- Officers' 'evidence' of McCanns' guilt included Kate's visit to a priest
- During first few hours of Madeleine's disappearance police smoked and joked
In the book, she says there were two reasons that she felt that the strain of Madeleine’s disappearance might affect their marriage.
The first was an inability to allow herself any sort of pleasure – whether reading a book, playing music or making love to her husband.
The second, she says, was the fear that a paedophile may have taken Madeleine.
Suspect: Kate McCann says her lawyer Carlos Pinto de Abreu, pictured, suggested her husband Gerry could work while she went to jail for admitting to disposing of Madeleine's body
In her account, Mrs McCann says her husband was supportive throughout her worst years, never making her feel guilty. ‘He would put his arm round me, reassuring me and telling me that he loved me,’ she writes.
Still missing: Madeleine has never been found and Kate says she felt like no one was bothering to look for her 'baby'
Mrs McCann recounts the day she returned to Madeleine’s bedroom at their home in Rothley, Leicestershire – and imagined her daughter was still there.
She didn’t go into the bedroom but stood at the open door. ‘I could almost see her there, lying on her side in a foetal position, her little head resting gently on the pillow with her fine, blonde hair spread out behind,’ she writes.
Mrs McCann has also written about how she was speechless with fury when police offered her a ‘lenient’ jail term if she confessed to disposing of Madeleine’s body.
Her Portuguese lawyer even tried to sweeten the pill by suggesting that while she stayed in jail, her husband Gerry could go back to work.
The extraordinary day the couple became suspects was their most despairing of all, and Mrs McCann says in her forthcoming book, serialised in The Sun, that even her normally-solid husband was distraught.
She said: ‘He was on his knees, sobbing, his head hung low. “We’re finished. Our life is over”, he kept saying.’
Mrs McCann says their predicament was all the worse because it meant police had long since given up looking for their missing daughter.
The plea-bargain offer was put to the McCanns by their lawyer, Carlos Pinto de Abreu. He told them Mrs McCann could get ‘only two years’ if she admitted Madeleine had died in an accident in the apartment, and confessed to hiding and later disposing of her body.
Mrs McCann, 43, writes: ‘Pardon? I wasn’t sure I could possibly have heard him correctly. Did they really expect me to confess to a crime they had made up, to falsely claim to the whole world that my daughter was dead, when the result would be that the whole world stopped looking for her?’
She says her ‘ferocious maternal instinct’ to protect her child was more powerful than her own fear.
Distraught: Kate McCann says she and her husband Gerry broke down and sobbed as they pleaded with officers for information about their missing daughter
CHANT KEPT KATE STRONG
Boiling with rage as a policeman accused her of killing her daughter, Kate McCann kept control of her temper by whispering ‘****ing to**er’ at him.
She was in the police interview room under intense pressure to confess, as Portuguese detectives confronted her with their so-called evidence that Madeleine had died in the holiday apartment.
Mrs McCann swore under her breath in a quiet chant to keep herself strong, she reveals in extracts of her book being serialised in The Sun.
Mrs McCann said detective Ricardo Paiva was interrogating her in the Portimao police station on Friday, September 7 – having previously been the McCanns’ police liaison officer.
‘This was the man who invited us to his home for dinner,’ she says. ‘Our children played with his son.’
Now he was suggesting that she had ‘sedated’ the twins and was unable to cope with three children.
‘I knew exactly where this line of questioning was going and I refused to give in to it,’ she says. ‘I remember feeling disdain for Ricardo. What was he doing? Just following orders?
‘Under my breath I found myself whispering, “****ing to**er, ****ing to**er”. This quiet chant somehow kept me strong, kept me in control.’
She was in the police interview room under intense pressure to confess, as Portuguese detectives confronted her with their so-called evidence that Madeleine had died in the holiday apartment.
Mrs McCann swore under her breath in a quiet chant to keep herself strong, she reveals in extracts of her book being serialised in The Sun.
Mrs McCann said detective Ricardo Paiva was interrogating her in the Portimao police station on Friday, September 7 – having previously been the McCanns’ police liaison officer.
‘This was the man who invited us to his home for dinner,’ she says. ‘Our children played with his son.’
Now he was suggesting that she had ‘sedated’ the twins and was unable to cope with three children.
