Detectives travelling to Bulgaria in new Madeleine McCann probe

Detectives travelling to Bulgaria in new Madeleine McCann probe


Read more: http://metro.co.uk/2017/11/04/detectives-travelling-to-bulgaria-in-new-madeleine-mccann-probe-7054140/

Detectives hoping to find out what happened to Madeleine McCann have travelled to Bulgaria to track down the wife of a convicted paedophile. The new lead comes after Met detectives re-examined witness statements taken after Madeleine disappeared aged three. They hope to interrogate the woman, whose husband was a paedophile but has died since Madeleine vanished in 2007, The Sun reported. The couple were reportedly working as domestic helpers near the apartment in Portugal where the McCanns were staying on holiday. However, they both vanished after the investigation into Madeleine’s disappearance was opened, it is claimed.


Locals in the Algarve reported them to the police, but despite extensive searches carried out in the following years, officers have been unable to find the woman. A source told The Sun: ‘There is no evidence they were involved but it would be good to eliminate them from the investigation.’

candyfloss wrote:Detectives travelling to Bulgaria in new Madeleine McCann probe


Read more: http://metro.co.uk/2017/11/04/detectives-travelling-to-bulgaria-in-new-madeleine-mccann-probe-7054140/

Operation Grange leaking news,who'd have thunk it.

And here's the sum total of the whole thing, just another stupid non story to get Madeleine selling papers.......

quote:
. A source told The Sun: ‘There is no evidence they were involved but it would be good to eliminate them from the investigation.’




You gotta laugh, no evidence but it would be good to eliminate them, what a load of tripe!!!!  So they are criss crossing Europe, looking for this person but really no need to.  I wonder where this story came from...

Another one I think to be assigned to the tabloid trash topic!

Let's leave it here for now, you never know when we might need to look up such mega important information.

Even better in the Daily Mail they are 'scouring' Bulgaria.......... my oh my - for someone they have no evidence to link them


http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5051251/Maddie-detectives-scour-Bulgaria-woman-purple.html?ITO=1490

quotes from Mail


But the brutal and tragic truth is that it is more than probable the woman in purple is unlikely to be the key to solving this mystery.







Given that Mrs Murat (whose son Robert was arrested as a suspect two weeks after Madeleine’s disappearance, but cleared of any involvement) raised the alarm about the woman on the morning after the alleged abduction, it must be asked why it has taken ten years for attention to focus on this suspect? Equally pertinent, perhaps, is the question: why is the British taxpayer being asked to finance Operation Grange further when all other leads have come to dispiriting dead-ends?
During the past six years, a string of theories and suspects have come and gone. Variously, the spotlight has fallen on a group of British contract cleaners working in the resort, a smelly, pot-bellied man, a burglary gang posing as charity collectors, child-traffickers, gypsies and so on.


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5051251/Maddie-detectives-scour-Bulgaria-woman-purple.html

Perhaps Great Uncle Bulgaria and the other Wombles can help - they're good at looking for things.

Another way to look at it is if they go to Bulgaria and eliminate this couple then that's one more thing out of the way if the Mc's do end up in court

I have always a bad feeling when they are going to "investigate" dead "suspects".
It's a easy way out, just like Ben Needham.

PMR wrote:Another way to look at it is if they go to Bulgaria and eliminate this couple then that's one more thing out of the way if the Mc's do end up in court

Me too, this is just another sighting that could stand in the way, needs ruled out, imo.

dogs don't lie wrote:

PMR wrote:Another way to look at it is if they go to Bulgaria and eliminate this couple then that's one more thing out of the way if the Mc's do end up in court

Me too, this is just another sighting that could stand in the way, needs ruled out, imo.

I hope you are right.
Rule out the "Plum colored Bulgarian woman"
Rule in the "Plum colored Exeter woman"

Exactly, if the Mc's got to court I think they would plead not guilty. Any barrister worth his salt would start bringing up all the other potential suspects. If the police can stand there and say 'We investigated them but ruled them out' then that would be so much better

How many cops are on the case? only yesterday the sun had them looking into the deaths of two brits in Portugal.

That's a misunderstanding. British police aren't investigating the apparent double suicide.

