By Keith Gladdis & Dominic Herbert

For the first time the News of the World takes you right INSIDE the holiday flat where Madeleine McCann was snatched one year ago.

We are the ONLY media organisation in the world to be invited in to take these exclusive pictures which reveal startling new evidence and insights into the crime mystery that has shocked millions.

Our detailed survey of the flat reveals a host of places Maddie’s abductor could have hidden when it’s most likely he was almost caught in the act by dad Gerry as he checked on her and twins, Sean and Amelie, at 9.05pm on May 3 last year.

But our on-site reconstruction proves that if the kidnapper was already in the flat, as the McCanns fear, he had a full TEN SECONDS to conceal himself after hearing Gerry open the patio doors and enter the apartment.

And he had no fewer than FOUR boltholes to choose from—behind Madeleine’s BEDROOM DOOR, inside her roomy WARDROBE, in her parents’ nearby BEDROOM or in the family BATHROOM.

Our poignant picture at the top of the page also reveals the view into Madeleine’s bedroom that must haunt family friend Matthew Oldfield.

It highlights the tragic but innocent error he made when he checked on the children at 9.30pm while the McCanns were at the nearby tapas bar with the other adults in the party.

From the hall, where he looked into the room, our pictures show that Matthew could only see the bottom corner of Madeleine’s bed.

The twins’ travel cots were beyond on the floor in full view. Seeing them sleeping, he assumed—most probably wrongly—that all was well.

The telltale sign that the kidnapper could already have struck was the open bedroom door—for Gerry had closed it just 25 minutes earlier.
Culprit

There was room for the kidnapper to hide inside Maddie’s fitted wardrobe. Outside the room, bloody footprints were found

Our photos heartbreakingly spell out that if Matthew had only walked a few feet further into the room he could have raised the alarm 35 minutes earlier, giving the police a real chance of catching the culprit.

And our photograph of the room, above right, shows the scene that confronted mum Kate when she arrived at 10pm—her three-year-old daughter Madeleine gone and the rolldown window shutter OPEN.

Tellingly, she had found the bedroom door now closed, blown shut by the draught from the open window looking out on to the road below.

Standing on the very spot, it was not hard to imagine Kate’s shock as the horrible truth sank in after three seconds of disbelief.

The view of the wardrobe in Maddie’s room, right, shows the spot where controversial forensic “evidence” was found——a bloody footprint which was visible to the naked eye.

Inconclusive lab tests found there was a “moderate” chance the blood was Madeleine’s.

There was a report that this footprint matched another in the McCanns’ hire car—although there has never been any confirmation of this.

As we were led through the front door to apartment 5A at the Mark Warner Ocean Club in Praia da Luz on Portugal’s Algarve coast it was like turning back the clock.

The rooms are now eerily silent but it is easy to imagine the excited chatter and kiddies’ laughter that filled the flat right up until the night Maddie vanished last year.

LITTLE Maddie’s bed, where she slept on holiday, is on the left in this photo—covered with a simple blue-check sheet. Only one bottom corner of it could be seen by the McCanns’ friend Matthew Oldfield as he glanced through the door. Next to Maddie, on the floor, the twins’ travel cots were placed in the empty space between the single beds. The bed below the window was empty. This window was originally thought to be the point of access where the abductor broke into the room while the three children were sleeping. Our evidence shows this was unlikely.

If one year on, the News of the World found clues, surely the detectives could have established more AT THE TIME? Crucial DNA evidence could have been lost during those early hours.

ERROR: Matthew Oldfield

The abductor must have touched windows, doors, shutters, particularly if he was disturbed and had to stay longer than he planned.

It is hard to accept that absolutely no tell-tale fibres or hairs were left behind.
The stillness and silence of the apartment now is just as it would have been after the McCanns left the children asleep in bed that fateful night.

And our team heard for themselves how much noise an intruder would have made— reinforcing the theory that this was not an opportunistic snatch but carefully planned.

When the bedroom shutter is opened by a pull-cord it makes a loud piercing creak that could easily have woken the youngsters or alerted Pam- ela Fenn, the woman living upstairs.

This is crucial evidence as it shows the difficulty of entering the property by the window and suggests the likelihood that the kidnapper gained access by the front door or even the rear patio doors.

It also underlines theories that the abductor probably had crucial inside knowledge of the apartment’s interior. Even walking across the ceramic tiled floors in the wrong sort of footwear could have raised the alarm.

After the police finished their investigations inside the bedroom, the walls were painted white.

Fiend’s bolthole? The McCanns’ bedroom	Holiday kitchen: Where Kate cooked for the kids	Lounge: Where Maddie and the twins played

They were said to have been spattered with small traces of blood, but police investigations into that, as into so much else, came to nothing.

