Revealed: How detectives searching for Maddie McCann planned to spy on paedophile’s family

Detectives hunting for Madeleine McCann were planning to monitor the family of a dead child abuser, it has been revealed.

Sick Raymond Hewlett lost a cancer battle six years ago at the age of 64. Police thought he could be a person of interest as he had lived an hour away from where little Maddie vanished on Portugal’s Algarve nine years ago when she was just three.

Hewlett has done three stints in jail in Britain for abusing young girls in the Seventies and Eighties. Scotland Yard officers thought that it would be worthwhile spying on his estranged wife and his children as they continued their search for Maddie.

The paedophile denied any involvement in Maddie’s disappearance. The little girl was on holiday in the popular holiday resort of Praia du Luz when she vanished. Her parents had left the three year old and her younger twin siblings alone in their holiday apartment while they dined at a tapa restaurant nearby. They and other adults in their group had been taking it in turns to check on the children.

Stolen to order

However, although he said that he was not directly involved in Maddie’s disappearance, he did write a letter to his son Wayne before he lost his cancer battle, in which he claimed that the little girl was “stolen to order” by a gang from Belgium.

Wayne told reporters tha he and his wife did feel they had been watched for a period of time last year. Hewlett’s former wife Mariana lives in Germany and two of his six children live in Portugal.

Officers say they were trying to find out if there was any connection between a Belgian gang and Hewlett. They described it as a “fishing expedition”. Hewlett was jailed for the rape of a 12 year old, spending two further stints in prison for attempting to rape another underage girl and then kidnapping a 14-year-old at knifepoint.