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Yahoo
3 days ago
- Yahoo
The Latest Development in the Madeleine McCann Case Explained
Originally appeared on E! Online Kate McCann and Gerry McCann have gone without answers for 18 years, but they've refused to give up hope that they will find their daughter Madeleine McCann. Or at least that they'll learn the truth about what happened to her. "The years appear to be passing even more quickly and whilst we have no significant news to share, our determination to 'leave no stone unturned' is unwavering," Kate and Gerry wrote on their Find Madeleine website May 3, the 18th anniversary of her disappearance, days shy of her fourth birthday. "We will do our utmost to achieve this." Noting that Madeleine would have turned 22 this year, the couple added, "No matter how near or far she is, she continues to be right here with us, every day, but especially on her special day. We continue to 'celebrate' her as the very beautiful and unique person she is. We miss her." The physician couple, who also share now-20-year-old twins Sean and Amelie, did their best to go on with their lives in England, as much as they could when a part of them would always be in Praia da Luz, Portugal, where their eldest child went missing during the family's spring holiday. It was German prosecutors who formally named a suspect in the McCann case in 2020: Christian Brueckner, a convicted sex offender who's due to be released from prison in a few months after serving seven years for raping a 72-year-old woman. He has denied having anything to with Madeleine's disappearance and has never been charged in the case. "There is currently no prospect of an indictment in the Maddie case," prosecutor Hans Christian Wolter told Sky News in January. "As things stand, the accused Christian B's imprisonment will end in early September." And yet the quest to keep Brueckner behind bars—including charging him with insulting a prison staff member in May—has continued since he was found not guilty last October of three counts of rape and two counts of child sex abuse dating back to between 2000 and 2017 in Portugal. Prosecutors have appealed that verdict, according to BBC News, and if he's convicted of the prison infraction he could face either a fine or up to an additional year in jail. More from E! Online Kailyn Lowry's Son Isaac Introduces New Name Another Summer House Star Announces Exit Amid Paige DeSorbo's Departure Brittany Furlan Reveals Tommy Lee Relationship Status After Catfish Scandal The case was initially closed in Portugal in 2008, but Scotland Yard opened their own investigation in 2011, and then Portuguese police reopened the case in 2013. With global interest in the case never waning, it has remained open ever since. It was German prosecutors who formally named a suspect in the McCann case in 2020: Christian Brueckner, a convicted sex offender who's due to be released from prison in a few months after serving seven years for raping a 72-year-old woman. He has denied having anything to with Madeleine's disappearance and has never been charged in the case. "There is currently no prospect of an indictment in the Maddie case," prosecutor Hans Christian Wolter told Sky News in January. "As things stand, the accused Christian B's imprisonment will end in early September." Metro Police said in 2020 that Brueckner (identified only as Christian B. at the time) lived in the Algarve—Portugal's southernmost region, a popular vacation destination full of beachfront resorts—off and on between 1995 and 2007. Police shared pictures and descriptions of two cars linked to the suspect, a camper van and a Jaguar that was re-registered under another name the day after Madeleine went missing, and asked the public for any sightings of the vehicles from the spring and summer of 2007. But it's unclear as yet if the latest action in the McCann case has borne any fruit. On June 3, German and Portuguese investigators launched a new search of the area between the resort where the McCanns were staying in Portugal when Madeleine disappeared in 2007 and where Brueckner was lodging at the time. The search ended three days later and, while police have not publicly shared any details, the BBC reported June 6 that a conversation the outlet had with an officer suggested nothing significant was found. The McCanns were on holiday with three other families in Praia da Luz when Madeleine went missing. According to numerous accounts of the events of May 3, 2007, Kate and Gerry went to dinner with the other adults at around 8:30 p.m. after tucking in Madeleine and her siblings in the bedroom they were sharing in the McCanns' quarters at the Ocean Club resort. The various parents took turns going back to the rooms to check on all of the kids every half hour. Gerry recalled checking on the children at 9:05 p.m. Dr. Matthew Oldfield, another member of their party, said he went in at 9:30 p.m. but later couldn't definitively say whether he had seen Madeleine in her bed or not. In the meantime, Madeleine's family has learned to take these periodic announcements that could