Portuguese police have reportedly released 49 questions they asked while grilling Maddie McCann’s mother four months after the three-year-old girl vanished from the family’s vacation apartment at a resort in Portugal.
The Mirror has obtained what the newspaper claims is a list of 49 questions investigators asked Kate McCann in September 2007, during an 11-hour interrogation of both Kate and her husband Gerry. The mother reportedly refused to answer all but one of them.
At the time, the parents had recently been named suspects in Maddie’s disappearance, and some of the questioning is aggressive and accusatory, with many questions focusing on the blood and DNA evidence found behind a couch in the vacation apartment and in a car the McCann’s rented a month later — despite forensic experts reportedly concluding that the evidence was “flawed” and “inconclusive,” according to the Mirror.
The Mirror published a complete list, but below are some of the most revealing questions of the interrogation — which Kate McCann exerted her right to avoid answering:
Why did you say Madeleine had been abducted?
Assuming Madeleine was abducted, why did you leave the twins to go to the ‘Tapas’ [the restaurant on the resort property where the McCanns were dining with friends the night Maddie vanished from the apartment] and raise the alarm? The supposed abductor could still be in the apartment.
Why didn’t you ask the twins then what happened to their sister or why didn’t you ask them later on?
Why did you go and warn your friends instead of shouting from the veranda?
Why did the twins [Maddie’s siblings] not wake up during that search or when they were taken upstairs?
Did you call Sky News?
Did you know the danger of calling the media, because it could influence the abductor?
Before travelling to Portugal, did you make any comment about a foreboding or a bad feeling?
Is it true sometimes you despaired at your children’s behavior and it left you feeling very uneasy?
Is it true that in England you even considered handing over Madeleine’s custody to a relative?
Did you have any responsibility or intervention in your daughter’s disappearance?
Kate McCann answered only one question during the interrogation, according to The Sun: “Are you aware that in not answering the questions you are jeopardizing the investigation, which seeks to discover what happened to your daughter?”
To which she replied, “Yes, if that’s what the investigation thinks.”
Kate and Gerry McCann returned to England two days after the interrogation. They have maintained all along that they had nothing to do with their daughter’s disappearance and have continued to search for Maddie with the help of British authorities.
Photo: Police handout