Dutch woman slams police over Maddie lead
- 00:01:55
- ITN
Dutch woman slams police over Maddie lead
The Dutch shop worker who said she may have seen Madeleine McCann has criticised detectives for not following up her story. The possible sighting was reported to Portuguese officers in June last year - but it has only now been made public with the release of previously secret police files. Anna Stam, 41, said she spoke to a little girl aged three or four in Amsterdam who said her name was "Maddie" and replied to a question about her mother: "They took me from my holiday." The girl entered Ms Stam's party shop in early May last year with a man and a woman and two other children, according to a witness statement to Dutch police. The man - who "did not look like a nice person" - appeared to be speaking Portuguese but the woman spoke in English and told Ms Stam they had a small circus in France. Ms Stam was at the back of the shop when the young girl approached her and asked in unaccented English: "Do you know where my mummy is?" On being told that her mother was a little further back in the store, the child replied, "She is not my mummy," and added: "She is a stranger, she took me from my mummy." The Dutchwoman said she thought the girl looked "very much like" Madeleine apart from the colour of her hair. She has attacked British and Portuguese officers saying: "I think it's stupid because maybe they could have done something more at that time and maybe now it's too late to find any clue. So I think it's very neglectful by the police. "And maybe not even the Dutch police but more the British or Portuguese police because at that time I remember the police told me they were suspecting the parents themselves. I thought it was crazy to think that but that's maybe why they didn't do something with it." The Dutch sighting was perhaps the most promising of the lines of inquiry that has emerged. McCann family spokesman Clarence Mitchell said it was "tragic" that this kind of information should only be released now. "It is harrowing to hear a child saying that. If it was Madeleine, it was a disgrace that it was not passed on. We need to know what happened with this. This is exactly the sort of primary information that we need to know if it was followed up properly by the police. "If that hasn't been done, that is exactly the kind of information that the private investigators are going to follow up." The report was sent to the Portuguese authorities on June 18 last year but it is not clear what action was taken. Madeleine's parents Kate and Gerry McCann accused detectives of withholding potentially crucial evidence from them after the newly-released official documents revealed a series of leads they knew nothing about.
ITN | August 6, 2008
