MADELEINEN vanhemmat suuttuivat murhaväitteistä.

Family Anger At Press ' Smear' Campaign

Updated: 10:20, Thursday August 09, 2007



Madeleine McCann' s parents have criticised fresh reports in the Portuguese press that police believe their daughter was murdered rather than abducted.



Madeleine McCannNewspapers in Portugal have printed a series of allegations contradicting the official stance that the four-year-old girl was snatched from her family' s holiday flat in the Algarve village of Praia da Luz on May 3.



They have reported that detectives now believe she died in the apartment that night and no longer think that Robert Murat, the only official suspect in the case, was involved.



DNA analysis of blood traces found in the holiday apartment is now being carried out at a Birmingham laboratory.



One paper has even suggested that police " intercepted" emails and phone calls between parents Kate and Gerry McCann and the friends on holiday with them when Madeleine vanished.



Family friends have said they are disgusted about what they said was a smear campaign against them.



Rachael Oldfield, who ate with the McCanns on the night Madeleine disappeared, told the Evening Standard newspaper: " I think there are some leaks coming from the police because a lot of what I have read recently has been completely untrue.



" Whether a journalist has had a bit of information and made the rest up, or the police are feeding some truths or untruths, I just don' t know."



A McCann family spokesman said the couple had always collaborated with the Portuguese police " to the fullest extent" .



" Some of the statements which have been made, that the police now regard it as definitely a murder case rather than abduction, we regard as speculation because that is not what the police are saying to the McCanns," he said.



A DNA sample taken from a restaurant in Tongeren, close to the Dutch border, where a woman reported seeing Madeleine with a suspicious couple, was yesterday found to be that of a man.



But investigators said the findings did not rule out that Madeleine was present and said they were still hunting the couple' s black Volvo car.