Paedophile suspect "familiar" with Madeleine McCann apartment

by Angela Johnson. Published Mon 25 May 2009 10:48

Police are tracing the mobile phone records of a convicted paedophile being investigated over Madeleine McCann’s disappearance, it has been reported.

Raymond Hewlett has admitted he was familiar with the layout of the Portuguese holiday complex where she went missing.

Raymond Hewlett is alleged to have been staying around an hour’s drive from the McCanns’ holiday flat in Praia da Luz when she vanished on May 3, 2007.

The couple who raised concerns over Hewlett's paedophilic past and links to Praia da Luz, Alan and Cindy Thompson, have handed over his mobile number for police to trace his phone records on the day Madeleine disappeared.

The McCanns’ investigation team, comprised of a team of retired policemen, wants to interview the 64-year-old in the next few days, but Hewlett has the right to refuse.

UK-born Hewlett, a former soldier, is reportedly being treated for throat cancer in hospital in the German city of Aachen.

Former soldier Peter Verran, 46, who met Hewlett at a campsite in Morocco, in May, 2007, has said Hewlett admitted parking a van close to the McCanns’ complex on several occasions.

Hewlett has previously been jailed three times for attacks on young girls, and Peter Verran has revealed he appeared "obsessed" with the case of missing Madeleine.

Peter Verran said: "He brought Madeleine up straight away.

"He said his three year old daughter looked like her.

"He was worried because there had been reports that Madeleine may have been spirited away to Morocco, people might think his child was her.

"Then he suddenly said 'Madeleine's not in Morocco.'

"I asked him what he meant and he said he knew Praia Da Luz really well.

"He knew the Ocean Club complex where the McCanns has been staying and that he'd been there many times and often parked his van close to the apartment."

It is over two years since Madeleine went missing from the resort, as Liverpool born mother Kate, and her Glaswegian husband Gerry shared a meal with friends, a few hundred yards from the apartment.

Leicestershire Police, the McCanns home force said yesterday: "The disappearance of Madeleine McCann remains a Portuguese investigation."