Magdeline MCann

Madeleine Beth McCann - born 12 May 2003, is a British missing person, who at the age of 3 disappeared from her bed in a holiday apartment in Praia da Luz, Lagos,Portugal, on the evening of 3 May 2007. The Daily Telegraph described her disappearance as "the most heavily reported missing-person case in modern history". Madeleine's whereabouts remain unknown, although German prosecutors believe she is dead.

Madeleine was on holiday from the United Kingdom with her parents Kate and Gerry McCann, her two-year-old twin siblings, and a group of family friends and their children. The McCann children had been left asleep at 20:30 in the ground-floor apartment while their parents dined with friends in a restaurant 55 metres (180 ft) away. The parents checked on the children about every 30–40 minutes throughout the evening, until Kate discovered Madeleine was missing at 22:00. Over the following weeks, particularly on the basis of their interpretation of a British DNA analysis, the Portuguese police came to believe that Madeleine had died in an accident in the apartment and her parents had covered it up. The McCanns were given arguido (suspect) status in September 2007, which was lifted when Portugal's attorney general archived the case in July 2008 for lack of evidence.

Madeleine's parents continued the investigation using private detectives until the Metropolitan Police opened its own inquiry, Operation Grange, in 2011. The senior investigating officer announced that he was treating the disappearance as "a criminal act by a stranger", most likely a planned abduction or burglary gone wrong. In 2013, the Met released e-fitimages of men they wanted to trace, including one of a man seen carrying a child toward the beach on the night Madeleine vanished. Shortly after this, Portuguese police reopened their inquiry. Operation Grange was scaled back in 2015, but the remaining detectives continued to pursue a small number of inquiries described in April 2017 as significant.In 2020, German authorities declared Christian Brückner their prime suspect for the abduction and murder of McCann, but charges have yet to be formalised.

Madeleine's disappearance attracted sustained press coverage both in the UK and internationally, reminiscent of the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, in 1997. Her parents were subjected to intense scrutiny and faced accusations of involvement in the disappearance, particularly in the tabloid press and on Twitter. In 2008, as a result of false allegations of their involvement in Madeleine's death, they and their travelling companions received damages and apologies from Express Newspapers. In 2011, the McCanns testified before the Leveson Inquiry into British press misconduct, lending support to those arguing for tighter press regulation.

Daytime: McCann family activities

Thursday, 3 May 2007 was the penultimate day of the family's holiday. Over breakfast Madeleine asked: "Why didn't you come when [my brother] and I cried last night?" After the disappearance, her parents wondered whether this meant someone had entered the children's bedroom. Her mother also noticed a large brown stain on Madeleine's pyjama top.

The children spent the morning in the resort's Kids' Club, then the family ate lunch at their apartment before heading to the pool. Kate took the last known photograph of Madeleine at 14:29 that afternoon, sitting by the pool next to her father and two-year-old sister. The children returned to the Kids' Club, then at 18:00 their mother took them back to 5A, while their father went for a tennis lesson. The McCanns put the children to bed at around 19:00. Madeleine was left asleep in short-sleeved, pink-and-white Marks and Spencer's Eeyore pyjamas, next to her comfort blanket and a soft toy, Cuddle Cat.

 

TIMELINE

20:30: Tapas restaurant

At 20:30 the parents left 5A to dine with their friends in the Ocean Club's open-air tapas restaurant, located on the other side of the pool. 5A lay about 55 metres (180 ft) from the restaurant as the crow flies, but to reach the restaurant, one needed to walk along a public street to reach the doors of the Ocean Club resort, and then go through the resort to the other side of the pool, a distance of about 82 metres (269 ft). The top of the apartment was visible from the tapas restaurant, but not the doors. The patio doors could be locked only from the inside, so the McCanns left them closed but unlocked, with the curtains drawn, so they could let themselves in that way when checking on the children. There was a child-safety gate at the top of the steps from the patio and a low gate at the bottom, which led to the street.

The resort's staff had left a note in a message book at the swimming-pool reception area, asking that the same table, which overlooked the apartments, be block-booked for 20:30 for the McCanns and friends every evening for the last four evenings of the holiday. The message said the group's children were asleep in the apartments. Kate believes the abductor may have seen the note. The McCanns and their friends left the restaurant roughly every half-hour to check on their children. Gerry carried out the first check on 5A at around 21:05. The children were asleep and all was well, except that he recalled having left the children's bedroom door slightly ajar, and now it stood almost wide open. He pulled it nearly closed again before returning to the restaurant.

