LinkTaint of guilt lifts as McCanns cleared in daughter's disappearance
Araminta Wordsworth, National Post
Published: Monday, July 21, 2008
The parents of Madeleine McCann have been cleared as suspects in the disappearance of their young daughter, as Portuguese prosecutors announced they were shelving their long-running inquiry due to a lack of evidence.
The decision Monday brings to an end the British couple's legal ordeal, and caps their many months of public humiliation as the prime suspects at the centre of scandalous allegations.
It is the second such official clearing of parental guilt in recent weeks.
The situation of the McCanns was similar to that of another unfortunate family -- the parents and brother of JonBenét Ramsey, the child beauty queen discovered murdered in the basement of her family's home in Boulder, Col., on Boxing Day, 1996. The "umbrella of suspicion" that fell over John and Patsy Ramsey, and JonBenét's older brother Burke, was lifted only earlier this month when the district attorney's office announced retesting of evidence showed they were not involved.
The move came too late for Patsy Ramsey, who died two years ago of ovarian cancer.
In the McCann case, Maddie went missing from a holiday rental apartment in Praia da Luz in on the evening of May 3, 2007, as her parents, Gerry and Kate McCann, both doctors, dined with friends in a restaurant nearby.
There has been no sign of the ash-blonde girl who vanished days before her fourth birthday, despite reported sightings of her across Europe and North Africa.
Monday, Fernando Jose Pinto Monteiro, Portugal's attorney-general, said the police had found no evidence linking the parents to her suspected abduction.
"The case involving Madeleine McCann will be shelved following the decision by the two magistrates in charge that no evidence was found to implicate the arguidos," his statement read.
The move comes only 10 months after Portuguese police upped the ante by making the parents arguidos -- formal suspects -- in the case.
"It's hard to describe how utterly despairing it was for us to be named arguido and to subsequently portrayed in the media as suspects in our own daughter's disappearance," the McCanns said in a statement.
"It's been equally devastating to witness the detrimental affect this status has had on the search for Madeleine."
Carlos Pinto de Abreu, their Portuguese lawyer, slammed the investigation and the way it had been conducted, saying the process had brought additional pain to the parents of a missing child.
"The police investigation and the criminal procedure have become an element of additional pain for Madeleine's parents, due to the long period of secrecy which they were subject to, the inhumane silence, the illegitimate information leaks and the shameless disinformation and wild speculation," he said.
"Unfortunately, the end of the procedure does not mean the solution of the case. Madeleine McCann remains unfound, in a place unknown."
The child's disappearance plunged her parents into what has been effectively a trial by police, aided and abetted by the media that examined every facet of their lives and drew unwonted conclusions.
Last year, the McCanns sued a Portuguese newspaper Tal & Qual for suggesting police believed they had killed their daughter.
In March, they won £550,000 ($1.1-million) in damages -- and grovelling front-page apologies -- from a quartet of British papers, the Daily Express, the Daily Star and their sister Sunday papers, the Sunday Express and the Daily Star Sunday.
Lawyers for the group apologized in court for "sensational" headlines, including "Maddie Mum ‘Sold' Her" and articles alleging the couple were involved in "swinging" or wife-swapping orgies.
The turnaround in the JonBenét case was the result of new genetic test results from invisible skin cells that yielded the killer's DNA profile. This enabled prosecutors to rule out any involvement of her family.
Over the years, all three have been suspected of involvement in the Dec. 26, 1996, crime, which attracted international media coverage.
"It has been too many years for this family to have suffered the injustice of being falsely accused of a crime they did not commit," L. Lin Wood, a lawyer for the family, said after the July 9 announcement.
Finding the real culprit remains a challenge. Investigators will have to compare the DNA profile to a national database of more than five million offenders. But even that may fail.
The new genetic results came after prosecutors submitted long underwear JonBenét, 6, was wearing to the Bode Technology Group, near Washington, D.C.
Scientists there found previously undiscovered genetic material on the sides of the girl's underwear, where an attacker would have grasped the clothing to pull it down, authorities said. The DNA matched genetic material found earlier in a drop of blood on JonBenét's underwear.
District Attorney Mary Lacy said the presence of the same male DNA in three places on the girl's clothing convinced investigators it belonged to the killer and had not been left accidentally by an innocent party.
"It is therefore the position of the Boulder District Attorney's Office that this profile belongs to the perpetrator of the homicide," she said.
In a letter to the Ramseys, she wrote the DNA evidence "has vindicated your family."
National Post, with files from The Daily Telegraph and news services
I've put my foot in it rather badly last time, patriotism is the virtue of the vicious, but I still think the unsupervised media made a rotten situation a lot worse and also tarnished the reputation of another innocent bystander (who was acting slightly oddly, making him an easy target).