potentially lead to a break in the case in stride. "It's more than 13 years since Madeleine went missing and none of us can imagine what it must be like for her family, not knowing what happened or where she is," Metro Police Detective Chief Inspector Mark Cranwell, who heads up the McCann investigation—dubbed "Operation Grange" in 2011—said in a statement on June 3, 2020, when the suspect news broke. "Following the ten-year anniversary, the Met received information about a German man who was known to have been in and around Praia da Luz," Cranwell continued. "We have been working with colleagues in Germany and Portugal and this man is a suspect in Madeleine's disappearance. The Met conducted a number of inquiries and in November 2017 engaged with the BKA who agreed to work with the Met. "Since then a huge amount of work has taken place by both the Met, the BKA and the Polícia Judiciária. While this male is a suspect we retain an open mind as to his involvement and this remains a missing person inquiry. Our job as detectives is to follow the evidence, maintain an open mind and establish what happened on that day in May 2007." The McCanns were on holiday with three other families in Praia da Luz when Madeleine went missing. According to numerous accounts of the events of May 3, 2007, Kate and Gerry went to dinner with the other adults at around 8:30 p.m. after tucking in Madeleine and her siblings in the bedroom they were sharing in the McCanns' quarters at the Ocean Club resort. The various parents took turns going back to the rooms to check on all of the kids every half hour. Gerry recalled checking on the children at 9:05 p.m. Dr. Matthew Oldfield, another member of their party, said he went in at 9:30 p.m. but later couldn't definitively say whether he had seen Madeleine in her bed or not. Kate returned to the apartment at 10 p.m. The door to the front bedroom, where the children had been asleep, was open. She remembered in her 2011 book Madeleine: Our Daughter's Disappearance and the Continuing Search for Her that, while she was standing there somewhat puzzled, the door slammed shut. And then she noticed the breeze coming from an open window. She realized that, while Amelie and Sean were fast asleep, Madeleine was gone. After a quick, frantic search of the resort grounds, they reported their daughter missing at 10:14 p.m. She had been wearing Eeyore pajamas from Marks & Spencer and had gone to sleep with her pink blanket and her Cuddle Cat. Her family had planned to celebrate Madeleine's fourth birthday on May 12, but instead she disappeared without a trace. "Apart from those first 48 hours, nothing actually has changed since then," Kate told Sky News in 2017, referring to the fact that, though their daughter remained missing, there was no definitive evidence that she had been harmed, either. "I think the difficult thing has always been, how will we find her?" But Kate said that they could "take heart" in the progress that had been made, "and we just have to go with the process and follow it through, whatever it takes, for as long as it takes. But there's still hope that we can find Madeleine." Metro Police said in 2020 that Brueckner (identified only as Christian B. at the time) lived in the Algarve—Portugal's southernmost region, a popular vacation destination full of beachfront resorts—off and on between 1995 and 2007. Police shared pictures and descriptions of two cars linked to the suspect, a camper van and a Jaguar that was re-registered under another name the day after Madeleine went missing, and asked the public for any sightings of the vehicles from the spring and summer of 2007. Brueckner had numerous convictions for child sexual abuse, German police said in a statement, per NBC News (again, not yet identifying him by name), and seemed to have earned a living "by committing criminal offenses, such as burglaries of hotel complexes and holiday apartments as well as trafficking in narcotic drugs." On June 4, 2020, Braunschweig state prosecutor Wolters said, via Reuters, "We assume that the girl is dead. The public prosecutor's office in Braunschweig is investigating a 43-year-old German national on suspicion of murder." Wolters told the BBC days later, "We have evidence against the accused which leads us to believe that he really killed Madeleine but this evidence is not strong enough at the moment to take him to court." Moreover, the police announcement continued, Brueckner had a cell phone conversation that ended approximately an hour before Madeleine disappeared—so whomever was on the other end of that call was considered a "highly significant witness." They released the two mobile numbers involved, both starting with the Portuguese country code 351, and asked for anyone with information about either number to contact authorities. The next day, Cranwell said they had received more than 270 calls and emails. In their own 2020 statement, the McCanns thanked the police for their continuing work and the public for their support, saying, "All we have ever wanted is to find her, uncover the truth and bring those responsible to justice. We will