Madeleine McCann: Police hunt waitress believed to be mysterious 'woman in purple'

THE “woman in purple” being sought by Scotland Yard detectives in Bulgaria in connection with the Madeleine McCann case worked with her husband at the Ocean Club resort on the Algarve in Portugal.
By James Murray Exclusive
PUBLISHED: 00:01, Sun, Nov 19, 2017

Waitress Luisa Todorov, 58, is believed to be the mystery woman seen by two witnesses standing outside apartment 5a of the Ocean Club from where Madeleine was taken 10 years ago. 
She has become the focus of Yard inquiries for months as officers want to know if she saw anything suspicious on the night of Madeleine’s abduction from Praia da Luz when she was aged just three. 
One witness saw her standing by a lamp post just outside the apartment at 8pm on May 3, 2007 and another saw her about half an hour later nearby. 
Luisa’s husband Stefan Todorov, 50, was working at the Tapas bar, where the McCanns and their seven holiday friends were dining when Madeleine was abducted.  
Detectives working on the £12million Operation Grange inquiry have spent months trying to track down the couple, who are being treated as significant potential witnesses. 
Spanish criminologist Heriberto Janosch Gonzalez, who has investigated the case for 10 years, said: “I have been combing through all the police files trying to identify who the woman in purple could be. 
“It has been widely reported that Yard officers are in Bulgaria. 
“Examining all the known statements it seems highly likely the police are seeking the Todorovs as they are the only known people with a clear link to Bulgaria. 
“I have been unable to trace them in Portugal and believe they could have moved away. 
“It is widely known that many workers at the Ocean Club were made redundant so it is possible they went to Bulgaria seeking work.” 
The couple gave statements to Portuguese police five days after the kidnapping as part of routine Portuguese inquiries. 
Luisa’s statement said she worked day shifts at the Millennium restaurant, where the McCann family had gone on the first evening of their holiday with their friends. 
Scotland Yard said they could not give a running commentary on investigations carried out by officers working on Operation Grange. 
In August 2007 a British woman reported seeing a child who looked mile Madeleine at Varna airport in Bulgaria, but the information was very sketchy and did not check out.


https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/881339/madeleine-mccann-police-hunt-waitress-woman-in-purple-scotland-yard-bulgaria

Interesting this seems to be based on another article way back with our friend Hairy Bert in it.  Remember he smuggled a pillow out of the apartment   It's a total non story as usual.  Phrases such 'as it is widely reported' and 'It seems highly likely the police are seeking'.....

This is a cracker, from Heriberto...

“I have been unable to trace them in Portugal and believe they could have moved away.
“It is widely known that many workers at the Ocean Club were made redundant so it is possible they went to Bulgaria seeking work.”

No absolute fact just the usual speculation.
   



Detectives working on the £12million Operation Grange inquiry have spent months trying to track down the couple, who are being treated as significant potential witnesses.
Spanish criminologist Heriberto Janosch Gonzalez, who has investigated the case for 10 years, said: “I have been combing through all the police files trying to identify who the woman in purple could be.
“It has been widely reported that Yard officers are in Bulgaria.
“Examining all the known statements it seems highly likely the police are seeking the Todorovs as they are the only known people with a clear link to Bulgaria.






This tells you all you need to know about this story.....



Scotland Yard said they could not give a running commentary on investigations carried out by officers working on Operation Grange.

candyfloss wrote:Interesting this seems to be based on another article way back with our friend Hairy Bert in it.  Remember he smuggled a pillow out of the apartment   It's a total non story as usual.  Phrases such 'as it is widely reported' and 'It seems highly likely the police are seeking'.....

It's presumably linked to this.

https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/100071/EXCLUSIVE-Who-was-the-woman-outside-Maddie-s-flat

This woman could be an important witness, or it could all just be a load of rubbish.

Relevant statements here.

http://www.mccannpjfiles.co.uk/PJ/LOUISA_TODOROV.htm

http://www.mccannpjfiles.co.uk/PJ/STEFAN_TODOROV.htm

So they shot off to Bulgaria and oh my, she is living 1 mile from PDL!!    Hairy Bert, all that investigating and couldn't find her either, even knowing her name.


Waitress DENIES she is the 'woman in purple' being hunted by Madeleine McCann investigators


[*]A 'woman in purple' is keeping Operation Grange alive - the search for Maddie

[*]She was seen by British expat Jenny Murat before the youngster went missing

[*]Criminologist Heriberto Janosch Gonzalez cited her as Luisa Todorov, 48

[*]But the former resort worker has 'already spoken to police and knows nothing'



A waitress has denied she is 'the woman in purple' at the centre of the investigation into missing Madeleine McCann.

Detectives searching for the youngster have been scouring Europe in an attempt to locate the mysterious figure, who was the main lead keeping the investigation alive.



Luisa Todorov, who worked in the resort, was recently cited by criminologist Heriberto Janosch Gonzalez as being the 'woman in purple' and still lives less than a mile away from site where Maddie disappeared from.

