Disappearance of Madeleine McCann

The disappearance of Madeleine McCann occurred on May 3, 2007, in Praia da Luz, Portugal. Madeleine, her siblings, and their parents, Gerry and Kate McCann, were on holiday on the Algarve coast. Several of the McCanns’ friends and their children were staying at the same resort. The three-year-old British child disappeared from the hotel room while her parents were eating in a nearby restaurant with their friends, as they did most evenings.

Despite an investigation lasting for many years, the Portuguese police unearthed few leads, and in 2013, the British police opened an investigation. In 2019, sources indicated that the police were scrutinizing an alleged child sex offender who was in Portugal at the time Madeleine disappeared. Nothing came of these intense investigations. However, authorities named a new suspect, Christian Brückner, as the primary suspect in Madeleine's disappearance in 2020. Still, no sign of the missing child has been found.

Background

May 3rd was the sixth day of the McCann family’s vacation. They were staying at the Waterside Village Gardens in the Ocean Club Resort. They had rented a ground-floor apartment, 5a, block five. The parents left Madeleine and her siblings, two-year-old twins Sean and Amelie, at the Ocean Club’s Kids Club in the morning. The family had lunch together in the apartment and spent the afternoon swimming in the Ocean Club pool. At 3:30, the children returned to the Kids Club, where they had dinner at 5:30. Kate McCann, a physician, took them to the apartment at 6:00, while Gerry McCann, a cardiologist, left to take a tennis lesson. A half-hour later, a friend, David Payne, checked in on Kate and the children, later reporting that all seemed well.

At 7:00, Gerry McCann returned to the apartment, and he and his wife put the children to bed in the front bedroom. The windows of the room overlooked the parking lot and the street beyond it. The room contained two single beds with two cots between them. The twins were placed in the cots, and Madeleine went to sleep in the single bed closest to the door. The bed beneath the window at the far side of the room was empty. The McCanns showered, dressed for dinner, and drank some wine in the apartment. Then they walked 50 yards (45 meters) to the restaurant, arriving at 8:35 before their friends.

At 8:55, the group began a series of checks on their children. Matt Oldfield stopped at his apartment and told the Paynes that the group was waiting for them. Gerry McCann entered the McCanns’ apartment through the unlocked patio doors at 9:05 to check on the children. The McCanns later explained that they had a key to the front door, but it was next to the children’s bedroom, and they did not use it because the children might be awakened by the noise. Instead, they left the patio doors unlocked and entered that way. They also left the children’s bedroom door open about 5 degrees. Gerry McCann noticed that the bedroom door was open to about 45 degrees but saw that all three children were asleep, so he closed the door back to 5 degrees, used the bathroom, and left. On his way back to the restaurant, he saw Jeremy Wilkins, another guest, and they talked for several minutes.

At 9:30, Kate McCann stood up to check on the children, but fellow diners Matthew Oldfield and Russell O’Brien were leaving to check on their children, and Oldfield offered to check on the McCann children as well. When he entered the McCanns’ apartment, he noticed that the door was open wide. He looked inside the room and saw the twins but did not directly look at Madeleine, whose bed was not in his line of sight.

At 10:00, Kate McCann walked to the apartment to check on the children. The bedroom door blew shut as she approached it. She went inside, where she found the window open and the shutter up. The twins were asleep, but Madeleine was not in her bed.

Kate McCann returned to the restaurant and reported that she could not find Madeleine. Fifteen minutes later, Oldfield went to the reception desk, and the police were called. They arrived at 10:30 and called in detectives, who arrived at 11:10. Law enforcement officials conducted a search for physical evidence until 4:00 the following morning.

Overview

The investigation initially focused on several lines of inquiry that were ultimately abandoned. Jane Tanner, another friend of the McCanns, was checking on her daughter at 9:10 when she saw a man carrying a sleeping girl across the street and away from the apartment block. Tanner shared this information with Rachael Oldfield when Oldfield told her that Madeleine was missing. Police investigated this sighting, but a British man later came forward and told them that he was carrying his own daughter.

Russell O’Brien, Jane Tanner’s husband, reported seeing a man near the apartment about the time that Madeleine disappeared. Rachael Oldfield said that she saw the same man near 5a. The suspect, Robert Murat, was investigated for years but ultimately cleared. A business associate of Murat’s, Russian Sergey Malinka, was also scrutinized and interrogated by police but was not named a suspect.

Portuguese police officers named the McCanns as suspects in September 2007. Forensic evidence from their rental car was later declared inconclusive, and traces of blood found in the rented apartment were determined to be from a man. A former police chief in Portugal, Goncalo Amaral, wrote a book in which he claims that the McCanns faked their daughter’s abduction. The McCanns sued him for libel and won. Several individuals were also arrested for attempting to extort money from the McCanns.

By 2012, officials had reviewed more than forty thousand documents from British and foreign law enforcement agencies and private investigators. They began a new investigation that soon took more than one thousand statements and collected more than one thousand exhibits. Metropolitan police reported that they had investigated sixty persons of interest. More than eight thousand potential sightings were investigated, and investigators looked at more than six hundred sex offenders. In 2015, Scotland Yard scaled the investigation back from twenty-nine officers to four. Investigators said that this was sufficient because they were able to narrow their focus to fewer lines of inquiry.

In March 2019, streaming service Netflix released a documentary about the disappearance of Madeleine McCann. The McCann family, unhappy with the upcoming release, refused to participate and asked their friends to avoid speaking to Pulse Films, the London-based production agency making the documentary for Netflix. Some journalists also reportedly declined to speak to the documentary makers.

Portuguese authorities were reportedly investigating Martin Ney, a pedophile from Germany, in May 2019. Ney was serving a life sentence for murdering three young boys between 1992 and 2001. He typically covered his face and head with a black balaclava and drugged and kidnapped children who were sleeping while their parents were out. Ney, who was suspected of other child murders, was working at a homeless shelter not far from the Ocean Club Resort when Madeleine McCann disappeared. He allegedly revealed details to a fellow inmate about the McCann disappearance that were not public knowledge. Portuguese authorities were also looking for a man who was seen with Ney in the resort area.

On May 3, 2019, the twelfth anniversary of Madeleine’s disappearance, her mother and twin siblings attended a prayer vigil in their home village of Rothley, Leicestershire. Later that month, as she did every year on Madeleine’s birthday, Kate McCann placed a birthday present in Maddie’s untouched bedroom in the family home. She continued to hope that her daughter would one day come home and open all the gifts from birthdays with her family she had missed. Madeleine would have been sixteen on May 12, 2019.

In 2020, German authorities named Christian Brückner as a primary suspect in Madeleine McCann's disappearance. Brückner was living near the resort at the time and had an extensive criminal history. Although phone records have placed him near the crime scene, no formal charges have been filed. German, Portuguese, and British authorities continue searching for clues in Madeleine’s disappearance. In 2023, authorities searched a reservoir near the resort in Portugal, where some objects were found, although no official statement was made regarding their relevance.

Bibliography

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