Source
Quote:
COPS CLOSE IN ON MADDIE
POLICE were last night ordered to find Madeleine McCann’s body to stop her parents “escaping” justice.
Prosecutors are convinced Kate McCann killed her daughter and roped in husband Gerry to help dispose of the corpse.
But they have warned unless Madeleine’s body is found the couple may never be charged in connection with her death.
Last night detectives in Portugal revealed they were no longer looking for the “living” four-year-old.
Prosecutors may charge the McCanns, both 39, with child neglect for leaving Madeleine and two-year-old twins Sean and Amelie while they dined in a tapas bar 40 yards away in Praia da Luz.
The offence carries a maximum two-year jail sentence in Portugal.
Manslaughter, the charge police want to bring against Kate, carries a maximum three years. Last night the McCanns said the legal battle would be a “long haul” and could take a year.
Police chiefs are convinced former hospital anaesthetist Kate killed her daughter with an accidental overdose of sedatives.
They believe the couple hid the body close to their apartment, then moved it in a Renault Scenic they hired three weeks later.
Brit police sniffer dogs found a “death scent” in the car, the McCanns’ apartment, on some of Kate’s clothes, and on Madeleine’s favourite soft toy Cuddle Cat.
Body fluids with an 88% match to Madeleine’s DNA were found in the spare tyre well under the carpet in the Renault’s boot.
But last night one of Portugal’s most senior prosecutors Antonio Cluny said evidence alone was not enough to bring death charges.
Mr Cluny, president of the District Attorneys and Magistrates Council in Portugal, said: “Without the little girl’s body everything is extremely complicated.”
Police are planning to dig near the resort’s tiny hillside church.
A senior police source said: “Finding the body is currently our great priority.
“Operations in that sense are being developed, although so far without results.
“It is fundamental to solving the case. The inquiry can go on but the truth is without finding the little girl it will be almost impossible to accuse the couple of any crime. They will escape.”
Last night a source close to the McCanns’ legal team said the couple feared a cloud of suspicion would forever be hanging over them.
He said: “If a body is not found and they are not charged then they will have this hanging over them. But that is unacceptable because they are innocent. Why should they have this stain on their character?
“The suggestion that they have to face justice or escape justice is loaded with assumptions of their guilt, which is untrue.
“A body never being found is the worst case scenario because nobody, least of all them, will ever know what has happened.
“It is every parent’s nightmare.”
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My emboldening
This is exactly what they need to do. Once they have them locked up in prison away from the PR spin machine, they are bound to finally get a confession out of them. It beggars belief that they have not done that already