Sandra Felgueiras - Portal de Notícias

Home> News> Portugal and the world> We spoke with Sandra Felgueiras about the Maddie documentary. “Gonçalo Amaral lied to me”

The documentary series The Disappearance of Madeleine McCann, launched by Netflix, which has information and statements collected in Portugal, has the participation of Sandra Felgueiras. The relationship of the RTP journalist with the Maddie case is from the very first day. Sandra Felgueiras followed this story, was in the Algarve for three months, did long hours of live coverage and numerous interviews, “controversial, at the time”, with the McCann couple, both in Praia da Luz and in England.

The Portal de Notícias spoke with the journalist. The reporter revealed to us details of what was experienced at the scene of Madeleine McCann’s disappearance. The mystery around the child's whereabouts “makes this story viral”. “Until we know the reason and the person who took Maddie, we’ll always have a story. There is, for now, no explanation for what happened in one of the calmer places in Portugal”, she says.


Sandra Felgueiras was on RTP and suddenly she is “surprised” by the news

The journalist recalls the day she learned of Madeleine’s disappearance. It was the year 2007. She was in RTP’s newsroom and suddenly was “surprised” by the news. “A three-year-old child disappeared in Praia da Luz. The English parents left her alone in the room with the siblings while they went to dinner”. The outline of this story left her “intrigued”.

Sandra Felgueiras only had time to go home to get a change of clothes and went to the Algarve. “It would never cross my mind staying for a week in the Algarve. Much less a month. And we [journalist and image reporter] spent three months”, she says. On the first day, “there were only four or five journalists on site”. The RTP professional recalls seeing a couple, Kate and Gerry McCann, “very emotional” in the first public statement, before the media.

“I remember being on the verge of tears because at no moment did it seem to me that they were lying. Our impulse was, among all, to go and look for the child, “confesses. “The journalists did not want to just report. We wanted, at the limit, to find her. That started to become very distressing for us too”.


“Dreamed every night of Maddie. I was ‘seeing’ her almost everywhere”

The involvement with the case was such that Sandra Felgueiras “dreamed every night with Maddie”. “I was ‘seeing’ her almost everywhere”. On a beach frequented by many Englishmen, the journalist remembers confusing various children with the missing girl. Soon Praia da Luz became a media epicentre. “I have no memory of a case that has provoked as many live coverages and reports as this one. The image that I keep in me is the media foot-print. “When Maddie’s parents return to their hometown, Rothley in England, the journalist accompanies them. “There was no space in Rothley's square to put all the cameras. We [journalists] fought over the place”, she says.

In the year that Maddie disappeared, 2007, the World was not what it is today. There were no smartphones and the information was not so easily spread. However, Sandra was recognized by a team of reporters from Tokyo who wanted to interview her. “The Tokyo reporter knew who I was because he had seen interviews with the McCanns”, she explains.
Occultation of information and the filing of the case. «Gonçalo Amaral lied to me»

Three months after Maddie's disappearance, two dogs came to Portugal that sniffed blood and cadaver. Police began an operation with the animals in the apartment where the girl had disappeared and in the car rented by the McCann family. The dogs signaled, simultaneously, in the room of the child's parents and in the luggage compartment of the car. Before this evidence, Gonçalo Amaral, the first operational coordinator of the investigation, assumes this signaling given by dogs as an “unequivocal” clue. Maddie had died behind the couch by accident and her parents had transported her in the luggage compartment of the Renault Scenic.

In order for this operation done with the assistance of the dogs to be valid, it must be supported by scientific analysis. Gonçalo Amaral’s thesis is not confirmed by the analysis pending in the Birmingham lab. When the preliminary results arrive, the inspector informs Sandra Felgueiras that “there was correspondence to Maddie’s DNA”. “In 20 possible alleles, five had been detected in the apartment and 17 in the boot of the car”. The journalist confirmed, with coroners, if the probability of matching Maddie was feasible if faced with this result”. All answered yes, that the probability was high”.

In July 2008, however, the journalist has access to the process that, until then, was in secrecy of Justice. “When I go to see the preliminary result, which Gonçalo Amaral told me, and that led him to constitute the McCanns as arguidos, I see that the last paragraph said that, although there were 17 alleles in 20, the sample was so insignificant and small that there were several people in the lab with the same genetic identification. So this evidence could not be considered relevant”, she explains. Sandra Felgueiras feels “profoundly deceived”. This paragraph was decisive to shake everything that had been done before. “In no moment Gonçalo Amaral told me that the sample was so small and criminally irrelevant”, she stresses.


Inquiry closed due to lack of evidence

The inquiry is closed due to lack of evidence that the coordinator of the investigation assured that they were reliable. Sandra Felgueiras does a new report, where she explains the whole process and everything that had happened.

The arrival of the police four hours after Maddie's disappearance, which allowed tens of people to enter the room without any restriction, and the closure of the borders only 48 hours later, after which in Portugal a disappearance is constituted a crime, made the investigations difficult. In an abduction thesis, in these circumstances the police may have missed the opportunity to capture any suspect. “The PJ was immersed in a world media circus that pressured it to have an answer and the only one they could arrange was one that diverted the crimes to the parents”. Over the preliminary results, the Authorities transitioned from kidnapping to murder.


The ‘secret’ that the McCann couple carries

In the first interviews with the McCanns, Sandra Felgueiras remembers them as “a desperate couple looking for their daughter”. The fact that the couple’s friends did not want to talk to the journalists and that Maddie’s parents only spoke under certain circumstances and without being unequivocally enlightening, leads the journalist to believe that the couple hides a secret. “I think the couple hides a secret. I do not know what, but they never told whole truth. “

Sandra Felgueiras says she does not know if this truth is decisive for knowing where the child is. But whenever the journalist asked a question, for example, she wants to know why they left the children alone, the answer is always interpreted with hostility and without objectivity. “They were indeed negligent and were never punished for it. That is a great guilt they carry”. From then on, Sandra realizes that the couple could present a certain coldness in answering certain questions because of “feeling guilty about leaving the child alone”.


The McCanns “carry a great sense of guilt and a great secret”

“Today I look at them and I think they carry a great sense of guilt and a great secret”. About the size of the secret and the impact it has on the outcome of the story, the journalist does not know. But “while a woman, a mother and a journalist, I would like for Maddie to be alive”. However, Sandra Felgueiras does not dare to “respond to what she “does not know.


Text: Jéssica dos Santos | WiN; Photos: Impala and D.R.