A former investigator into the disappearance of UK girl Maddie McCann has spoken about the important first steps that need to be taken when a child goes missing.
As police continue their search for four-year-old Cleo Smith, missing from a remote campground near Carnarvon in WA, fears that the little girl may have been abducted have intensified.
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On Wednesday it was revealed that as many as 20 sex offenders are known to police around the Blowholes Campground area where Cleo vanished on Saturday morning.
After four days of searching the local area, no trace of Cleo has been found.
Attention is turning to the possibility that little Cleo may have been kidnapped and perhaps even taken interstate.
Speaking to The West Australian, Graham Hill, the founder and first head of Behaviour Analysis at the UK Child Exploitation Online Protection Centre (EOPC), said the first days in any missing child investigation were crucial.
Hill, a specialist in predatory child sex abusers and child abduction by non-family members, flew to Portugal in 2007 after Maddie McCann went missing from her family’s holiday apartment, sparking a search that gripped the world.
He said it was vital to check out what family members told police because eliminating suspicion of the parents and understanding the family dynamic was typically the first port of call.
“That needs to be done very quickly,” he said.
“As difficult as that is when parents have a missing child, you have to do it, because statistically we know that children get hurt by people that know them.
“And also, you have to eliminate the suspicion around the parents before you can move on and do other lines of inquiry.”
Trace, implicate and eliminate
Hill said police typically use a system called TIE — trace, implicate and eliminate.
“What you want to do is TIE as many people as possible,” he said.
“You need to try and identify everyone that was on that campsite.
“Identify everybody, every vehicle, and make sure that they are seen and spoken to early on.
Because there’s two things. One is they could be suspects themselves. The second thing is they could be witnesses.
“Ideally you’d stop everyone leaving the campsite until they’ve given their details and you’ve spoken to them.”
Location is key
Hill said the fact that Cleo went missing in a remote campsite, rather than, for example, in the middle of a busy city street, was advantageous for investigators.
“The general rule of thumb is the less people around the more time you’ve got,” he said.
“So if a little girl goes missing in the middle of Sydney, then you’re fighting the clock, because you’ve got more people that have access to take the child.
“Whereas if you’re in a remote campsite, there’s fewer people around, then that’s going to give you a bit more time to play with.”
The criminologist added that young children usually only disappear for two reasons - they either wander off and get lost or have an accident, or they are deliberately taken.
“Bearing in mind (Cleo’s) only a small little girl, she’s not going to get that far (if she’s wandered off),” Hill said.
“Little girls and boys get tired really quick and in the middle of the night they are half asleep anyway.
“The real complication, from what I can see, is the fact that her sleeping bag’s gone missing.
“I would say it’s a remote chance that she’s got up wandered off and taken her sleeping bag with her.
“But I think that’s highly unlikely because there’d be some disturbance.
“You’d see where she dragged the sleeping bag and how far is a four-year-old child going to get in the dark.”
The problem with the early part of the McCann investigation, Hill said, was that Portuguese police did not have a sophisticated search system in place.
“They just sent out uniformed officers to bang on doors,” he said.
“You have to have a system.”
Thursday will mark the sixth day in the desperate search for Cleo Smith.
On Wednesday, her mother Ellie and partner Jake fronted the media for the first time, saying “someone must know” what happened to the little girl.
“Someone has to know where she is,” Ellie said.
“We hold hope that she is still around here somewhere.
“If I think about the idea of her being taken, a million things cross my mind.
“We just want our little girl home.”
Police have identified a German man known as Christian B as the “prime suspect” in the abduction and suspected murder of Maddie McCann but he has yet to be charged.
On October 12 German prosecutor Hans Christian Wolters told The Mirror, “It is now possible that we could charge. We have that evidence now.”
Maddie McCann’s body has never been found.
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2021-10-20 08:21:00Z
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