From the Sun:
Freud was on 'nodding terms' with former suspect in tot's disappearance as well as being a regular at a pub 'for paedos'
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By ANTONELLA LAZZERI
18th June 2016, 8:27 pm
PAEDOPHILE Clement Freud regularly drank at a pub frequented by the former prime suspect in Madeleine McCann’s disappearance.
He and Robert Murat were on “nodding terms” at the Pigs Head, according to the landlord of the boozer in Portugal.
Freud, who was unmasked as a child abuser last week, was also a regular at a pub in Praia da Luz dubbed The Plough and Paedophile.
The fact Freud and Murat knew each other is one in a series of odd links that the dead former Liberal MP had to the McCanns.
He had also entertained Gerry and Kate at his house in the days after Madeleine disappeared in 2007.
Murat, 43, lived close to the apartment where the three-year-old was snatched. He was named a as a suspect by Portuguese police, but later cleared of any involvement. And Freud’s Casa da Colina villa in the resort is a few hundred yards from a key sighting of Madeleine.
A Brit said that he saw a man carrying a little girl in the early hours of May 4, 2007.
The villa is also dwarfed by a huge hill that Kate, 47, was once convinced was where Madeleine was buried and begged cops to have it searched.
Her plea came in July 2007, when Freud befriended the McCanns.
Robert Hurst, landlord of the Pigs Head, said: “I find that really odd. I can’t imagine why he would suddenly want to invite them to his house.
“At the time Madeleine went, all hell was going on. Police everywhere, people just stunned and he’s straight in there having them over to dinner.
“When it came out this week that he was a paedophile, it made you wonder what he was up to?”
Freud, who was revealed in an ITV documentary to have abused girls as young as ten, also visited the nearby Plough and Harrow.
It was nicknamed the Plough and Paedophile after a Brit working there dubbed DJ Shifty went on the run when cops tried to speak to him over alleged grooming and child sex abuse images.
Christian Ridout, 32, whose parents owned the bar and lived next door to Murat, has never been traced.
In her book about Madeleine, Kate told how Freud, then 83, sent a letter out of the blue inviting them to his house for a meal.She said he offered her strawberry vodka and cooked her and Gerry, 48, risotto for dinner.
The McCanns grew fond of Freud, who once teased Kate about rumours she was a nymphomaniac.
She said in her book that his humour helped their pain, saying: “Thank God for people like Clement who kept us smiling.”
The couple are said to be horrified by the revelations about Freud.
One of his victims, Vicky Haynes, 64, went to police after reading Kate’s book four years ago.
She said he was a private man and it “beggared belief he would suddenly befriend a couple who had intense media attention”.
She is convinced Freud, who died in 2009, was part of a paedophile gang operating in Praia da Luz.
Police in the resort last night refused to say whether Freud was ever part of their investigation into Madeleine’s disappearance.
But a spokesman said officers are “considering” the latest information.