Now the rest of the flat has been redecorated and is ready to welcome more holidaying families to Portugal.
But it will take more than a lick of emulsion to remove the terrible images seared into every parent’s mind just one year ago.

Help

Someone, somewhere has information about Madeleine that could be the breakthrough the family have been waiting for.

Anyone with information is urged to contact:

The family investigation hotline on +44 845 8384699
or email investigation@findmadeleine.com.

PORTUGESE POLICE – 0035 1282 405 400
CRIMESTOPPERS – 0044 1883 731 336
NEWS OF THE WORLD – 0044 207 782 1001 or Newsdesk@notw.co.uk

THERE’S absolutely no chance that the parents of Madeleine McCann would be charged with her murder in this country.

It would be an outrageous miscarriage of justice if they were.

I don’t say that from any feelings of sympathy for Kate and Gerry McCann, but from examining the facts of the case — or rather, the total LACK of them.

I’ve been a detective at the most senior level for 30 years and have never seen such a witch-hunt, or one based on such flimsy evidence.

Again, I don’t say this from believing in the McCanns’ innocence or their guilt. I simply don’t know either way.

But from the evidence I have read I don’t think they did it.

Unless the Portuguese police have something else, it doesn’t make sense. The couple don’t fit the profile and their opportunity was limited.

Throughout my career I have based my conclusions on hard evidence—and here there isn’t any.

Sadly, I have to admit that is because of the sheer inadequacy of the police investigation that began when little Madeleine disappeared on the night of May 3.

Among the many things the Portuguese police SHOULD have done that night, but didn’t, was treat the McCanns as the prime suspects.

That’s what I’d have done. It’s a matter of statistical fact that three out of four child murders are committed by the parents.

So their behaviour, movements, what they said, how they said it, what they did, who they were with, should have been instantly put under the police microscope.

They should have been sympathetically but relentlessly grilled again and again about what had happened that night.

They weren’t.

That police error has become their tragedy now, because if they had been properly investigated back then they may well have been cleared. And thus free now to concentrate on the hunt to find their missing four-year-old, rather than somehow proving their innocence.

Hand-in-glove with treating the McCanns as suspects, the entire apartment and its environs should have been totally sealed off and barred to anyone but specially-trained police and forensic scientists who would have checked every millimetre of it for evidence.

It wasn’t.

Police don’t call the time after a crime, particularly one against children, the Golden Hour for nothing. In fact, I always insist it’s a Golden Day — the time when forensic evidence is most fresh and easy to detect, when memories are most sharp, when lies and alibis are most vulnerable.

At its most basic, a bloodstain is easiest to see when it’s still wet.

Instead, Kate and Gerry McCann were just treated as grieving parents. Nicer for them, but no use in solving a crime they may have been involved in.

And the possible murder scene was treated as a glorified meeting-room to organise a search for a missing child, instead of the potential treasure trove of clues it actually was. To any experienced British detective, it is incomprehensible.

I spent ten years heading Britain’s Psychological Offender Profiling Committee for the Home Office. It was set up after the so-called Railway Murders, in which monster John Francis Duffy killed two women and stalked and raped four others close to London train stations.

I worked alongside other very senior detectives, top civil servants and psychological profilers like Professor David Canter — who this week appeared on a TV programme about Madeleine’s disappearance.

And I instinctively found myself agreeing when my friend Prof Canter concluded: “I feel abduction is the most likely possibility.”

In other words, the McCanns were not involved. Everything I’ve learned about the couple tells me their profile simply doesn’t fit as killers of their own child.

They’ve been criticised for being too controlled in their dealings with the media. It doesn’t surprise me at all. They’re both highly professional medics, one a surgeon the other a GP.

They’re trained and experienced in dealing with crises — and professionals react to crises with calm.

Of course, anyone can get caught in horrendous circumstances and in panic try to lie their way out of it.

But my experience has shown those lies, particularly elaborate and choreographed deceit as this would have to be, can rarely be maintained before cracks start to show.

And particularly so when the suspects choose to place themselves under the intense, unprecedented scrutiny the McCanns have faced. But that’s just my opinion, informed and based on considerable experience as it is.

Meanwhile, the police investigation that started so disastrously has turned to farce. Every apparent stream of evidence has been either missed, fatally compromised or is simply ludicrous.

For instance, Mrs McCann being allowed to hang on to Madeleine’s favourite toy CuddleCat. Consoling for her, of course, but that’s not the point —it had gone to bed with Madeleine, been taken from her and placed on a high shelf, presumably by the abductor.

CuddleCat was therefore vital evidence. Even a rookie detective should know it was highly likely an abductor’s DNA would be on it.