At about 8pm on the evening of May 3, 2007, Jenny Murat, a British expatriate living in the coastal village of Praia da Luz on Portugal's Algarve, and another separate witness noticed a woman staring intently at an apartment block next to the Ocean Club, a small holiday complex popular with British families. 

Sometime during the next two hours, three-year-old Madeleine McCann disappeared from an apartment in that same block as her parents dine with friends nearby. 


Mrs Todorov, 48, worked there with her husband, Stefan, who has since returned to his homeland of Bulgaria.

She says she was quizzed within days of Maddie's disappearance and would be willing to co-operate further, but is unsure of how useful she would be.

'I've no idea about any woman in purple. It wasn't me. I spoke to the police a long time ago about the Madeleine case,' she told the
'I don't really want to talk about it, nobody around here does, it brings back lots of bad memories.

'Nobody knows what happened to her. If the British police want to speak to me that's fine, but I don't know anything.  

Talking of when she spotted the woman in purple, Mrs Murat said earlier this month: 'I saw the woman standing on the corner of the street.

'She caught my eye because she was dressed in purple-plum clothes. It struck me as strange. 

'It's so usual for anyone, particularly a woman, to be standing alone on the street in our resort, just watching a building. 

'The next morning, we heard that a little girl had gone missing, and I later told police about the woman I'd seen right outside,' Mrs Murat continued. 'I didn't recognise her and don't have a clue who she is, but she seems a bit suspicious.'

It is this 'woman in purple', the Mail understands, who is keeping alive Operation Grange, the marathon reinvestigation of the Madeleine McCann case by Scotland Yard, now in its sixth year.

A source told The Sun 'There is no evidence they were involved but it would be good to eliminate them from the investigation.'  

In the past few months, the Grange team — now down to four detectives from a peak of 31 — has been criss-crossing Europe trying to locate the woman.

Their budget had been due to run out in September, but officers are understood to have used the 'woman in purple' line of investigation to persuade the Home Office — which is financing the inquiry from central government funds — to grant a six-month extension. 

The £154,000 agreed will allow inquiries to continue until March, taking the total spent on Operation Grange near to £12 million.

Given that Mrs Murat (whose son Robert was arrested as a suspect two weeks after Madeleine's disappearance, but cleared of any involvement) raised the alarm about the woman on the morning after the alleged abduction, it must be asked why it has taken ten years for attention to focus on this suspect?  

Equally pertinent, perhaps, is the question: why is the British taxpayer being asked to finance Operation Grange further when all other leads have come to dispiriting dead-ends? 

During the past six years, a string of theories and suspects have come and gone. Variously, the spotlight has fallen on a group of British contract cleaners working in the resort, a smelly, pot-bellied man, a burglary gang posing as charity collectors, child-traffickers, gypsies and so on.

Of course, it must be acknowledged that the suffering of Madeleine's parents, Gerry and Kate McCann, over their daughter's disappearance is as unimaginable as it is unending.

Every parent will sympathise with their conviction that, until proven otherwise, Madeleine may yet be found alive and well.

But the brutal and tragic truth is that it is more than probable the woman in purple is unlikely to be the key to solving this mystery.

Operation Grange has been one of the longest, most high-profile and costly police investigations in history

Launched in May 2011, officers have sifted (and translated) 40,000 documents produced by Portuguese police who conducted the initial investigation, and by the eight teams of private detectives who have worked on the case.

Some 600 'persons of interest' have been examined and 'sightings' of Madeleine — in Brazil, India, Morocco and Paraguay, on a German plane and in a New Zealand supermarket — assessed.

The demand from many quarters — from the McCanns, from the public, from politicians — for the investigation to continue is, of course, entirely understandable.

But there comes a time in every police inquiry into a disappearance when the question of how long it should continue has to be asked.

In an era of austerity — with the Met threatening to stop investigating thousands of 'low-level' crimes, such as burglaries and assaults, to help it absorb £400 million in cuts before 2020 — the commitment to one increasingly old, and cold, case is becoming harder to defend.

Some police critics of Operation Grange point to what they see as its 'original sin' — the failure of the Met's team to re-interview Gerry and Kate McCann and the so-called Tapas Seven, the friends with whom they were dining in a restaurant at the Ocean Club on the night of Madeleine's disappearance.

This, it is argued, should have been a basic first step in a reinvestigation while implying no guilt on the part of those involved.

According to Mark Rowley, Assistant Commissioner of the Met, there was simply no need to re-interview the group because local police had already done so. Yet the initial inquiry by police on the Algarve is known to have been deeply flawed.





