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DNA clues delay in Maddie probe
A FORMER Blackpool soldier, linked to the disappearance of Madeleine McCann, is unlikely to face charges over a sex attack 30 years ago.
A team of detectives from West Yorkshire police flew to Germany to question Raymond Hewlett over the assault on an eight-year-old girl in 1972 and took a DNA sample.
But sources at the Yorkshire force said that although they were still awaiting instructions on how to proceed from the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), it was unlikely charges would follow. A spokesman for West Yorkshire Police said: "We have been over to interview him and are currently liaising with the CPS regarding the matter.
"We are also still awaiting the results of a DNA profile."
Hewlett, 64, who was brought up in Hawes Side Lane, Marton, is currently in hospital in Aachen where he is being treated for throat cancer.
Private detectives working for the McCann family have not named him as a suspect but want to question him after receiving some worrying information from people who knew him.
In the past he has been jailed three times for sex attacks on young girls but has since insisted "I didn't kill the McCann girl".
Hewlett is said to have been staying around an hour's drive from the McCanns' holiday flat in Praia da Luz in Portugal when the little girl vanished on May 3, 2007.
The battered blue Dodge van owned by Hewlett at the time of Madeleine's disappearance has been seized by German police and looked over by investigators.
It has been alleged the vehicle was seen parked close to the McCanns' complex on several occasions around the time the youngster went missing.
The McCanns' investigators – retired UK policemen Dave Edgar and Arthur Cowley – flew to Germany last month in a bid to question Hewlett.
But negotiations between the private investigators and Hewlett's German lawyer broke down and the detectives flew home empty handed.
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Saturday 26 May 2012
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