‘I knew exactly where this line of questioning was going and I refused to give in to it,’ she says. ‘I remember feeling disdain for Ricardo. What was he doing? Just following orders?
‘Under my breath I found myself whispering, “****ing to**er, ****ing to**er”. This quiet chant somehow kept me strong, kept me in control.’
Earlier, in his own ‘tearful’ police interview, Mr McCann had pleaded with officers: ‘Do you have any evidence that Madeleine is dead? We’re her parents. You have to tell us.’
Desperate for any information the police had, he asked if the case was now a murder inquiry. ‘The answer was indirect,’ writes Mrs McCann, who says they replied: ‘You can probably guess that from our lack of response.’
Madeleine disappeared aged three from the McCanns’ holiday apartment in Praia da Luz, on the Algarve, on the night of May 3, 2007.
The police theory was that she had died in an accident, and the McCanns had hidden her body and later buried it elsewhere. One of their pieces of ‘evidence’ was that devout Roman Catholic Mrs McCann had asked to see a priest on the night Madeleine vanished.
Apparently people in Portugal ‘only called for a priest when they wanted their sins to be forgiven’, she says.
Mrs McCann says their lawyer warned them: ‘If you were Portuguese, this would be enough to put you in prison.’
Eleven months later, when the McCanns were allowed access to the police files, they discovered the DNA and sniffer dog evidence the Portuguese police were relying on – obtained with help from the UK – was weak.
Mrs McCann says: ‘The full report from the UK Forensic Science Service, sent to them before they interrogated us, had concluded that the DNA results were “too complex for meaningful interpretation”.’
She says: ‘There was no evidence whatsoever that Madeleine was dead. The search had to go on.’
The McCanns said they were treated appallingly even before they were made ‘arguidos’ – suspects – in September 2007.
On May 4, with Madeleine missing for just a few terrifying hours, they sat in a police station while officers in T-shirts and jeans smoked and exchanged banter.
Mrs McCann says: ‘I felt as if I didn’t exist.’ It seemed to her that no one was bothering to look for her ‘baby’.
In the extracts printed in The Sun, she recounts how one bungling police officer supposedly looking for Madeleine did not even recognise the three-year-old in a photocopied picture.
Twenty-four hours after their daughter went missing, Mrs McCann says, her frustration and anger were reaching boiling point. ‘I felt like a caged, demented animal,’ she says.
‘This was torture of the cruellest kind. Finally, I erupted. I began to scream, swear and lash out.
‘I kicked an extra bed that had been brought into the apartment and smashed the end right off it. Prostrate on the floor, sobbing like a baby, I felt utterly defeated and broken.’
The former GP from Rothley, Leicestershire, is hoping her 384-page book will reinvigorate the search for Madeleine, and raise £1million to fund the continued hunt.
Detectives led astray by sniffer dogs
Sniffing out evidence: PC Martin Grime's sniffer dog Keela indicated blood was in the apartment
Portuguese police case against the McCanns relied on dubious evidence from two British sniffer dogs.
PC Martin Grime took his highly-trained spaniels Keela and Eddie to the apartment Madeleine was taken from.
In her book, serialised in The Sun, Mrs McCann recalls the 100th day of the hunt for Madeleine when a police officer told her the two dogs had indicated blood and human remains were in the apartment.
‘Police appeared to be telling us, on the say-so of a dog, that someone had definitely died in apartment 5a and it must have been Madeleine.’
Later, she says, the Portuguese officer boasted about the success rate of the dogs. This helped persuade the authorities to name the McCanns as ‘arguidos’ or official suspects.
However, after forensic tests were carried out it became clear that no scientific evidence could be found to back up the reaction of the sniffer dogs.
Mr Grime is now a director of a forensic science company, GSS International, and is employed as a sniffer dog expert. He owns both his former police dogs and they continue to work with him.
Yesterday he was in the U.S. on business and a spokesman for the Hampshire-based company said he had been asked by police in the UK not to comment on the McCann case.
Mr Grime and his dog Eddie were involved in the search for remains at the Haut de la Garenne children’s home in Jersey.
The massive investigation in 2008 ended with the conclusion that nothing suspicious was found at the scene and there was no evidence of murder.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1385336/Kate-McCann-Madeleine-guilt-meant-I-make-love-Gerry.html#ixzz1hRPw7DkP
