Panicked Pedophile Killed Maddy: Cops

Madeleine McCann was killed by a panicked pedophile who suffocated the 4-year-old when she screamed, then escaped with the body, Portuguese police now theorize. The U-turn in the case came after a senior detective took over the investigation, according to the Portuguese newspaper Publico,  and it would exonerate Maddy's parents, the Telegraph reports.

According to the new theory, imagined in detail in a macabre reenactment in Publico,  Maddy was already dead when she was seen in the arms of a man leaving the resort where the family was staying. A friend of her parents tells the Daily Mail the theory is "ludicrous. If a pedophile had killed her in the apartment he would have left her there and fled." (More Madeleine McCann stories.)