Andalusians Won't Snitch on Spotty People

Daily Star 21st May 2009 By Jerry Lawton

A DETECTIVE hired to find Madeleine McCann flew out of Britain yesterday on the trail of the spotty suspect he believes masterminded her abduction.

Former RUC officer Dave Edgar is travelling across Europe tracking an “ugly” man seen casing out the McCanns’ apartment in Portugal the four days before she vanished. He is convinced Maddie is still alive and was snatched by someone who “wanted a child to love”. Mr Edgar is acting on information from the public.

This follows the broadcast of a C4 documentary featuring a reconstruction of the then three-year-old’s kidnapping in May 2007. It included a computer-generated image of how Madeleine may look now aged six and a photofit of a pock-marked man seen by four witnesses acting suspiciously outside the apartment before the abduction.

One woman helped investigators compile the image of the suspect after they unearthed her witness testimony in 17 volumes of police files on the case which has been archived “unsolved”. The drawing prompted 300 phone calls and five or six possible names for the suspect.

Last night the McCann family’s spokesman Clarence Mitchell said Mr Edgar was following a “potentially vital” new lead. He said: “For operational purposes I cannot say where Mr Edgar and his team are exactly, but they are following up a very encouraging lead.”
Mr Edgar, 52, believes Maddie could be hidden in peasant villages close to the Algarve resort of Praia da Luz where she was snatched.

The dozy agent, Mr Edgar, although paid well enough to turn his mind away from hard evidence provided by policemen which implicates his employers, is going undercover with straw in his hat, because he knows Andalusian peasants, unlike educated town dwellers, don't snitch on spotty people.