never give up hope of finding Madeleine alive but whatever the outcome may be, we need to know, as we need to find peace." German officials, meanwhile, gave their own grim update on the case as had numerous convictions for child sexual abuse, German police said in a statement, per NBC News (again, not yet identifying him by name), and seemed to have earned a living "by committing criminal offenses, such as burglaries of hotel complexes and holiday apartments as well as trafficking in narcotic drugs." On June 4, 2020, Braunschweig state prosecutor Wolters said, via Reuters, "We assume that the girl is dead. The public prosecutor's office in Braunschweig is investigating a 43-year-old German national on suspicion of murder." Wolters told the BBC days later, "We have evidence against the accused which leads us to believe that he really killed Madeleine but this evidence is not strong enough at the moment to take him to court." The prosecutor said the evidence was "strong enough to say that the girl is dead and strong enough to accuse a specific individual of murder—that strong." But, Wolter added, "One has to be honest and remain open to the possibility that our investigation could end without a charge, that it ends like the others have. We are optimistic it will be different for us but for that we need more information." To this day, the Metropolitan Police still classify the investigation into Madeleine's disappearance as a missing persons case. Over the years a handful of suspects have been named, including Gerry and Kate, who weren't formally cleared by Portuguese authorities until July 2008, about 10 months after police acknowledged there wasn't enough evidence to keep questioning the couple. "This is the only time in 13 years that police have been so specific about a suspect, down to the phone numbers, vehicles and particularly with a known individual," said Clarence Mitchell, a former BBC reporter who for awhile was the McCanns' full-time representative and still serves as a spokesman for the family. Gerry and Kate "were coping as best as they can but want the focus to remain on the police investigation," Mitchell said, adding, "They still remain hopeful." Kate told Sky News in 2017, "You don't realize how strong you are until you have no option, and I think that's very true. Obviously massive events like this cause a lot of reaction, a lot of trauma and upset, but ultimately you have to keep going. And especially when you've got other children involved." "I think before Madeleine was taken, we felt we had managed to achieve a little perfect nuclear family of five," added Gerry, with a small smile. He cleared his throat. "And we had that for a short adapt and you have a new normality and, unfortunately for us, our new normality at the minute is a family of four." (Originally published June 17, 2020, at 7 a.m. PT) Robert Murat—a British national who lived not far from the Ocean Club and had volunteered to aid in the search for Madeleine when she first went missing—ended up winning upward of $750,000 in defamation damages from four U.K. media groups for coverage in their newspapers that strongly insinuated he was guilty of something. "It is hard to describe how utterly despairing it was to be named arguidos and subsequently portrayed in the media as suspects in our own daughter's abduction," Kate said at a news conference when she and her husband were officially cleared. "It has been equally devastating to witness the detrimental effect this status has had on the search for Madeleine."Local authorities conducted a sweeping raid in Portugal on dozens of properties linked to around 80 suspected pedophiles in 2007, but "Operation Predator," as it was called, did not result in any substantive leads in the McCann case. In 2012, Scotland Yard said it had identified 38 persons of interest in the case, including 12 Britons. By October 2013 it was 41, including 15 British nationals. Tips came in from all over the world, as did alleged sightings of Madeleine from as far away as India and New Zealand. In 2014, Metropolitan Police announced "a potential linked series of 12 crimes which occurred between 2004 and a male access to mainly holiday villas occupied by U.K. families on holiday in the western Algarve." NBC News reported in March 2014 that police were asking for the public's help identifying the perpetrator, whom they described as "having an interest in young white girls." Detectives said that in four of the cases being investigated, the man was believed to have sexually assaulted five girls between the ages of 7 and 10 years old while they were in their beds. The suspect was further described as "tan, with messy short dark hair," and he spoke English with a foreign accent. Prosecutors in the German city of Stade said in June 2020 that the newly announced suspect was also being investigated in connection with the 2015 disappearance of 5-year-old girl—identified as Inga G.