James Bryce
BRITISH detectives are probing sensational claims that a grave containing the remains of Madeleine McCann has been found in the holiday resort where she went missing.
A self-styled investigator, Stephen Birch, has handed radar scans to Scotland Yard showing an apparent burial site in the Portuguese town of Praia da Luz.
Officers have requested more information to help them interpret the scan results and other data collected by the ground-penetrating scanner.
Birch – who claims to have spent €50,000 on the scanner and being trained to use it – has also passed his findings to Portuguese police in the hope of locating the missing toddler.
“All I want to do is solve the mystery and bring closure to Madeleine’s family. I am convinced she lies where I have scanned,” said the South African property developer.
“I’ve had the scans analysed and they show digging, a void and what could be human bones.”
Madeleine’s parents, Kate and Gerry McCann, refused to comment on the claims.
The story is bizarre on each and every level. But what’s new.
I can understand that Mr Birch was so keen to resolve this case. I don’t know the family but looking at the pictures of this little girl that was put up really buried her deep into many a mothers heart. I do hope that some closure can be find.If Mr Birch was also consumed by this incident and believed that he may be able help I think we should respect his work so far. Personally I am gratefull to anyone who could use his expertise to help . There is nothing to loose trying to find the truth. May God be with us all whatever the outcome of this may be. Chritina
Government officials need too act quick before another “cover-up” happens. Whats difference is a whole in the ground for a few days gonna make get it dug now it’s a no brainer!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I like your use of the slightly disparaging “self styled investigator”. People seem to have forgotten the “self styled investigators” on whom the McCanns squandered millions of pounds of generously donated money – Metodo3 who employed Jimenez Raso, and Halligen to name but two. Both are now languishing in prison. This guy has handed his results, whatever they are, to the proper authorities. None of the McCann’s private investigators ever did, and it remain a mystery why the “Fund’s” legal teams failed to perform due diligence. Clarence Mitchell even boasted that Oakley International were the “Big Boys” even though they were set up AFTER Madeleine disappeared. He was also party to the deliberate confusing in the public mind about Alphaig, pretending it was Alpha Investigations. It wasn’t. It was a company set up with an office in a cottage in Wales.
@PM
All that you have written PM just goes to show that there are many people with no scruples willing to insert themselves into this case, to make money or gain notoriety.
How the McCanns could imagine that every Tom, Dick and Peter would come out of the woodwork like parasites, feeding on the parent’s fears and their desperate need to get their daughter back, is beyond me.
Birch is a property developer with an obsession and an eye on the reward money, not an investigator.
And he’s not the first obsessed person who has trawled PDL digging sites and lifting the shutters on Apartment 5a is he? There was some man who claimed to be an ex-police inspector and a ‘self-styled’ criminal ‘profiler’ from America who started digging around the area not long ago.
They, and people like them, have inspired a whole new cottage industry – bypassing all judicial systems and becoming ‘self-styled investigators’ who feel quite entitled to dig where they see fit in PDL and elsewhere. Libeling innocent people and writing it about it in their blogs, books and forums.
The Portuguese police must cringe with embarrasment when these ‘invesitgators’ visit PDL, because it implies loud and clear that ‘we think you did such a poor job, that we feel able to come over and show you where you went wrong’
And I’m horrified by comments from people who consider it fine for citizens from another country to visit another, and spy on an elderly woman for a week and then invade her property four nights in a row, leaving her terrified to be alone, as his stalking is broadcast worldwide.
Then he flees Portugal to avoid arrest, then demands the authorites dig based on his obsession.
So now the poor woman will have every ‘vigilante’ invading her property to dig it up in the hope, HOPE!!!, of finding a dead child.
Never have I known a child to have more people wishing and hoping she is dead than this one. It’s sickeing.
Steven should be given all the support of the public as it is sickening that the Mccann’s never searched and as pointed out above they also fled Portugal as soon as. The book The Truth of the lie is online and can be read and as much as i dont want to ruin the end of it, it does not end with an abduction. But once again it is sickening how the Mccann’s never searched so Steven should be given all our support. At least he has done some investigation without asking the public to pay for it again unlike the Mccann’s.
This is a complicated case of where maddie is and what happened to her. my grandmother has been in the uk all her life never been abraod she had a premanition of the hotel name and the room the church a farm a pushchair also pale yellow walls and white paintwork childrens paintings the people involved around the hotel but she cannot come forward because it is not concrete evidence she said everyone would riddicule her and start to think she is mad but my grandmother has a diary and has wrote down all events of the premanitions she has had over a period of 3-4 years i told her to write it and send it to a place where they can understand the messages in her premanition–