new leads, there is one we are particularly interested in.”
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The detectives identified a suspicious man who was in Praia da Luz at the time of Madeleine’s disappearance and is still living there. The source said: “He is one of a handful of men we are looking at. There are a couple in Praia da Luz and two elsewhere on the Algarve. All but one are British.”
The latest suspect has been deemed especially “significant” after a witness came forward to say they had seen him lurking near the McCanns’ apartment around the time of Madeleine’s disappearance.
The source said: “We are looking at a man. He is of significant interest.” Former British police detectives David Edgar and Arthur Cowley recently returned from the Algarve and Germany after interviewing a series of witnesses.
Last night the pair welcomed convicted paedophile Raymond Hewlett’s offer to answer their questions. They hope to interview him about Madeleine’s disappearance in the “near future”, a close source said.
Hewlett, 64, is said to have been staying around an hour’s drive from the McCanns’ holiday flat in Praia da Luz in Portugal when Madeleine vanished in May 2007. He is now being treated in hospital in Aachen, Germany for throat cancer.
He has denied any involvement and the investigators continue to believe that the Praia da Luz area provides the key to finding Madeleine.
They have discovered that the area has a number of paedophiles and that tourists have been targets of sex offenders.
Holidaymakers have also frequently been the target of burglaries. Edgar and Cowley were hired by the McCanns to pick up the pieces of the investigation after Spanish agency Metodo 3 failed to find the missing youngster, now aged six.
Ex-Detective Inspector Dave Edgar said: “The only people capable of running an investigation like this are those trained as an SIO – Senior Investigating Officer.” Edgar and his colleague, ex-Detective Sergeant Arthur Cowley, receive up to 200 inquiries every day from people claiming to have new evidence.
A source close to the investigation said: “There are 38 known sex offenders in the Algarve. There have been seven sexual assaults involving the children of tourists in the Praia da Luz area in the past four years. They all have the same modus operandi as Madeleine’s abduction.
“There were attacks on children involving burgling a property and indecent assaults on the kids. Five happened before Madeleine’s abduction, two happened afterwards. One took place a month before Madeleine vanished.”