—from the woods outside a family party being held in the town of Stendal, about 60 miles west of Berlin. "It is being assessed whether there is a connection between the two cases," a spokesperson for the prosecutors' office said. Though the update was disturbing, a spokesperson for the McCann family told NBC News at the time it also felt like the most "significant" development in the case to date. "This is the only time in 13 years that police have been so specific about a suspect, down to the phone numbers, vehicles and particularly with a known individual," said Clarence Mitchell, a former BBC reporter who for awhile was the McCanns' full-time representative and still serves as a spokesman for the family. Gerry and Kate "were coping as best as they can but want the focus to remain on the police investigation," Mitchell said, adding, "They still remain hopeful." Kate told Sky News in 2017, "You don't realize how strong you are until you have no option, and I think that's very true. Obviously massive events like this cause a lot of reaction, a lot of trauma and upset, but ultimately you have to keep going. And especially when you've got other children involved." "I think before Madeleine was taken, we felt we had managed to achieve a little perfect nuclear family of five," added Gerry, with a small smile. He cleared his throat. "And we had that for a short adapt and you have a new normality and, unfortunately for us, our new normality at the minute is a family of four." (Originally published June 17, 2020, at 7 a.m. PT) For the latest breaking news updates, click here to download the E! News App
BBC News
4 days ago
- BBC News
Madeleine McCann: Hopes of closure fade despite fresh searches
From the moment I arrived in Praia da Luz on Monday the word on everyone's lips was "closure".All the long-term residents of the sleepy Atlantic resort told me closure was what they were hoping for. From the English woman who lived at the time above the apartment from which Madeleine McCann disappeared in 2007, to the former neighbour of the main suspect in the all said: "We hope her family get closure".Of course, any chance of a really positive outcome disappeared years ago. Closure now would mean either finding Madeleine McCann's body, or finding her living with another family, unable to remember her parents or her younger twin siblings. But, frustrated as residents are when the world's media return to Praia da Luz - year after year at the same time that purple flowers appear on the jacaranda trees - they do understand the unbearable pain that Kate and Gerry McCann must feel. How that shock of realisation that Madeleine was not in her bed turned into minutes, then hours, and then days of panic. Then tortuous, unending months and years of 13 years there was no single theory as to what happened to Madeleine McCann. Did she wake up in the middle of an opportunistic burglary and have to be silenced? Was she abducted on behalf of a couple desperate for a child of their own? Had her own parents covered up her accidental death? (A theory given sufficient weight by Portuguese prosecutors that for a while Kate and Gerry McCann were officially under suspicion.)The initial Portuguese investigation failed to preserve the scene adequately, so the opportunity to gather forensic evidence from Madeline McCann's room at the Ocean Club was lost. Long-term residents remember joining in uncoordinated and ad-hoc searches of the Metropolitan Police investigation that began in 2011 built to a peak in 2014, with substantial searches near Praia da Luz - but they did not appear to have any identifiable suspects. They had 60 people of interest, 38 of whom they were investigating. Portuguese prosecutors had allowed them to search only one of three sites they had asked for access changed in June 2020 when, out of the blue, the head prosecutor in Braunschweig in Germany, Hans Christian Wolters, said he had evidence that Madeleine McCann was dead. Working with the Bundeskriminalamt (BKA), the German equivalent of the FBI, he said he had identified a suspect, later identified as Christian Brückner."The evidence is strong enough to say that the girl is dead, and to accuse a specific individual of murder," Hans Christian Wolter who spent many years of his life in the Algarve, was a drifter, a petty criminal and a convicted sex offender. It all fitted neatly into place and it seemed that the mystery might finally be solved. Brückner's long list of previous convictions includes ones for sexually abusing children in 1994 and 2016. The Braunschweig prosecution team have never disclosed the extent of any evidence they have, but we do know their suspicions are partly based on a conversation an old acquaintance of Brückner's claims they had at a festival in Busching says the topic of Madeleine McCann's disappearance came up, and Brückner said she "didn't scream". Mr Busching says it was clear to him what Brückner 2019, Brückner has been in prison in Germany for raping a 72-year-old American woman in Praia da Luz in 2005. But he is due for release in September, or in January if he does not pay an outstanding told an RTL reporter earlier this year that he was looking forward to a "decent steak and a beer". The concern is that he will leave the country and head somewhere with no