Monday, June 15, 2009

The dying pedophile at the center of the Madeleine McCann investigation says he has an alibi for the night she vanished — but he has no plans to reveal it.

Speaking publicly for the first time, Raymond Hewlett admits he was in the Algarve, Portugal, at the time Madeleine disappeared but would not say where.

"I have an alibi but why should I share it?" he said in an interview with the Sunday Mirror. "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?"

Hewlett, 64, has been jailed three times for sexually assaulting young girls. He denies killing Madeleine — and said he would take a lie detector test to prove it.

"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," he said.

"But I've never seen her in real life."

A former soldier who previously lived in the English towns of Blackpool and Telford, Hewlett has been receiving treatment for throat cancer in Aachen, Germany. But the Mirror claims he has just weeks to live after doctors told him there is nothing more they could do.

Daily Express
BREAKING HIS SILENCE: Hewlett says he didn't kill Maddie
Monday June 15,2009
By Cyril Dixon CONVICTED paedophile Raymond Hewlett broke his silence over missing Madeleine McCann yesterday, claiming: “I’ve never seen her in real life.”


The 64-year-old Briton, who was living in Portugal’s Algarve when the youngster disappeared, had previously refused to talk about the case.

But Hewlett, a former soldier who has served jail terms for sexually assaulting young girls, vowed to prove his innocence.

“I’d take a lie-detector test. I’ll take any test you like,” he said. “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.”

Detectives working for Madeleine’s parents Kate and Gerry McCann yesterday said they were keen to interview Hewlett.They wanted to clear up suggestions that he had seen Madeleine twice before she vanished, at the age of three, in May 2007.

McCann family spokesman Clarence Mitchell urged Hewlett to clarify what he knows about the mystery as soon as possible. “This makes it even more imperative that Mr Hewlett gives any credible information that he may have about Madeleine to the investigators as a matter of priority,” he said.

“We hope that he and his representatives will see sense and facilitate this interview in the near future.”

Dave Edgar, one of two retired UK policemen working for the family, added: “I have been attempting to speak with Raymond Hewlett to eliminate him from our investigation into the disappearance of Madeleine McCann. He is not a suspect but I was keen to interview him because of his failing health.”

At the time of Madeleine’s disappearance, Hewlett was living an hour from Praia da Luz, where the McCanns were on holiday.

Hewlett has lived in Blackpool and Telford, Shropshire, but moved to a truck on a campsite with his wife and six children. Since then, he has surfaced in Aachen, Germany, where he was treated for throat cancer and where the McCanns’ detectives tried in vain to speak to him.

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His record includes a sex attack on a young girl in 1978 where he put a gun to his victim’s back. West Yorkshire Police are also investigating his possible involvement with an indecent assault in 1975.

Hewlett resembles a pock-marked suspect seen near the McCann holiday apartment and has refused to give an alibi for the night of the disappearance.

He said: “It’s obvious why they’re interested in me. 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.

“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.”

Hewlett, who has been in hiding and now lives in a squalid German flat, can hardly speak and claims he has only weeks to live. After leaving Portugal, he went to Morocco where he is said to have told tourist Peter Verran he was obsessed with the McCann case.

Mr Verran, a former Scots Guard, alleges Hewlett told him he had parked his truck outside the family’s holiday flat many times. But Hewlett responded at the weekend: “My life’s been made a misery for something I know nothing about and a crime I’ve not committed.”

He said Portuguese police visited him and his wife Mariana twice about the case and he gave them a DNA swab and fingerprints – though he was never arrested or quizzed. “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.”

News pictures Kate and Gerry McCann will go back to the European Parliament next week in a last-ditch effort to persuade MEPs to back their missing child alert system.

The couple visited Strasbourg in April and begged for support for a scheme that would automatically alert police in all EU states as soon as a child goes missing.

But only a quarter of MEPs have signed up so far - and they need at least half of the Parliament's 785 members if it is to become law.

And they need the signatures by the end of the month.

The McCann's spokesman Clarence Mitchell said: "We remain confident we will get them. It's normal for MEPs to wait until the last minute to."

The family say Madeleine, four, who vanished in May 2007, may have been found if there had been alert system.

Get your MEP to sign by writing to them at European Parliament, Correspondence with Citizens, GOL03A012, L-2929 LUXEMBOURG.