Madeleine McCann's parents have revealed to Sunday Night the extent of the inept Portugal police investigation following their three-year-old's disappearance from a holiday resort in 2007, which included the possible cover up of one or more paedophiles breaking into holiday apartments and attacking UK families in the area.
Instead Kate and Gerry McCann were named the prime suspects in their daughter's disappearance from the Ocean Club Resort in Praia da Luz and prevented from publicly defending themselves at the time because it was forbidden under Portuguese law.
"The ludicrous thing is that Madeleine died in the apartment by an accident and we hid her body," Mr McCann told Sunday Night. "Well, when did she have the accident and die? 'Cause the only time she was left unattended was when we were at dinner, so if she died then, how could we have disposed of or hidden her body? You know, when there was an immediate search?
"It's just nonsense! And if she died when we were in the apartment, or fell, why would we cover that up?"
The McCanns had earlier explained that there was only an hour during which their daughter disappeared, since Mr McCann had seen her sleeping in the villa's front room at 9.05pm and when her mother went to check at 10pm she was gone and the locked window was wide open.
The McCanns and their friends had spent six nights at a tapas restaurant across the pool from their apartments, where they had line of sight to the block of villas where their children were sleeping.
"We always talk about the decision we made, that you talked about, you know, 'Do you think that will be OK or not?' I mean, that never came into it," Mrs McCann said. "It was a case of, 'We can eat here. The kids, you know, won't be disruptive. We'll get them sorted and then we can all eat.' I mean, it was simply like that. If there'd been any risk at all that had occurred to us, then it just wouldn't have happened."
Madeleine was asleep in a single bed in the front room, with the twins, Sean and Amelie, asleep in travel cots by her side.
"It was one of those parental moments where I thought, 'God, we're so lucky. Look at her.' Three children, we're having a lovely holiday. The kids were really enjoying it, and I just lingered for a few seconds and thought how beautiful she was," Mr McCann said. "And that was the last time I saw her."
The McCanns' apartment was on the end, the most accessible from the street. The front door was locked but the back one was left unlocked, to allow easy access to check on their children.
"The curtains, which had been closed, just swung open into the room and the window was all the way up had been pushed right across, and then I just knew. I just knew she'd been taken," Mrs McCann said. "I ran to the window. I don't know what I expected to find or see. You know, you just hope you're going to see your child every second.
"I whizzed round the apartment in about 10 seconds. Again, I don't quite know why, because, you know, I knew in my head that someone had taken her. I don't know if I kind of hoped that maybe she was hiding in a cupboard or something.
"And then I just legged it out the back of the apartment and as soon as I saw Gerry and our friends at the table, I mean, I was just screaming, you know, 'Madeleine's gone! Someone's taken her!'."
Mr McCann vividly recalled the moment as well. "Kate was clearly distraught and it was kind of disbelief. 'She can't be gone. She can't possibly. How could she be gone?' went through my mind as we were both running."
"She can't have been taken. You just think it doesn't happen... but Kate said, 'She's gone, Someone's taken her!"
Instead Portugese police treated it as a child who had wandered off and did not attempt a manhunt until 4.30am, by which time Maddie could have been smuggled halfway across Spain, as far as Port Algeciras, and into North Africa.
And in not closing off the apartment as a crime scene, dozens of people trampled through the rooms and the yard, searching for any sign of Madeleine and destroyed any recoverable evidence or vital clues in the process.
"There is no hint, no proof that the child was kidnapped. On the contrary, there are hints that the parents were negligent and there are hints there was hiding of the body," said ex-lead investigator Detective Goncalo Amaral through a translator. "This was our point of view in 2007, that she was dead."
Det. Amaral was so sure of the McCanns' guilt that he went as far as publishing a book, after he was taken off the case, that suggested the British Secret Service, MI5, helped conceal Madeleine's body.
When asked by Sunday Night reporter Rahni Sadler "Did you kill your daughter?", Mr McCann replied: "No. No. Never.
"And you know, there's nothing with any logic that could, you know... You would have to start with why? How? When? Who? And there's just simply, you know, no answer to any of these things - there's nothing to suggest anything. So no - that's an emphatic 'no'."
Scotland Yard investigator Detective Inspector Andy Redwood, however, discovered that what happened to Madeleine may not have been an isolated incident.
"On the evidence, we believe that there is a possibility that Madeleine is alive," he told Sunday Night.
There had been 12 crimes between 2004 and 2010, when an intruder broke into the properties of UK families, within a 60km radius of where Madeleine disappeared. On six of those occasions, the intruder either got into bed with or sexually assaulted a young female child.
"What we can see here is clearly a man who has got a very, very unhealthy interest in young, white, female children, who he is attacking whilst in their beds while on their holidays," Det-Insp. Redwood said.
Before Madeleine vanished, there were several sightings of men loitering in the area: A neighbour reported bogus charity collectors door-knocking villas; A schoolgirl saw a fair-haired man casing the McCann's apartment from multiple directions; A British holidaymaker also reported seeing a suspicious man lurking outside their apartment; Two men were seen on the balcony from the McCann's and four hours before Madeleine vanished, an unidentified man was seen loitering in the stairwell.???
"There had been a number of crimes in the Algarve, whereby there had been attempted break-ins where children had been asleep in some cases and they fled from the child's bedroom," said the McCann's friend Clarence Mitchell.
In the months before Madeleine disappeared, there was a four-fold increase in the number of robberies in the area. And just weeks before Madeleine arrived, there were two unsolved burglaries in the villa block, where the McCanns stayed.
"Well, I think the Portuguese police and the Portuguese Tourist Board would have been quite keen not to feature the number of burglaries that were going on in Praia da Luz and other towns on the Algarve," said forensic expert, Professor David Barclay. "And the fact that random paedophiles going around taking children out of holiday apartments, would have probably been quite a disincentive to families turning up for their holidays. So they wouldn't want to feature that.
"I think that's possibly an explanation why the Met, recently, were able to find more examples of indecent assaults on children than we'd been told about previously."
This week, Madeleine's nanny at the Ocean Club's creche reportedly made the claim that the resort was considered so unsafe nannies were given rape alarms and told not to go outside alone.
Retired Scotland Yard investigator Colin Sutton told Sunday Night: "There is an employee, somebody who worked within the Ocean Village complex, who, it's felt, has some information or some knowledge, which may be of assistance.
"...Madeleine McCann didn't disappear into thin air on her own. Somebody must know what happened. Somebody knows the truth."
Professor Barclay: "It might be solved if Madeleine's body is found and there's evidence either on the body or in the location where the body is found that will point to somebody.
"But otherwise, I don't think it will ever be solved. There is just no physical evidence whatsoever that we can use at this time even to eliminate some of the theories."
Maddie's parents however continue to work to keep their daughter's memory alive.
"People want to believe that something like this can't happen to them because the perpetrators have not been brought to justice, there can't be blame, you can't say, 'Oh, that's it'," says Mr McCann.
"You haven't got a face, you haven't got a name, you haven't got anyone to blame but, you know, as you say, it's every parent's worst nightmare," says Mrs McCann. "I mean, it's touched everybody."
But they say that they will never stop looking for her.
"I don't believe any parent could and I don't believe we could ever reach a point where we think 'oh well, we've done everything now'," said Mrs McCann. "You know, whilst the situation remains as it is, you know, Madeleine's out there and she needs us to find her."