But it was left for Mrs McCann to clutch, her other children to play with and spread Madeleine’s DNA around.

Then there was the suggestion the McCanns somehow smuggled their daughter’s body away in a car they hired 25 days after her disappearance.

Where did they hide the remains in that time? How did they do this when their every move, at their encouragement, was under the media spotlight?

There’s also a very unpleasant aspect to face. What state, unless it had been in a deep freeze, would the body have been in? I’m afraid very gruesome indeed, probably with considerable leakage of bodily fluids and sloughing off of body cells.

The smell alone would have been appalling and would linger endlessly in any enclosed space like a car.

I’m bewildered by reports leaked by the Portuguese police that tiny traces have been found in the vehicle. My experience says it would probably be a great deal. If not, then anything found should be treated with extreme caution.

In Britain, forensic evidence alone rarely solves cases. When it does, such as in rape cases, it hits the headlines because of its infrequency. But even then it’s usually in support of more conventional evidence.

None of the so-called forensic finds being boasted of in Portugal sound either likely, admissible or even possible to me.

Evidence from cadaver dogs, for instance, could not be used to bring about a conviction here. Generally they are regarded as being at best 80 per cent reliable.

And so it has gone on. The police haven’t even found poor Madeleine’s body — though that doesn’t surprise me when you know rubbish bins in that small Portuguese seaside town weren’t even searched in the week of her disappearance, before the contents were dumped in a landfill site.

To me, there is only one possible conclusion. There is so far not a single shred of evidence that justifies charges against the McCanns.

But the worst thing is that, while the Portuguese police continue their single-minded determination to nail them, they ignore other lines of inquiry.

And, worst of all, they are failing to carry on the hunt to try to find Madeleine alive.

THE News of the World has put up a record £1.5 million reward for the safe return of Madeleine McCann.

Stars and business leaders have donated huge sums in an unprecedented show of support for our Find Maddie campaign – to make up the largest award in newspaper history.
CALL:

PORTUGESE POLICE – 0035 1282 405 400

CRIMESTOPPERS – 0044 1883 731 336

NEWS OF THE WORLD – 0044 207 782 1001

After we kicked off the fund with £250,000, Harry Potter author JK ROWLING put up a staggering amount – the largest single donation. But she asked us not to reveal the exact figure.

Kind-hearted JK married a Portuguese TV journalist and her first child Jessica was born in Portugal, a few hours’ drive from Praia da Luz where Maddie was snatched.

Her dad Gerry said: “We are very happy and pleased with what you are doing. Anything that can be done to publicise that Madeleine is missing and help with the search is very welcome.”

Topshop tycoon SIR PHILIP GREEN matched our £250,000 and said: “I hope this makes a difference.”

Virgin’s SIR RICHARD BRANSON put up £100,000, saying: “I’d like to appeal as a father to whoever is holding her to please bring her home safe.”

Everton football club chairman and theatre boss BILL KENWRIGHT was one of the first people to see pictures of Maddie wearing his club’s shirt before they were released this week.

Mr Kenwright, who has pledged a huge personal sum, said: “If it helps towards the reunion it will be the best cheque I’ve ever written.”

Footie chairmen EGGERT MAGNUSSON of West Ham and Reading’s JOHN MADEJSKI both gave £10,000.

Ann Summers boss JACQUELINE GOLD donated £100,000, explaining she wanted to get involved after meeting Sara Payne.

She said: “I pray that this nightmare comes to an end soon with the safe return of their beautiful little girl.”

Telly star SIMON COWELL promised £50,000, saying: “I heard about the terrible situation here in LA and I hope she is found safe and sound.”

Manchester United star WAYNE ROONEY and fiancée Coleen McLoughlin pledged £25,000, telling us: “We are praying for Maddie’s safe return and for an end to what must be a nightmare for all her family.”

The England cricket team joined in with £20,000. Captain MICHAEL VAUGHAN said: “Our thoughts and prayers are for Maddie’s safe return.”

Entrepreneur SIR TOM HUNTER pledged £100,000 with EasyJet boss SIR STELIOS Haji-Ioannou and Matalan chief JOHN HARGREAVESchipping in with large sums too.

The Mark Warner company, which runs the Ocean Village resort where Maddie was snatched, said: “We wholeheartedly support the News of the World initiative and anything that helps get Madeleine back.”

Our reward offer, which appears in several major European languages on the right, is subject to standard News of the World reward offer conditions.

Download the A4 poster in Portuguese
Download the A4 poster in Spanish

Payment will be made at the discretion of the Editor, following consultation with the Portuguese authorities. In the event of more than one person qualifying, the reward may be split. The Editor’s decision is final.