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PRAIA DA LUZ - Traces of Madeleine McCann's body were found on a Portuguese beach weeks after she was reported missing, during tests by a former detective renowned for locating abducted children, it has been claimed.
Forensic analysis by retired South African police superintendent Danie Krugel claimed to reveal Madeleine's body had either been temporarily buried or was still beneath the beach at Praia da Luz, the resort from where she disappeared on 3 May.
Based on a combination of Madeleine's DNA sample and GPS satellite technology, Krugel's findings were taken so seriously by Portuguese detectives that officers twice searched the beach.
Krugel, of the University of Bloemfontein, claims that his technique is able to locate a missing person anywhere in the world using only a single strand of hair. He became famous in South Africa after helping a television crew locate the whereabouts of five South African girls who went missing during the Eighties. Last July the retired detective spent four days in Praia da Luz following a request for assistance from Madeleine's parents, Kate and Gerry McCann.
"He clearly identified an area of the beach where Madeleine may have passed through or was buried," a close friend of the McCanns said yesterday.
Krugel's report of his findings to Portuguese detectives eventually led to British officers being asked to bring in sniffer dogs to supplement the search for Madeleine. The subsequent reaction of the dogs to Kate's clothing - the so-called scent of death - led to the couple being declared formal suspects over the death of their daughter.
The results of Krugel's investigations come amid mounting concern that the Portuguese-led investigation into the disappearance of Madeleine has stalled with an increasingly exhausted core of 'half-a-dozen' CID officers awaiting potentially crucial final forensic results from laboratories in Birmingham.
Reports in the Portuguese press claim that the original team of more than 200 police who were involved in the frantic early days of the investigation has now been whittled down to a small core who have been working without holidays and are 'completely exhausted'.
The inquiry, increasingly managed by UK-based detectives, appears once again to be focusing on trying to find a missing child rather than on the role of Madeleine's parents in their daughter's disappearance.
- OBSERVER
