PORTUGUESE DETECTIVES claimed Madeleine’s DNA had been found in her parents’ hire car, despite a British scientist’s warning days earlier that tests were inconclusive.
The revelation is included in the thousands of pages of official police files released to the media yesterday (Monday) in Portugal.
An email dated September 3, 2007, written by senior British forensic scientist John Lowe to Det Supt Stuart Prior, head of the UK side of the investigation.
Mr Lowe, from the major incidents team at the Birmingham-based Forensic Science Service, said it was impossible to conclude whether a sample from the McCanns’ hire car came from their daughter Madeleine.
Four days later Portuguese detectives named Gerry and Kate McCann as formal suspects in the child’s disappearance, citing forensic evidence as grounds for their suspicions.
Police then categorically told Mr McCann in interview that his daughter’s DNA had been found in the family’s Renault Scenic hire car.
The massive dossier also includes details of the lines of inquiry pursued by detectives during the 14-month investigation, other forensic reports and witness statements and transcripts of interviews with Mr McCann and his wife Kate.
Another document includes a map showing where a man was seen carrying a child on the night Madeleine McCann vanished.
 A sketch by one of the McCanns’ friends showing where a man was seen carrying a child on the night Madeleine disappeared. |  |
The sketch, produced by a friend of Gerry and Kate McCann, may show the last place the youngster was seen before she vanished.
Madeleine was nearly four when she vanished from her family’s holiday apartment in the Algarve resort of Praia da Luz on May 3 last year as her parents dined with friends at a nearby tapas restaurant..
Despite a huge police investigation and unprecedented coverage in the Portuguese and British media, she has not been found.
Portuguese prosecutors announced on July 21 that they were shelving the case, although it can be reopened if credible new evidence comes to light.
As a result, the files were released because under Portuguese law the period of judicial secrecy in the case was lifted.
Lawyers for the McCanns, from Rothley, Leicestershire, were given access to the files last week and they are still studying the dossier for fresh leads that the couple’s private detectives can follow up in their own search for their daughter.
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