No one can vouch for Madeline McCann suspect

by Elissa Corrigan. Published Sun 21 Jun 2009 10:45, Last updated: 2009-06-22

Madeleine McCann

The wife of Madeleine McCann suspect Raymond Hewlett yesterday admitted that NO ONE can give him an alibi.

German-born Mariana, 33, confessed that a female friend who Hewlett insisted could vouch for him on the day Madeleine vanished cannot remember where he was.

Convicted paedophile Hewlett, 64, won't name the woman.

In an interview with the Sunday Mirror last week, he claimed she was with him on the day Madeleine vanished.

He said she would remember because she shot a home video of him and his family at a flea market in the town of Fuzeta, 30 miles from Praia da Luz, on May 5, 2007 - two days later.

But he refused to reveal the German woman's identity, saying: "I don't think I should involve anybody. Why should I keep dragging people into this?"

But last night, as dad-of-six Hewlett drifted closer to death from throat cancer, Mariana said: "The truth is, she cannot remember where Ray was.

"She can't give him an alibi. No one can."

The Sunday Mirror has also learned that Hewlett befriended two families of Portuguese gipsies in the weeks leading up to Madeleine's disappearance.

Theories that Madeleine was snatched by gipsies have surrounded the case.

Chillingly, Hewlett told a friend that gipsies had offered him "good money" for his own two-year-old blonde-haired daughter.

Former Scots Guard Peter Verran, 46, shared a Moroccan campsite with Hewlett between June and November 2007.

He said: "He told me gipsies wanted to pay good money for her and he'd met some who traded in children and sold them to paedophiles."

Last week, Hewlett dismissed those claims as "rubbish".

But another former close pal of his in the Portuguese town of Tavira - where his family used to park their truck - revealed how, in April 2007, he developed a close friendship with two gipsy families.

Us-born artist Leonardo Leopoldo, 79, who has lived in Tavira - 40 miles from Praia da Luz - for 10 years, said: "No one spoke to the gipsies apart from Ray. He was always talking to them.

"There was talk in the area that they sold children to paedophiles.

"By the time, Madeleine was snatched, he was very friendly with them."