Madeleine McCann police leave empty-handed after three-day search

Telegraph

05-06-2025

Detectives investigating the disappearance of Madeleine McCann have left empty-handed after a three-day search near where she went missing 18 years ago.
Officers from Portugal's Polícia Judiciária, under the direction of German authorities, scoured 120 acres of gorse scrubland east of Praia da Luz for any trace of the three-year-old's remains.
A team of 60 police officers, a JCB-style digger and ground penetrating radar (GPR) devices, all at an estimated cost of £300,000, were deployed in the hope of bringing closure to the infamous missing persons case.
By the time the detectives packed up their tents at 5pm on Thursday, the sum total of their findings were a handful of animal bones, decayed adult clothes and some soil.
And even then, The Telegraph was told that these samples would not be sent back to Germany for further examination.
'Not very well', said one police officer when asked how the search was going, hours before the digging stopped for the last time.
'We were criticised for not doing our job 20 years ago. Beyond that, I can't say anything', he told The Telegraph before walking back to his colleagues, shovel in hand.
The new search area encompassed 20 plots of private land in the small region of Atalaia and is dotted with derelict farmhouses, disused wells, and abandoned buildings.
It sits less than a mile away from the former home of Christian Brueckner, a convicted paedophile and the main suspect in Madeleine's disappearance in May 2007.
Brueckner has denied his involvement and so far has not faced any charges in connection with the McCann case.
Teams of officers used shovels and later diggers to excavate the ground floors of abandoned buildings and then scan the earth below with radar devices.
Some questioned whether this short-lived search was based on fresh intelligence unearthed by detectives or whether it was more random and speculative than that. The answer remains unclear.
It marks what could be the last roll of the dice in the detectives' bid to find answers and crucial evidence relating to Madeleine's disappearance.
Brueckner is due to walk out of Germany's Sehnde prison in three months time after serving seven-year-prison sentence for raping an elderly American woman in Praia da Luz in 2005, only two years before Madeleine went missing.
Prosecutors view this window as the last possible opportunity to find the crucial bit of evidence needed to charge Brueckner before he absconds abroad and is likely never to be seen again.
He was first named as a suspect in the case in 2020, when prosecutors in Germany claimed to have compelling evidence linking him to Madeleine's abduction and murder.
However, the exact nature of that potentially damning evidence has never been divulged.
Hans Christian Wolters, the German prosecutor leading the investigation, has repeatedly refused to disclose what has prompted the search.
In the search site, the roar of chainsaws and hedge trimmers filled the air as they started clearing the shrub from the ruins of abandoned villas in the 73F (23C) heat on Tuesday morning.
Their efforts were closely monitored by a throng of international journalists and press photographers with long lenses who clambered through the thorny undergrowth for a closer look.
Dirt tracks heading north were cordoned off with police tape to deter the hundreds of tourists walking along the coastal trail that runs parallel to the search sites.
Officers were sent in small teams of two or three to sift through the rubble and pack containers with soil to be taken away for further analysis.
However, the Telegraph were told the samples weren't going to be sent back to Germany in yet another blow to the police investigation.
At one property a team of half a dozen firefighters worked to dredge a disused well.
The following day, a JCB digger was deployed to excavate the ruins along with a ground-penetrating radar (GPR) device, capable of mapping underground terrain to a depth of approximately 33ft (10 metres) and identifying anomalies.
Detectives hoped the GPR may locate the crucial piece of evidence needed to formally charge Breuckner without damaging it in the process.
Robert Green, a Professor of Forensic Science at the University of Kent, who led a programme for the Home Office setting out a national cold case strategy, explained its benefits.
He said: 'Ground penetrating radar has proven to be an invaluable asset in forensic investigations, especially in locating buried bodies or remains.
'Its significant advantages enable the investigators to scan the area and generate real-time feedback, producing detailed images of subsurface anomalies that could represent potential clues, such as disturbed soil or voids that may suggest the presence of a body.
'In this manner, GPR effectively serves as the investigators' eyes, unveiling hidden depths without causing disruption.'
However, the devices, also used in an earlier search in Praia Da Luz in 2014, do have their drawbacks.
It takes an expert eye to be able to analyse the mapping data and discern between a natural feature such as a tree root or a piece of bone.
The radar may also struggle to pick out particularly small pieces of evidence such as a tiny piece of fabric. Signals may return weakly due to highly conductive materials like clay.
But for the detectives, their hopes that the GPR would be their saviour in the search for crucial evidence appeared futile after three days.
The search concluded at approximately 5pm on Thursday afternoon.
The team took down their tents, packed away their tools and drove away from the sites.
The international team of Portuguese and German officers were seen shaking hands and applauding one another.
One officer celebrated the end of the search by passing a crate of Augustiner, a German beer, to his colleagues.
Professor Green had recommended that the Portuguese have on board an anthropologist or archaeologist and questioned the heavy-handed tactic of using JCB diggers.
'The GPR will highlight the possibility of underground anomalies, and employing heavy excavation equipment may have proven counterproductive,' he said.
Approximately a mile away in the village of Sitio das Lajes on the outskirts of Lagos is Brueckner's old home, where he had lived intermittently since 1992.
When the Telegraph visited the rundown cottage, it was boarded up with three cameras set up over the entrance with no signs of life.
An algae-infested well filled with frogs sits a few yards away from the front door.
Teun Koke, a Dutch father on holiday with his wife and six-month-old child at an Airbnb rental next door, said: 'When you read those stories, you think about your own children, but it didn't put me off bringing my family here
'It was a long time ago.
'We hope they find something that will solve that case, of course, it's a terrible situation.'