Hotel axes student for Maddie tip-off

DEC 02, 2009
Liverpool Echo
Luke Traynor
Blow for graduate who shopped £1.3m fraud suspect staying as guest

A TOP hotel reneged on a job promise for an Oxford graduate after he shopped the £1.3m Maddie McCann fraud suspect who was staying as a guest, it was claimed today.

Journalism student Chris Winsley telephoned police after recognising pictures of Kevin Halligen in newspaper articles, linking him to a man staying for over six months at the Old Bank Hotel in Oxford. Officers visited the A-list pad and detained the fugitive Dubliner, wanted by the FBI for an alleged £1.3m con in America, based on the 22-year-old's memory of Halligen when Mr Winsley was working as a barman at the hotel over the summer.

The on-the-run private detective was once hired by Liverpool-born Kate McCann and her husband, Gerry, to find their three-year-old daughter, Maddie, who disappeared from a flat in Praia da Luz, Portugal, in 2007. But after £500,000 was pocketed by him from the Find Madeleine Fund, his contract was cancelled after he had delivered precious little to the investigation.

Now Mr Winsley has received the bombshell that an assured job at the Old Bank Hotel over Christmas has been axed. The Cornwall student has emailed and written to hotel bosses who have refused to return his correspondence.

Today, the budding writer said he was disappointed his former employers had "punished him" for bringing a fugitive man to the attention of police. Mr Winsley told the ECHO: "I feel hard done by. I did it to get this man caught, but now they won't give me the time of day. "I had a letter from the manager saying they'd be delighted to employ me over Christmas, and now silence."

An extradition hearing is set to take place to send Halligen back into the custody of American police. While staying at the Old Bank the businessman used several aliases and would spend most of his evenings getting drunk in the bar, witnesses said. Halligen is also said to have caused consternation in the hotel, visited this year by top celebrities, over unpaid bills. The Old Bank Hotel refused to comment.