Might not a British interviewer of the McCanns and their friends have picked up on something not spotted by the Portuguese?

Speaking shortly before the tenth anniversary of Madeleine's disappearance, Mr Rowley explained: 'We had a look at all the material and we are happy that was all dealt with, and there is no reason whatsoever to reopen that or start rumours that that was a line of investigation.'

According to a friend of the McCanns, 'it would have been hugely insulting to Kate and Gerry if their original statements had been questioned. There was no need to say anything more because everything had been said'.

What this meant in practice was that abduction, either by design or as the result of a break-in gone wrong, was the only consideration for the Grange team.

The reinvestigation began after the McCanns found a powerful ally in the shape of Rebekah Brooks, then chief executive of News International (publisher of The Times, Sunday Times and The Sun), who was anxious to secure the newspaper publishing rights for Kate McCann's book on the family's terrible ordeal.

Ms Brooks was subsequently accused during the Leveson Inquiry into Press standards of bullying the Prime Minister David Cameron and Theresa May, then Home Secretary, into initiating Grange.

She denied the accusation, but admitted applying pressure for a case review on the McCanns' behalf.

Politics has been a consideration in the conduct of Operation Grange ever since; certainly, it was the subject of discussions between David Cameron and his Portuguese opposite numbers.

One could argue that delaying the end of the inquiry postpones the moment when Mrs May, an increasingly embattled prime minister, must explain why so many millions and countless hours of police time —resources committed on her watch as Home Secretary and PM — have ended up in a fruitless dead-end.

Disquiet about Operation Grange is nothing new. In 2015, John Tully, then chairman of the Metropolitan Police Federation, argued that, in a time of cuts at home, Scotland Yard should not be used to conduct inquiries into matters abroad.

'It is surprising to see an inquiry like the McCann investigation ring-fenced,' he said. 'I have heard a few rumblings of discontent about it.'


Colin Sutton, a retired senior detective at Scotland Yard, has told how he was warned off taking the leadership of Operation Grange.

A senior officer, who Sutton knew well, told him: 'You wouldn't be happy leading an investigation where you were told what you could look at and what you could not.' Meaning, presumably, that the McCanns were off-limits to further questioning.

Mr Sutton recalls: 'It was made clear that this was an unofficial call and that it was made in my interest — so that I might not end up taking on a task which would ultimately frustrate me.

'I do though think that a point worthy of reinforcing is that a proper, conclusive and reasoned elimination or implication of Kate and Gerry McCann would have been in everyone's interest, most of all theirs. That would have been my first objective had I been leading Operation Grange...To eliminate or implicate those closest to the child in this type of case is not only the documented best practice, but is common sense.

'Had Grange done this, then everything would be a lot clearer. I have no idea why this was not done, but I am satisfied [by] what has been said by the Met and what [information] is available that it was not [done].'

Following the departure in late 2014 of Andy Redwood, the officer originally in charge of the inquiry, Operation Grange has been the responsibility of Detective Chief Inspector Nicola Wall.

Taking on an investigation in its death throes must be something of a poisoned chalice, and DCI Wall may not be sorry to see the end of Grange in March 2018.

Meanwhile, the McCanns keep a close eye on developments from their home in Rothley, Leicestershire, and continue to express thanks to the Met.

'Kate and Gerry are grateful for the resources put into finding Madeleine and encouraged that they continue to be so,' says the friend.

In Praia da Luz, however, locals are weary of the case, and the extension of Grange has been greeted with little enthusiasm.

According to Paul Luckman, of English-language newspaper The Portugal News: 'There was this slightly arrogant British assumption that: 'We'll come in and show you how to conduct an investigation'. Well, we've seen the result.

'And the money. What about all the other missing children? There must be a limit to spending on a single case. The one consistent sentiment among [the] Portuguese, who are very family-focused, is to ask why Madeleine and her siblings were ever left alone in the first place. Parents here would take their children with them to the restaurant.'

In a symbol of solidarity with the McCanns, De Lisle College in Loughborough — the secondary school Madeleine, who would now be 14, would have attended — continues to reserve a place for her. This year, she would have started her GCSE course.

Unless the woman in purple is tracked down in the next few months, the moment of closure for Operation Grange is approaching.

Despite a monumental effort, the case of Madeleine McCann, one of the most haunting mysteries of modern times, is likely to remain just that.


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5113205/Maddie-McCann-Waitress-DENIES-woman-purple.html

Didn't one of the descriptions of the woman in purple also state that she was on the large size?

How large is large? Are we talking gross fat-*rse or just slightly on the hefty side?