The Daily Express
Martyn Brown and Paul Jeeves
Paedophile Raymond Hewlett has confessed that he saw Madeleine McCann twice weeks before she disappeared, it was claimed last night. He said: "It's obvious why they're interested in me. But they can all think what they like. I didn't kill the McCann girl. It's the truth and it's never going to change. "There is a person who can say where I was that day, but why should I bring them into this? I've done nothing wrong."
In an extraordinary deathbed confession, he was reported to have told police: "Yes - I have seen Maddie." He even remembered the distinctive flaw in her right eye, despite previously insisting that he was nowhere near the family resort at the time. Kate and Gerry McCann's spokesman said it was now "imperative" that Hewlett is interviewed before he dies.
Madeleine was just three years-old when she went missing from her family's apartment as they holidayed at the Algarve beach resort of Praia da Luz.
Hewlett, 64, who has a lifelong history of sexually abusing little girls, was living less than an hour away from the scene of the abduction at the time. The paedophile, originally from Yorkshire, was quizzed by Portuguese police investigating Madeleine's disappearance but he was given an alibi by a 15-year-old girl.
But he came under renewed suspicion after making bizarre comments about the case to his friends and family. Yesterday's claims were made in Germany's biggest newspaper Bild, which were understood to be based on "police sources".
The McCanns' team want to speak to Hewlett but the paedophile - who has been given weeks to live - has said he will only talk about the case if he receives tens of thousands of pounds from the Find Maddie fund.
Spokesman Clarence Mitchell said: "In the light of the Bild piece, this makes it even more imperative that Mr Hewlett gives any credible information that he may have about Madeleine to the investigators as a matter of priority. It is only right that he and his legal representatives ensure this happens. However, there will be no payment made to him."
The paedophile was interviewed by British police this week, but they were unable to quiz him about Madeleine's disappearance. Hewlett was being sought by West Yorkshire Police's Homicide and Major Inquiry Team, who were conducting a review of an assault on an eight-year old girl in 1975.
Two detectives spent Thursday and yesterday in Aachen, Germany, grilling him. But under the terms allowing the interview, the detectives were unable to make any mention of Madeleine unless Hewlett himself volunteered information. He did not.
But Hewlett has agreed to have a DNA test again which will go on to a worldwide Interpol database. This could then be used to cross-match samples obtained during the Madeleine inquiry by the Portuguese police.
(BLOGGER NOTE: IF THEY DID NOT HAVE HIS DNA, THEN HOW DID THEY MANAGE TO CLEAR HIM AS A SUSPECT IN THE MOLSEED MURDER INVESTIGATION???)
A West Yorkshire Police source said: "The only way we would have ventured into the Madeleine investigation would have been through something Hewlett himself told us. "We are aware of the reports that he has claimed to have seen Madeleine twice but he made no such comments to our detectives."
(BLOGGER NOTE: MAX McLEAN WAS ONE OF THE OFFICERS WHO INTERVIEWED HEWLETT. SEE: MAX McLEAN / LESLEY MOLSEED.)
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