extradition treaty with Germany, though he appears to have no Braunschweig prosecutors' confidence was dealt a severe blow last year when they put Brückner on trial for rape and unconnected attempted child abductions. Mr Busching gave evidence, but the court in Braunschweig acquitted Brückner and suddenly time was very Wolters has made no secret of the fact that he wants more evidence to charge Brückner. That is why the BKA footed the bill for the search this week in ruined farm buildings on merciless, shadeless scrubland in the rising heat of an Algarve summer. The buildings are frequented at night by the kind of drifters and petty criminals that Brückner once was. Nearby residents told us they sometimes find looted suitcases among the ruins that have been stolen from this week's searches were not targeted on one specific building, so any intelligence they were based on was clearly quite all felt a bit like a last desperate attempt to back Mr Busching's statements with concrete, physical some ways this search was similar to those I have seen on previous trips. The use of shovels in the heat, digging up stone-hard the German team were mostly targeting old farm buildings. This meant they needed a large, yellow mechanical digger to break up the concrete floors and sift through the resulting rubble. They also made extensive use of a ground-penetrating radar, slowly pushing the device across the buildings' floors, looking for anomalies and cavities underneath. The Portuguese fire brigade helped on the first day, pumping out an old well so it could be safely searched. The officers were looking for traces of Madeleine McCann, or some of her time I travel to Portugal for a new search it always begins optimistically. Could police find something this time? But on every occasion it quickly becomes apparent the searches are not tightly targeted. The police work always clearly based on quite vague intelligence - or just an investigator's Neves, the National Director of the Polícia Judiciária, the Portuguese equivalent of the FBI, said at the end of the week that, "nothing is in vain, not least because doors are being closed".As we watched the German detectives packing away it felt like the spring of hope of a resolution that had bubbled up in June 2020 was evaporating in the thankless heat.
The Guardian
4 days ago
- The Guardian
‘Every parent's nightmare': after 18 years, was this the final search for Madeleine McCann?
The police have packed up, the diggers and radar scanners gone from the Algarve scrubland. The latest search for Madeleine McCann, the British toddler who vanished from a Portuguese holiday apartment 2007, has ended quietly without any apparent breakthrough. After 18 years of intermittent searches, this one, led by German police, may well be the last. In Praia da Luz, a seaside town etched into the world's memory by the tragedy, that realisation lands with a mix of relief and weariness. Locals barely speak about the case now, if at all. The McCann investigation brought an unrelenting glare of media attention that many here would prefer to forget. But even as the formal search ends, the town's association with the disappearance of Madeleine remains stubbornly intact, kept alive not just by police work but also the trickle of true crime tourists retracing a story they know from Netflix specials and acres of news coverage over the last two decades. Some pose for selfies outside the Ocean Club holiday apartment where Madeleine was last seen, dine in the complex's tapas restaurant where her parents, Kate and Gerry McCann, were eating when she vanished. Some play amateur sleuth in the town's cobbled alleyways as though they were the famous sets of a long-running drama. When British friends Joanne Sheppard, 60, and Jane Thorp, 61, began planning a trip together, they settled on Praia da Luz partly for that reason. 'When we decided to go on holiday, I said I would like to see the place where [Madeleine] went missing and I'd like to sit and see the scope of the area so we could get a feel of various routes where maybe Gerry McCann and Kate walked,' Sheppard said. The pair were outside the Ocean Club on Thursday morning to check if 'anyone was milling around' the McCann apartment while German and Portuguese police were scouring scrubland and abandoned buildings a mile away in Atalaia, near Lagos, which was once home to a farming community. They had already spent hours at the tapas restaurant on Tuesday and had made plans to return. 'No one was speaking about Madeleine,' Thorp said of their first visit. As they entered the resort, reception staff asked the women not to take photos but that did not stop Thorp, who said she was not as interested in the case as Sheppard. 'Someone is in that apartment at the moment, we saw them the other night,' the carer from Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire added. Sheppard's interest in Madeleine's disappearance was piqued when she watched an eight-part Netflix documentary series in 2019. 