Cleo Smith search: Maddie McCann investigator tells of ‘real complication’ in case of missing WA girl

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.

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.

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.

“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.

“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.

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.