Exclusive: The new prime suspect in the Madeleine McCann cold case is a "scapegoat", according to a former Portuguese detective who predicted today's significant developments more than a year ago.
Goncalo Amaral, who led the 2007 Portuguese police investigation when Madeleine mysteriously vanished, exclusively told Nine's hit podcast Maddie in April last year that British police were "preparing the end of the investigation, with a German pedophile who is in prison right now".
"He is probably going to be the scapegoat," Mr Amaral said in a rare interview with English-speaking media.
German and British police today dramatically announced an unnamed 43-year-old German man could be involved in Madeleine's disappearance 13 years ago.
The man is known to have been in and around Praia da Luz on Portugal's Algarve coast at the time Madeleine vanished on May 3, 2007.
The Metropolitan Police released photos of a campervan the German was said to have owned in Portugal, and two phone numbers used in a May 3, 2007 telephone call which started at 7.32pm and ended at 8.02pm.
LISTEN: Maddie 10 episode podcast investigation
READ: Three questions that could answer what happened to Madeleine McCann
Speaking on the Maddie podcast, in a 2019 interview that has accurately foreshadowed today's developments, Mr Amaral confirmed the German had been on the Algarve.
"He was investigated by the [Policia Judiciaria, Portugal's police] at the time [and] when the case ended they discarded him," he said.
"The trailer that he lived in was taken to Germany for testing but nothing was found there."
Mr Amaral said the German suspect was a convicted sex offender and was serving sentences in Germany unrelated the disappearance of Madeleine, arguably the world's most famous missing person case.
The former cop hit out at Operation Grange, the long-running $20 million London Metropolitan Police investigation for Maddie.
He alleged Operation Grange only had "one investigation line", and claimed it was blinkered to other possibilities about what may have happened in the resort where Madeleine was staying.
In September 2007, four months after Maddie vanished, parents Kate and Gerry McCann were declared arguidos, the Portuguese word for suspects, in the case.
Weeks later, Mr Amaral was thrown off the case after he was quoted in a newspaper criticising the involvement of British police and their lines of investigation.
He claimed he was the victim of external political pressure being applied on the Policia Judiciaria.
In 2008 Mr Amaral released The Truth of the Lie, documenting his five months leading the police investigation into Madeleine's disappearance.
The controversial book triggered a protracted and bitter legal battle with the McCanns. The 22-chapter work suggested a theory that Madeleine had died in apartment 5A, an abduction had been simulated and the three-year-old's body was somehow removed from the resort.
Mr and Mrs McCann have strenuously denied any involvement in their daughter's disappearance. Nine.com.au does not suggest they were involved in any way.
The German pedophile fits with the theory Mr and Mrs McCann have always believed could explain what happened to Madeleine: that someone broke into the holiday apartment and stole the three-year-old girl while she was sleeping.
Clouding that possible theory was circumstantial evidence developed by Mr Amaral and his team of detectives in the summer of 2007.
LISTEN: Maddie 10 episode podcast investigation
READ: Three questions that could answer what happened to Madeleine McCann
That work included specialist sniffer dogs, trained to detect the smell of dead bodies and human blood, which both alerted inside the McCanns' holiday apartment. Dog alerts require additional corroborating evidence.
DNA samples were taken from the apartment, around a blue sofa and under tiles, but the results came back inconclusive.
In Maddie, a forensics expert from the US, Dr Mark Perlin from Cybergenetics, claimed his pioneering technology could unravel the DNA samples from the apartment and the boot of a hire car.
Madeleine would be 16 years old, if alive today.
Contact: msaunoko@nine.com.au
FOLLOW: Mark Saunokonoko on Twitter
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