Madeleine McCann: Raymond Hewlett Tells All

MADELEINE McCann Watch: Anorak’s at-a-glance look at Madeleine McCann in the news - Raymond Hewlett speaks out.

In the Mirror, Simon Wright brings us:

MADELEINE: KEY SUSPECT TALKS FOR FIRST TIME

Well, not exactly. Maddie spotter Raymond Hewlett, for it is he, has spoken frankly with Bild and briefly with the Sun.

Wright delivers the chat in bullet points:

Yes I’m a convicted paedophile

Yes I lived near Praia Da Luz

Yes I look like police drawing

Which means..?

Broken, frail, with only weeks to live, Raymond Hewlett is the man the McCanns fear could take the secrets of their daughter’s disappearance to the grave.

Fear. Could. Such are the facts. They have no proof. No evidence.

Says he:

“It’s obvious why they’re interested in me,” croaks Hewlett, 64. “But they can all think what they like. I didn’t kill the McCann girl. It’s the truth and it’s never going to change.”

So that’s that, then, no death bed confession. Can his morphine dose be upped?

The man jailed three times for sex attacks on girls today speaks out for the first time in a bid to clear his name amid the mountain of circumstantial evidence against him.

No, not for the first time.

Hewlett, who has been in hiding ever since he was named in connection with the case…

No, he’s not been in hiding since his name was given to the press. He’s been in hospital. The newspapers found him, as did doctors and the police. Such are the facts:

What’s more he is REFUSING to give an alibi for the night Madeleine, three, vanished.

Does he need one? the Mirro has called him “‘Maddie’ pervert“, a link apparently established by Team McCann, a man who says Hewlett brought up Our Maddie in conversation, a chat that to the media’s mind - get this -made him “obsessed” and lots of media opinion.

The word of tourists Cindy and Alan - who had previously located Osama bin Laden’s lair - caused the Mail to label Hewlett“Maddie’s Paedo”?

“I have an alibi but why should I share it?” he says, struggling for air with each syllable.

“There is a person who can say where I was that day, but why should I bring them into this? I’ve done nothing wrong. Why should I have to prove it? “My life’s been made a misery for something I know nothing about and a crime I’ve not committed.

“I’d take a lie-detector test. I’ll take any test you like. The only time I’ve seen Madeleine McCann is on missing posters. And I saw her on TV in a bar once. But I’ve never seen her in real life. Yes I’ve been to Praia da Luz, but not since 2002.”

If you were Raymond Hewlett’s alibi would you want him to make your name public?

But those claims contradict what former Scots Guard Mr Verran, 46, says Hewlett told him - that he was in and around Praia da Luz at the time Madeleine disappeared in May 2007.

Can it be proven?

The McCanns’ private detectives first became aware of father-of-six Hewlett in February this year when his name was given to them during local door-to-door inquiries.

Paedo!

Portuguese detectives told UK officers they were unaware of his existence until the McCann team uncovered his name.

Did they?

But bizarrely, Hewlett tells the Sunday Mirror he was visited twice by Portuguese police over the Maddie case and gave detectives a DNA swab and fingerprints, although he was never arrested or quizzed.

So no need for him to be swabbed again, then. So they didn’t think he was a suspect. Perhaps there was no proof. Perhaps you cannot arrest someone and charge them for a crime for which there is no evidence?

The McCanns’ investigators are unsure whether to believe him or the detectives in Portugal.

Not the key word “investigators”. Why not investigate?

He also says that local police helping in the search for Maddie visited him, wife Mariana and their children in the summer of 2007.

He says: “They checked that all the children living with us were ours. Our youngest girl looks a bit like her. But they saw everything was OK and they left.

“The police came again in August last year and told Mariana it was about the McCann girl.

They asked for me and Mariana told them I was in hospital. They came to see me and asked permission to take DNA and fingerprints. I was very sick and barely able to speak to them. They asked where we parked in the Algarve in the first half of 2007.

“I told them, ‘You know where we’ve been because you know us round there.’ “I knew why they were asking, because I’d seen the TV and newspapers. By then, that McCann kid’s photo was in every shop and supermarket you went in to. I’ve got previous convictions for child-sex crimes so my heart sank. I thought, ‘Oh no, here we go again.’

Again:

I was miles from the UK but it didn’t make any difference. I’d tried hard to build a new life. But the reality for me is that my past convictions will never go away. I have to put up with it because it’s always going to be this way. I gave them their DNA and fingerprints. I knew they were just doing their job but I was angry. I had enough to cope with. I had cancer and no money.”

Life on the road:

“We’d stop in various places and decide whether to hang around there,” he says. “It would depend on the weather and how easy it was to make money. I used to busk on the street, playing guitar. I can’t really play but people would give me money anyway.”

On the day Our Maddie vanished:

Hewlett says he was 60 miles away - in Vila Real de Santo Antonio - when Maddie was taken. Crucially, he says he cannot specifically remember being there that day.

“May 3 was a Thursday and I was always in Vila Real Santo Antonio on Thursdays,” he says. “My routine never altered. That’s 100km from Praia da Luz.

“If you asked people there if we were there on that day, I don’t know what they’d say. Maybe they can’t remember. If you ask them if we were normally there, they’d say yes. If it wasn’t for the fact that we were living the way we were, I wouldn’t be able to say so clearly that that was where I was.

“It’s only because of the way we live that I can say it. As far as I’m concerned, I don’t have to prove anything.”

With neither proof nor evidence, the law would doubtless agree:

“Our truck was our only vehicle. I didn’t have another vehicle to go anywhere in. It’s a high-profile vehicle. Once you see it, you never forget it. It was like that purposefully because I wanted people to see us. I didn’t want to be hiding.”

Want to see the video of Hewlett and his kids?

His youngest daughter Yanina bears a striking resemblance to missing Maddie.

A Blonde-ish child?

He says: “The friend who made the video would remember where I was two days earlier. She could tell anyone where I was. But I haven’t asked her and I don’t intend to. Why should I ask her? I don’t think I should involve anybody. Why should I keep dragging people in to this? I don’t like being in it, so why should I keep putting people’s names forward so that they get bothered with it too?

“I could ask her, but if she says no, then sorry, the answer is no. Then people will just have to carry on speculating.”

And that is that. For all the investigation and all the money the disappearance of Madeleine McCann centres on speculation, and continues to. There is one fact: a child is missing. It has yet to be established that a crime took place.

His voice so weak it is at times barely audible, today Hewlett is holed up in his cramped, sparce apartment, with Mariana, 33, and six young children.

Remember how the “sicko” wanted money to talk, to provide for his children?

“I would say to the McCanns that I know what it’s like to lose a child because it’s happened to me recently,” he says.

“I’ve been through hell and now I’ve got another hell which I don’t deserve. I know for a fact that I didn’t do anything wrong, but if people aren’t listening, what can you do?”

Shaking with pain, he repeats: “I didn’t kill the McCann girl.”

Leaving the investigators to investigate the other suspects and Madeleine McCann to remain missing…

Raymond Hewlett Saw Madeleine McCann Alive

Pictures Of All The Madeleine McCann Suspects
Madeleine McCann: The Story In Pictures

Madeleine McCann, Raymond Hewlett And Suspect Evidence

Anorak

Posted: 14th, June 2009 | In: Key Posts, Madeleine McCann, Media Comments (12) | Follow the Comments on our RSS feed: RSS 2.0 | TrackBack | Permalink