'I watched the Netflix series and then I started delving a bit deeper because something was amiss. And if you actually delve deeper … and start with the PJ [Portuguese Polícia Judiciária] files, you'll see a whole new truth emerge,' the decorator from Nottingham said. She had been gripped by what she said were the 'numerous holes' and 'contradictions' in the case. She dismissed the latest searches as 'a whole waste of time', proffered theories and spoke of 'hard evidence' and media 'manipulation' before heading to the nearby beach for the day. Town residents feel uneasy about the ghoulish obsession with Madeleine's disappearance. Metres away from the Ocean Club, at the Baptista supermarket's cafe, a British businessman, Tahir, who splits his time between London and the Algarve said he came across some tourists outside the McCann apartment just last week. 'They'd obviously spotted it or they'd known where it was, and they were taking pictures of the apartment. I felt like going up to them and saying, 'That's so morbid. What's the matter with you people?'' the 45-year-old said. 'They've been doing that for years,' replied David, 80, a British expat sitting at a nearby table. 'A lot of people come down here and they want to drive past that [building], just to say this is where it was.' Simon Foy, the former head of the Metropolitan police's homicide and serious crime command, who led Operation Grange to find Madeleine in 2011 before retiring in 2012, said the case had captured the public's imagination because it embodied 'every parent's nightmare'. 'When I was working in homicide investigations in the Met, occasionally these cases would come along which for some reason just connected around the public consciousness,' he said. 'It's a whole load of things: it's a young blonde girl, it's a middle-class family, it's a holiday, it's every parent's nightmare. All that sort of stuff very unpredictably would combine together and you would go from virtually minimal media interest and coverage to significant and substantial media coverage, and that was all before the days of social media.' Foy, who has not been involved in the investigation since retiring, said the popularity of true crime documentaries and dramas in which complex cases are neatly wrapped up in one-hour episodes had also contributed to the public's enduring fascination with the case. Sign up to First Edition Our morning email breaks down the key stories of the day, telling you what's happening and why it matters after newsletter promotion 'What then happens is that you get people's avid fascination and expectation that it's all going to get solved really quickly, and it's all nice and neat, and follows nice dramatic lines, and in reality it never does,' he said. 'In real life, it's messy, and you can't get anything more messy than the whole Madeleine McCann investigation, the whole saga. There are human beings, there's pressure and people make mistakes. It's different. It's never as perfect as it's portrayed in the media world. But people are absolutely fascinated by a story like that, it just happens that this one is a real-life tragedy.' It is this fascination with the case, and in turn Praia da Luz, that has led some residents to blame the McCanns for damaging the town's reputation. Road signs in the town were once defaced with graffiti reading 'McCann circus'. The signs have now been cleaned up but still bear traces of the town's unease. Hundreds of journalists descended on the town to report on the mystery of the three-year-old girl, but tourism dropped and businesses suffered. 'This place was like a ghost town at one point,' said Tahir, who did not want to give his surname. It is why he and many others hope the case can be solved. 'Everyone has got an interest in what happens to Madeleine. For locals, it's still closure that they're looking for. It's not just the family, everyone wants to know. It's gone on so long. There was a point where locals wanted to bury the story because it was affecting businesses and all the rentals went down, but I think it's got over that point,' Tahir said. A retired Portuguese businessman in his 60s, who did not want to give his name, said: '[It has been] 18 years and we've had enough. For the family it's a pity, but it's enough. This area was full of people, it was a joy, a happy family place that was completely transformed and completely dead after [Madeleine disappeared]. Now it's OK but it took 10 years.' The search, the latest in a series of renewed efforts by German prosecutors, was said to have been the last chance to build a case against the prime suspect, Christian Brückner. He denies any involvement. The countdown is now on to the 48-year-old's imminent release from a German prison, where he is currently being held for the rape of an American woman in Praia da Luz in 2005. After 18 years, hundreds of leads and still no trace of the missing girl, the emotional toll must weigh heavily on Madeleine's family, who have not commented on this week's search. And for a place that once hoped its name would be reclaimed by the sun, the sea and the quiet rhythm of local life, the McCann case still casts a long shadow, one that no end-of-search announcement can fully erase.