 

21:15: Tanner sighting

The sighting by Jane Tanner, one of the Tapas Seven, of a man carrying a child that night, became an important part of the early investigation. Tanner had left the restaurant just after 21:00 to check on her own daughter, passing Gerry on Rua Dr Francisco Gentil Martins on his way back to the restaurant from his 21:05 check. He had stopped to chat to a British holidaymaker, but neither man recalled having seen Tanner. This puzzled the Portuguese police, given how narrow the street was, and led them to accuse Tanner of having invented the sighting.

Tanner told the police that at around 21:15 she had noticed a man carrying a young child walk across the junction of Rua Dr Francisco Gentil Martins and Rua Dr Agostinho da Silva just ahead of her. He was not far from Madeleine's bedroom, heading east, away from the front of apartment 5A. In the early days of the investigation, the direction in which he was walking was thought to be important because he was moving toward the home of Robert Murat, the 33-year-old British-Portuguese man who lived near 5A, and who became the case's first suspect.

The child in the man's arms was wearing light-coloured pink pyjamas with a floral pattern and cuffs on the legs, similar to Madeleine's. Tanner described the man as white, dark-haired, 5 ft 7 in (1.70 m) tall, of southern European or Mediterranean appearance, 35–40 years old, wearing gold or beige trousers and a dark jacket, and said he did not look like a tourist. According to Kate, Tanner passed the information to Portuguese police as soon as Madeleine was reported missing, but they did not pass the description to the media until 25 May. Madeleine's Fund hired a forensic artist to create an image of the man, which was released in October 2007.

The sighting became important because it offered investigators a time frame for the abduction, but Scotland Yard came to view it as a red herring. In October 2013, they said that a British holidaymaker, Julian Totman (one of the Tapas seven), had been identified as the man Tanner had seen; he had been returning to his apartment after collecting his daughter from the Ocean Club night creche. Scotland Yard took photographs of the man wearing the same or similar clothes to the ones he was wearing on the night, and standing in a pose similar to the one Tanner reported. The pyjamas his daughter had been wearing also matched Tanner's report. Operation Grange's lead detective, Detective Chief Inspector Andy Redwood, said they were "almost certain" the Tanner sighting was not related to the abduction.

 

22:00: Smith sighting

The rejection of the Tanner sighting as crucial to the timeline allowed investigators to focus on another sighting of a man carrying a child on the night of Madeleine's disappearance, this one reported to Portuguese police on 26 May 2007 by Martin and Mary Smith, who had been in Praia da Luz on holiday from Ireland. Scotland Yard concluded in 2013 that the Smith sighting offered the approximate time of Madeleine's kidnapping.

The Smiths saw the man at around 22:00 on Rua da Escola Primária, 500 yards (460 m) from the McCanns' apartment, walking away from the Ocean Club and towards Rua 25 de Abril and the beach. He was carrying a girl aged 3–4 years. She had blonde hair and pale skin, was wearing light-coloured pyjamas, and was barefoot. The man was mid-30s, 5 ft 7 in–  5 ft 9 in (1.70 m– 1.75 m), slim-to-normal build, with short brown hair, wearing cream or beige trousers. He did not look like a tourist, according to the Smiths, and had seemed uncomfortable carrying the child. E-fits based on the Smiths' testimony were first created in 2008 by Oakley International, private investigators hired by the McCanns, and were publicised in 2013 by Scotland Yard on the BBC programme Crimewatch.

 

22:00: Reported missing

Kate had intended to check on the children at 21:30, but Matthew Oldfield, one of the Tapas Seven, offered to do it when he checked on his own children in the apartment next door to 5A. He noticed that the McCanns' children's bedroom door was wide open, but after hearing no noise, he left 5A without looking far enough into the bedroom to see whether Madeleine was there. He could not recall whether the bedroom window and its exterior shutter were open at this point. Early on in the investigation, Portuguese police accused Oldfield of involvement because he had volunteered to do the check, suggesting to them that he had handed Madeleine to someone through the bedroom window.

Kate made her own check of 5A at around 22:00. Scotland Yard stated in 2013 that Madeleine was probably taken moments before this. Kate recalled entering the apartment through the unlocked patio doors at the back and noticing that the children's bedroom door was wide open. When she tried to close the door, it slammed shut as though there was a draught, which is when she saw that the bedroom window and its shutter were open. Madeleine's Cuddle Cat and blanket were still on the bed, but Madeleine was gone. After briefly searching the apartment, Kate ran back towards the restaurant, screaming, "Madeleine's gone! Someone's taken her!"

