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A woman investigated over the disappearance of Madeleine McCann has told Sky News she was shocked by the police interest in her.
Portuguese and British police investigated the German woman seven years ago while their focus was on a theory Madeleine woke up, got out of her family’s Praia da Luz holiday apartment through an unlocked patio door and was killed in a hit-and-run accident.
This was just before Christian B emerged as the prime suspect over the three-year-old British girl’s disappearance in 2007. He is expected to be released from a German jail next week at the end of a sentence for raping an elderly woman in Praia da Luz in 2005.
The German woman said she was not aware she had been under suspicion
The hit-and-run theory was leaked to Portugal‘s Correio da Manha newspaper in June. It didn’t identify the woman, but the report suggested the investigation fizzled out because German authorities refused to get involved and deploy an undercover detective to befriend the suspect.
We tracked down the German woman, and she said she was not aware she had been under suspicion.
She told us she’d been working in a restaurant near the beach in Praia da Luz and got home after the time Madeleine was discovered missing from her bed. Her British partner was a chef at the Ocean Club who had served dinner to the McCanns and their friends.
“I don’t even know if there was a car accident, because I was working,” she said. “I came home at half ten, and my boyfriend was home already.”
Their flat, like the homes of many residents, was searched by Portuguese police in the days after Madeleine vanished.
‘Do you think I’ve cut her up?’
The German woman said she got angry during a second search when she was asked to empty her freezer and asked a police officer: “Do you think I’ve cut her up in little pieces and I’m going to have her for dinner?”
The woman said that more than 10 years later, German police contacted her, but only to ask her if she knew Christian B and had seen him near the McCanns’ apartment.
The German woman said she was unaware about press reports on her
She said: “They wanted to know if I ever saw this German bloke around this area where I was living for a long time. Other people obviously saw his van, but I never saw it.”
The woman told us a German police commissar – equivalent to an inspector – called her several times over more than a year.
He asked for the SIM card from a phone she used when she was living in Portugal. That might suggest the officer was fishing for more than information about Christian B.
Christian B raped an elderly woman in Praia da Luz in 2005
Local reports alleged the woman may have borrowed a car, but she said: “Do you think I ran her over? I didn’t even have a car at the time.”
She was unaware of the Portuguese newspaper report in June until we told her.
“Why didn’t my friends tell me and call me about this?” she said.
The family of the woman’s British partner, who has since died, told us they had been questioned by detectives from Scotland Yard’s Operation Grange, which is supporting the German and Portuguese police investigation into Madeleine’s disappearance.
