Madeleine McCann search team probe convicted British paedophile

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By Stephen Moyes in Germany and Aidan McGurran in Portugal 22/05/2009

Questions: Raymond Hewlett

Detectives working for the McCanns are investigating convicted paedophile Raymond Hewlett after it was revealed he was in the Algarve when Madeleine disappeared.

Hewlett, 64, was staying with his family in a motor home an hour's drive from the McCanns' apartment in Praia da Luz.

Clarence Mitchell, spokesman for Kate and Gerry McCann, said yesterday:" We are aware of Raymond Hewlett and the claims that have been made.

" The investigators searching for Madeleine are currently investigating the circumstances surrounding Mr Hewlett and these claims. Hewlett is an individual of interest to the investigation.

" Beyond that I cannot go into any further operational detail." The alarm was raised about Hewlett by Alan and Cindy Thompson who met him while on an extended holiday in Portugal.

At the time they thought he was merely an eccentric drifter, scraping a meagre living with his wife and six children as they travelled from campsite to campsite in a converted Dodge truck.

The couple were horrified when after returning to Britain they learned Hewlett had been jailed three times for kidnapping, attempting to rape and molesting young girls. He is also still wanted by at least two UK police forces for questioning about sex attacks going back nearly 30 years.

Alan said:" Hewlett befriended us but kept quiet about his terrible past. We were mortified and disgusted to discover the truth." Cindy and Alan were not only worried by Hewlett's presence in the region when Madeleine vanished.

Alarm bells also began to ring over a conversation they had in which he told how just before Madeleine went missing he was approached by some" gipsy tourists" offering cash for his own daughter. Like Madeleine, she is blonde-haired and blue-eyed. Hewlett told the couple he refused.

Cindy said:" We didn't think too much of this at the time. Ray and his family led a desperate hand-to-mouth lifestyle and someone may have thought he'd be tempted to sell one of his six children."

They also recalled him telling how he had gone to Morocco with his family to make a sale, telling them it was" a good business trip and he made a profit". He did not tell them what he had sold.

In the months following Madeleine's disappearance there were numerous alleged sightings of Madeleine across Morocco. In each case the girl in question was either ruled out or never traced.

So worried were the Thompsons that earlier this week they contacted Hewlett, who is now being treated for cancer in a German hospital, to question him.

When they asked about his Morocco trip after Madeleine disappeared, he said sarcastically:" Yes, so? That makes me guilty then?" He didn't expand on the gipsies who offered to buy his daughter but, in reference to his trip, said:" In Morocco, everything's worth something. You can get 25 euros for an old bike."

Hewlett told them he was able to remember his movements when Madeleine was taken on 3 May, 2007. He said he was at a market in the Portuguese town of Fuseta, 30 miles from Praia da Luz.

Hewlett said:" That place where she was abducted from, I have to have a good memory see, there was a market on that same Sunday.

" We drove there on the Saturday. We were parked there. As I drove out there I saw police going the other way. So it's all very clear for me. I know exactly where I was. I wasn't anywhere near there. Where did you get that I was there?" He added that after attending the market he returned to his base at a campsite in Tavira, an hour's drive from Praia da Luz.

He said:" I do remember where I was that particular weekend. Later I was parked... a mighty long way from where that kid went missing from. If you'd gone in our truck you couldn't have got away with it, driving that about. You'd have stood out like a sore thumb."

Hewlett said the Thompsons were basing their suspicions him on what they had learned of his past. He said:" If you've chosen to believe anything I do anything about it anyway, there you go. Catch 22.

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" You're basing it on someone's past, rather. That means the person's past is important. Doesn''t make him guilty. You shouldn't be talking to me about it. I've done nothing wrong, nothing, nothing.

" I don't actually believe that child was actually kidnapped, let alone murdered."

Hewlett, a former trawlerman and fairground worker, abducted and sexually assaulted a neighbour's old daughter in 1972.

was sentenced to 18 months released after a year.

1978 he attempted to rape year-old girl after holding to her head and was jailed four years - but only served months. In 1988 in Mold, Cheshire, he kidnapped and assaulted a 14-year-old girl. Hewlett, a former Scots Guard, was jailed for six years.

Police still want to speak to Hewlett over the abduction and sexual abuse of an eight-year old girl in Manchester in 1975. West Yorks Police would also like to question him about various serious offences.

Missing: Madeleine

It is believed Dublin police may also wish to speak to him. He was described by one judge as" extremely dangerous" and once featured on a Crimestoppers list of Most Wanted paedophiles.

Alan, 56, and Cindy, 47, struck up a friendship with Hewlett and German wife Mariana, 33, after first meeting them in Portugal three years ago.

Cindy said:" Ray was living along the Algarve and Spanish coast.

" He survived by selling things he had found. Mariana also made money by busking on the streets in tourist areas - playing a tin-whistle while operating a puppet.

Ray was quiet and unassuming and he played the doting father, never letting his children stray too far." It was only after they returned from the Algarve that the Thompsons got a text message from another holidaymaker they had met alerting them to Hewlett's past.

Cindy said she later discovered others who were in the same travelling community did know his horrible secret.

She said:" They didn't want to report Hewlett for fear of upsetting Mariana.

" I find it incredible and incomprehensible that people could turn their backs on a known convicted paedophile still wanted for questioning about outstanding offences.

" We owe it to Madeleine and her family to speak out about Raymond Hewlett. We do not know he abducted Madeleine but our information should be examined."

The Mirror yesterday handed details of Hewlett's whereabouts to cold case teams in West Yorkshire and Greater Manchester.

His details were also passed to Leices-tershirPolice, the McCanns' home force.

A spokesman said they will pass the Mirror's file to Portuguese police, adding:" It remains a Portuguese investigation."

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