At around 22:10, Gerry sent Matthew Oldfield to ask the resort's reception desk to call the police, and at 22:30 the resort activated its missing-child search protocol. Sixty staff and guests searched until 04:30, at first assuming that Madeleine had wandered off. One of them told Channel 4's Dispatches that, from one end of Praia da Luz to the other, searchers calling Madeleine's name could be heard.

 

Portuguese police

Two officers from the gendarmerie, the Guarda Nacional Republicana (GNR), arrived at the resort at 23:10 from Lagos, 5 miles (8.0 km) away. At midnight, after briefly searching, they alerted the criminal police, the Polícia Judiciária (PJ), in nearby Portimão. Kate recounted that the PJ arrived just after 01:00. According to the PJ, they arrived within 10 minutes of being alerted. At 02:00 two patrol dogs were brought to the resort, and at 08:00 four search and rescue dogs. Police officers had their leave cancelled and started searching waterways, wells, caves, sewers, and ruins around Praia da Luz. Inspector Gonçalo Amaral, head of the PJ in Portimão, became the inquiry's coordinator.

It was widely acknowledged that mistakes were made during the so-called "golden hours" soon after the disappearance. Neither border nor marine police were given descriptions of Madeleine for many hours, and officers did not make house-to-house searches. According to Kate, roadblocks were first put in place at 10:00 the next morning. Police did not request motorway surveillance pictures of vehicles leaving Praia da Luz the night of the disappearance, or of the road between Lagos and Vila Real de Santo António on the Spanish border. Euroscut, the company that monitors the road, said they were not approached for information. It took Interpol five days to issue a global missing-person alert. Not everyone in the resort at the time was interviewed; holidaymakers later contacted the British police to say that no one had spoken to them.

The crime scene was not secured. Portuguese police took samples from Madeleine's bedroom, which were sent to three forensic labs. It was reported on 1 June 2007 that DNA from one "stranger" had been found, but around 20 people had entered apartment 5A before it was closed off, according to Chief Inspector Olegário de Sousa of the PJ. According to Kate, an officer placed tape across the doorway of the children's bedroom, but left at 03:00 without securing the apartment. The PJ case file, released in 2008, showed that 5A lay empty for a month after the disappearance, then was let out to tourists before being sealed off in August 2007 for more forensic tests. A similar situation arose outside the apartment when a crowd gathered by the front door of 5A, including next to the children's bedroom window—through which an abductor may have entered or left—trampling on evidence. An officer dusted the bedroom window's exterior shutter for fingerprints without wearing gloves or other protective clothing.

 

 

British police

In the United Kingdom it was agreed that Madeleine's home force, Leicestershire Police—led by Chief Constable Matt Baggott—would coordinate the British response, although it remained a Portuguese inquiry. A strategic coordinating group, or "gold" group, was put together, representing Leicestershire Police, the Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA), the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP), and the National Police Improvement Agency (NPIA). The PJ gave a British team a room in which to work, but apparently resented their presence. British police were used to feeding their data into HOLMES 2 (the Home Office Large Major Enquiry System); in Portugal, the information was collected in boxes. In addition the PJ had less autonomy than police in the UK, often having to wait for magistrates' decisions, which slowed things down. In an interview for Anthony Summers's and Robbyn Swan's book Looking for Madeleine (2014), Jim Gamble, head of CEOP at the time, said Portuguese police felt they were being condescended to, and that the British were acting as a "colonial power”.

 

Witness statements

In statements to the PJ, witnesses described men behaving oddly near apartment 5A in the days before the disappearance and on the day itself. Scotland Yard came to believe that these men may have been engaged in reconnaissance for an abduction or burglary. There had been a fourfold increase in burglaries between January and May 2007, including two in the McCanns' block in the seventeen days before the disappearance, during which burglars had entered through windows.

Several witnesses reported men collecting for charity. On 20 April, a bedraggled-looking man asked a tourist in her apartment near 5A for money for an orphanage in nearby Espiche; apparently there were no orphanages or similar in or near Espiche at the time. The witness described the man as pushy and intimidating. On 25 or 26 April, the tourist who rented apartment 5A before the McCanns found a man on his balcony who had entered via the steps from the street. Polite and clean-shaven, the visitor asked for money for an orphanage. On the day of the disappearance, 3 May, there were four charity collections by two men in the streets around 5A. At 4:00 p.m. two black-haired men approached a British homeowner looking for funds for a hostel or hospice in or near Espiche, and at 5:00 p.m two men approached another British tourist with a similar story.

