McCanns 'created unhelpful monster of information'
The parents of missing Madeleine McCann have created a “monster of information” which is not helping the official investigation, one of Portugal’s leading police officials has claimed.
Carlos Anjos, chairman of the Portuguese Union of Police Detectives, told BBC Radio 4’s Inside Stories programme that Kate and Gerry McCann had whipped up a media storm.
The couple were even “partly to blame” for the hurtful and damaging news stories which they have complained about, he said.
Mr Anjos said Portuguese police were against the massive campaign to keep Madeleine’s image in the public spotlight, saying drawing attention to her distinctive right eye could have put her life in greater danger.
He said: “There is no criminal investigation which can feed a news frenzy for six months so what we have seen are both English and Portuguese journalists behaving in a scandalous and unprofessional way.
“Writing terrible stories in the papers some of which have clearly affected the McCanns… now we have to say that the McCanns are partly to blame for this. Because it was something they created.
“It was the McCanns who first gave the story to the press. It was them together with their press advisors whose instructions I assume they were following who gave all those press conferences.
“It is our opinion that the McCanns created a monster of information about the ’Maddie case’ which they then lost control of.”
Asked if the constant press attention had made matters worse, Mr Anjos told the programme: “At the moment the issue is that these press advisors keep pushing stories into the papers – they have clearly not helped solve the case.”
He went on: “Quite honestly I don’t know if that is good or bad for an investigation.
“We were against this from the start. And importantly we were against the release of Madeleine McCann’s photo all over the world.
“We thought the photos that were released should not show the distinct mark Maddie had in her left eye. From our experience in criminal investigations this was a kidnap, which was what we believed from the start, the revealing of such a distinct feature would put that person’s life in danger.”