The Independent
5 days ago
- General
- The Independent
Investigators congratulate themselves as Madeleine McCann searches end
German and Portuguese investigators congratulated and embraced each other as the latest searches connected to the disappearance of Madeleine McCann drew to a close. Search teams wound down the operation in Atalaia, near Lagos, Portugal, on Thursday, after three days of scouring scrubland and abandoned structures. Their efforts focused on a 120-acre stretch of land, using equipment such as chainsaws, diggers and a ground-penetrating radar. The operation comes 18 years after three-year-old Madeleine disappeared from nearby Praia da Luz while on holiday with her family in 2007. The British girl vanished after she was left sleeping while her parents, Kate and Gerry McCann, went for dinner in a nearby restaurant. Officers involved in the latest searches held a debrief before leaving the site, and there was a round of applause before a crate of German beer was removed from one of the tents in the designated base area. After the Augustiner beers were carried away, some officers struggled to grapple with the tents they were taking down because of the blustery conditions. Earlier in the day, personnel could be seen holding pitchforks as they combed stretches of land. Pick-axes and shovels were used to dig some of the undergrowth and a digger was again used to remove rubble from one of the abandoned structures at the site. They spent the first two days of the search focusing on one particular derelict building, using ground-penetrating radar on the cobbled ground after clearing the area of debris and vegetation using a digger and chainsaws. British officers have not been present at the latest searches, the Metropolitan Police said. Madeleine's parents have not commented during the 'active police investigation', staff at the Find Madeleine Campaign said. German authorities requested the search as part of their continued attempts to source evidence to implicate prime suspect Christian Brueckner, who is in prison for raping a 72-year-old woman in Praia da Luz in 2005. He is due to be released from jail in September if no further charges are brought. In October last year, Brueckner was cleared by a German court of unrelated sexual offences, alleged to have taken place in Portugal between 2000 and 2017. In 2023, investigators carried out searches near the Barragem do Arade reservoir, about 30 miles from Praia da Luz. Brueckner spent time in the area between 2000 and 2017 and had photographs and videos of himself near the reservoir.
The Independent
5 days ago
- General
- The Independent
Madeleine McCann searches to end after three days scouring abandoned buildings
Investigators looking in to the disappearance of Madeleine McCann are to conclude their latest searches after three days scouring scrubland and abandoned structures, it is understood. Officers could be seen holding pitchforks as they combed land in an area on the outskirts of Lagos in Portugal on Thursday. Search teams of German and Portuguese police officers, as well as firefighters, used pick-axes and shovels to dig some of the undergrowth and a digger was again used to remove rubble from one of the abandoned structures at the site. The operation comes 18 years after three-year-old Madeleine disappeared from nearby Praia da Luz while on holiday with her family in 2007. The British toddler vanished after she was left sleeping while her parents, Kate and Gerry McCann, went for dinner in a nearby restaurant. Personnel have spent two days focusing on one particular derelict building, using a ground-penetrating radar on the cobbled ground after clearing the area of debris and vegetation using a digger and chainsaws. British officers have not been present at the latest searches, the Metropolitan Police said. It is understood officers will conclude the searches on Thursday, Madeleine's parents are not commenting during the 'active police investigation', staff at the Find Madeleine Campaign said. German authorities requested the search as part of their continued attempts to source evidence to implicate prime suspect Christian Brueckner, who is in prison for raping a 72-year-old woman in Praia da Luz in 2005. He is due to be released from jail in September if no further charges are brought. In October last year, Brueckner was cleared by a German court of unrelated sexual offences, alleged to have taken place in Portugal between 2000 and 2017. In 2023, investigators carried out searches near the Barragem do Arade reservoir, about 30 miles from Praia da Luz. Brueckner spent time in the area between 2000 and 2017 and had phoographs and videos of himself near the reservoir.