An "ugly" blond-haired man was seen on 2 May across the road from 5A, apparently watching it; he had also been seen on 29 April near the Ocean Club. On 30 April the granddaughter of 5A's former owners saw a blond-haired man leaning against a wall behind the apartments, and saw him again on 2 May near the tapas restaurant, looking at 5A. She described him as Caucasian, mid-30s, with short cropped hair, and "ugly" with spots. On or before the day of the disappearance, a man was seen staring at the McCanns' block, where a white van was parked. In the late afternoon of 3 May, a girl on the balcony of the apartment above 5A saw a man leave through the gate below, as though he had come out of a ground-floor apartment; what caught her attention was that he looked around before shutting the gate quietly, with both hands. At 14:30 two blond-haired men were seen on the balcony of 5C, an empty apartment two doors from 5A. At 16:00–17:00 a blond-haired man was seen near 5A. At 18:00 the same or another blond-haired man was seen in the stairwell of the McCanns' block. At 23:00, after the disappearance, two blond-haired men were seen in a nearby street speaking in raised voices. When they realised they had been noticed, they reportedly lowered their voices and walked away.

 

McCanns as Early suspicion

The first indication that the media were turning against the McCanns came on 6 June 2007, when a German journalist asked them during a Berlin press conference whether they were involved in the disappearance. On 30 June a 3,000-word article entitled "The Madeleine Case: A Pact of Silence" appeared in Sol, a Portuguese weekly, stating that the McCanns were suspects, highlighting alleged inconsistencies between their statements and implying that the Tanner sighting had been invented. The reporters had obtained the Tapas Sevens' mobile numbers and that of another witness, so it was apparent that the inquiry had a leak.

This and later articles in the Portuguese press, invariably followed up in the UK, made several allegations, based on no evidence, which would engulf the McCanns for years on social media. They included that the McCanns and Tapas Seven were "swingers", that the McCanns had been sedating their children, and that the group had formed a "pact of silence" regarding what had happened on the night of the disappearance. Much was made of apparent inconsistencies within and between the McCanns' and Tapas Seven's statements. The police had asked the group questions in Portuguese, and an interpreter had translated the replies. According to Kate, the statements were then typed up in Portuguese and verbally translated back into English for the interviewees to sign.

Among the inconsistencies was whether the McCanns had entered the apartment by the front or back door when checking on the children. According to the PJ case file, Gerry stated during his first interview, on 4 May 2007, that the couple had entered 5A through the locked front door for his 21:05 and her 22:00 checks, and in a second interview, on 10 May, that he had entered through the unlocked patio doors at the back. (The patio doors could be unlocked only from inside, so the parents had left them unlocked to let themselves in.) There was also an inconsistency about whether the front door had been locked. Gerry told The Sunday Times in December 2007 that they had used the front door earlier in the week, but it was next to the children's bedroom, so they had started using the patio doors instead. The PJ also questioned why, when Kate discovered Madeleine was missing, she had run to the tapas restaurant leaving the twins alone in 5A, when she could have used her mobile phone or shouted to the group from 5A's rear balcony.

Another issue was whether the exterior shutter over Madeleine's bedroom window could be opened from outside. According to journalist Danny Collins, the shutter was made of non-ferrous metal slats on a roller blind that was housed in a box at the top of the inside window, controlled by pulling on a strap. Once rolled down, the slats locked in place outside the window and could be raised only by using the strap on the inside. Kate said the shutter and window were closed when Madeleine was put to bed, but open when she discovered Madeleine was missing. Gerry told the PJ that, when he was first alerted to the disappearance, he had lowered the shutter, then had gone outside and discovered that it could be raised only from the outside. Against this, Portuguese police said the shutter could not be raised from the outside without being forced, but there was no sign of forced entry; they also said forcing the shutter open would have caused a lot of noise.

The apparent discrepancies contributed to the view of the PJ that there had been no abduction. Kate's shout of "they've taken her" was viewed with suspicion, as though she had been trying to lend credence to a false abduction story. Particularly from August onwards, these suspicions developed into the theory that Madeleine had died in apartment 5A as a result of an accident—perhaps after being sedated to help her stay asleep—and that her parents had hidden her body for a month, before retrieving her and driving her to an unknown place in a car they had hired over three weeks after the disappearance. In 2010, Carlos Anjos, former head of the Police Detectives Union in Portugal, told the BBC programme Panorama that most Portuguese investigators still believed Madeleine had died as a result of an accident in the apartment.