Madeleine McCann, Raymond Hewlett And Suspect Evidence
IT’S brewing up for Summer of Madeleine McCann in the media.
Yesterday the Sun (“MADDIE PEADO SUSPECT”) and Mail (“A NEW BRITISH SUSPECT”) led with news of a new line of enquiry. The Mirror went further and named “paedophile” Raymond Hewlett.
Hewlett is said to look like the picture of a suspect. But how many men don’t look like one of the suspects?
Clarence Mitchell has spoken of “operational issues” and that Mr Hewlett was of “interest to the investigation”. It is the language of the police adopted by a PR.
Hewlett told the paper that he is innocent. He says he was at a market 30 miles from Praia da Luz at the time when Madeleine McCann vanished. He then went to his “base” at Tavia, “an hour’s drive from Praia.
So the Mirror will leave a man alone – leave him to the investigators. Or…
The Mirror: “MADELEINE POLICE PAEDO QUIZ”
Quiz… Ego!
British police are to quiz the holiday couple who raised suspicions about paedophile Raymond Hewlett and the disappearance of Madeleine McCann.
Senior officers from Leicestershire, where the McCanns live, will interview Alan and Cindy Thompson to find out more about 64-year-old Hewlett’s activities in Portugal.
Let’s review the evidence…
Hewlett is also being probed over a sex attack – and the mysterious death of one of his own sons. His former wife has told how he brutally beat her. And son David, 40, said: “He’s a monster.”
And the evidence..? Says the Mirror:
REFUGE OF A PERVERT
Where?
This is the campsite where paedophile Raymond Hewlett stayed with his family after leaving Portugal. The British convict left the Algarve as police continued to search for missing Madeleine McCann.
And the evidence of his involvement?
While at the site, Hewlett eked a living selling items he had found or been given. His wife Mariana played a tin whistle and performed a puppet show.
Such are the facts.
None of their six children are believed to have gone to school.
Facts!
Instead, the family would park at big hotels so tourists would see the kids and give them items. Everything had a value and when the family couldn’t use something they would sell it.
Anything?
Hewlett had left the Algarve just as the tourist season was getting into full swing.
Friends say he took a route well known to travellers – heading into southern Spain for the ferry to Tangier at the northern tip of Morocco. From there, he drove south about three hours to the pretty town of Chefchouen which is popular with the hippy set.
The family set up base at the campsite high in the Riff mountains. Hewlett, still wanted in the UK, is considered one of the most notorious and dangerous paedophiles to have disappeared off police radar.
So how does the Mirror know so much about his movements?
Hewlett told friends of his love of Morocco and how he could always make money there. He said: “The Moroccans will buy and sell anything. You can take a rusty bike there and get 20 euros for it.”
One traveller at the campsite said: “This is not a place for regular holidaymakers. The people here are a bohemian, alternative set…
Even his adapted blue Dodge van would seem perfectly at home in this setting. Many campers drive battered vans – often customised with highly personalised and colourful paint jobs.
Paint jobs! It’s damning stuff.
Any more? The Mail:
French tourist Anne Parisot, 70, said: ‘Most of the time he was cooped up in the van and made it clear no one should go over. He seemed quite cold.’
Leading to – in the Mirror
WANTED
Stephen Moyes and Jeremy Armstrong report:
Convicted paedophile Raymond Hewlett could be at the centre of three police inquiries as he lies in a German hospital recovering from throat cancer surgery.
Could be…
1. Questions to Alan and Cindy Thompson.
2.
Officers from West Yorkshire yesterday said they had asked German authorities for permission to interview Hewlett over an unsolved indecent assault from 1975.
3.
And it was revealed he is also under investigation over the death of his son David after the boy fell from the back of a van that Hewlett was driving from Portugal to Germany.
Earlier we learnt that Hewlett is “considered one of the most notorious and dangerous paedophiles to have disappeared off police radar”. Now on the matter of the death of David…
An investigation by German police is still going on. Hewlett has had to regularly report to the British embassy in Frankfurt in relation to the inquiry.
So not missing.
The couple and their children now live in a squalid flat in Aachen.
The surnames ‘Hewlett and Schmuker’ are on a post box in the dimly lit entrance to their block.
As the Mail notes:
He and his family are apparently living in an apartment overlooking a kindergarten but he is in the Universitatsklinikum Aachen Hospital.
Well, he has children and children like to play? Back in the Mirror:
Mariana, 33, yesterday said she knew her husband had a troubled past but denied he had done anything wrong.
She said: “I knew he had problems with police in the past. But there are no problems now because it turned out he never actually did anything.”
Says the Mirror:
Hewlett abducted and sexually assaulted a neighbour’s 12-year-old daughter in 1972. In 1978 he tried to rape a 14-year-old girl after holding a gun to her head.
Ten years later he kidnapped and assaulted a girl of 14. He was described by a judge at one of his trials as “extremely dangerous”.
Says the Sun:
He’s evil enough to have snatched Maddie
Bette Balfour, just 12 when Raymond Hewlett abducted and sexually assaulted her, added: “I believe he is quite capable of taking Maddie.”
When asked about whether the man who attacked her could do it to another, the victim replied…
Daily Express: “MADDIE LEAD: SUSPECT IS A MONSTER”
THE daughter of the convicted paedophile wanted for questioning over the disappearance of Madeleine McCann said last night that she does not care if he dies.
Gina Hewlett, 41, said she would never forgive serial sex beast Raymond Hewlett for what he had done.
The father of eight, who has a string of convictions against children stretching back to the 1970s, is dying of cancer in a German hospital. But Gina, whose life has been shattered by her father’s crimes, said she had no sympathy for him.
The chef, from Telford, Shropshire, said: “We didn’t know if he was dead or alive, but now we have heard about all this we don’t really care.
“While he is hundreds of miles away in Germany being treated in a hospital the rest of his family are here bearing the brunt of what he might have done. We’re having to pick up the pieces and deal with all the trouble he’s caused…
Gina said: “Over the years we’ve had hate mail sent to us and firebombs thrown through our window, all when he was linked to paedophile offences.
“Now he’s being linked with taking Madeleine it will all kick off again. We don’t have any sympathy for him and we never will, even when he’s on his deathbed. We will never forgive him for what he’s done in the past.”
The Independent: “New McCann suspect ‘was questioned by police but had an alibi’”
The Independent understands that the Briton, described by detectives as “cunning” and a “danger to children” was questioned during the initial inquiry but discounted after providing an alibi.
Says Hewlett:
‘I’ve done nothing wrong, nothing nothing,’ he says.
So no evidence linking Raymond Hewlett with the disappearance of Madeleine McCann. But he makes for easy copy.
Isn’t this just trial by media? Is a man not innocent until proven guilty. Can a man’s past crimes be used agsint him a court of law? Is such reporting detrimental to any case?
Wiith the summer brewing – the silly season – might this be the prelude to a Summer of Our Maddie?
Pictures Of All The Madeleine McCann Suspects
Hundreds Of British People Missing Overseas
Madeleine McCann: The Story In Pictures
Posted: 23rd, May 2009 | In: Key Posts, Madeleine McCann, Reviews Comments (15) | TrackBack | Permalink
