Disappearance of Madeleine McCann

This article is about the missing-person case. For the Netflix documentary about the case, see The Disappearance of Madeleine McCann.

Madeleine McCann
Madeleine in 2007, aged three, and forensic artist's impression of what she may have looked like in 2012, aged nine[1]
Born
Madeleine Beth McCann

(2003-05-12)12 May 2003
Leicester, Leicestershire, England
Disappeared3 May 2007 (aged 3)
Praia da Luz, Lagos, Portugal
37°05′19″N 08°43′51″W / 37.08861°N 8.73083°W / 37.08861; -8.73083
StatusMissing for 17 years, 6 months and 8 days
Height90 cm (2 ft 11 in)[2]
Parents
  • Gerry McCann
  • Kate McCann (née Healy)
Distinguishing featuresBlonde hair; "Left eye: blue and green; right eye: green with a brown spot on the iris ... small brown spot on her left leg".[3]
Investigators
ContactMadeleine's Fund

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".[4] Madeleine's whereabouts remain unknown,[5] although German prosecutors believe she is dead.[6]

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.[7] The parents checked on the children throughout the evening, until Kate discovered Madeleine was missing at 22:00. Over the following weeks, particularly after misinterpreting 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.[8][9]

Madeleine's parents continued the investigation using private detectives until Scotland Yard 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.[10] In 2013, Scotland Yard released e-fit images of men they wanted to trace, including one of a man seen carrying a child toward the beach on the night Madeleine vanished.[11] Shortly after this, Portuguese police reopened their inquiry.[12] 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.[13][14] In 2020, German authorities declared Christian Brückner their prime suspect for the abduction and murder of McCann, but charges have yet to be formalised.[6][15][16]

Madeleine's disappearance attracted sustained press coverage both in the UK and internationally, reminiscent of the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, in 1997.[17] Her parents were subjected to intense scrutiny and baseless allegations of involvement in her death,[a] particularly in the tabloid press and on Twitter.[21][22] In 2008 they and their travelling companions received damages and apologies from Express Newspapers,[23] and in 2011 the McCanns testified before the Leveson Inquiry into British press misconduct, lending support to those arguing for tighter press regulation.[24][25]

  1. ^ "Madeleine McCann, aged progressed to age nine" Archived 9 February 2017 at the Wayback Machine, Scotland Yard; Patrick Barkham, "The sad ageing of Madeleine McCann", The Guardian, 25 April 2012.
  2. ^ Height Archived 25 May 2021 at the Wayback Machine; URL accessed 4 November 2020.
  3. ^ Cite error: The named reference PJmissing was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  4. ^ Cite error: The named reference Telegraph24April2008 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  5. ^ Gordon Rayner, "Madeleine McCann latest: are police any closer to knowing the truth?" Archived 18 January 2015 at archive.today, The Daily Telegraph, 26 April 2016.
  6. ^ a b "Madeleine McCann assumed dead - German prosecutors". BBC News. 4 June 2020. Archived from the original on 30 September 2020. Retrieved 4 June 2020.
  7. ^ Cite error: The named reference distance was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  8. ^ Cite error: The named reference Govan21July2008 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  9. ^ Cite error: The named reference Telegraph9Feb2017 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  10. ^ Cite error: The named reference Laville25April2012 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  11. ^ Sandra Laville, "British detectives release efits of Madeleine McCann suspect" Archived 5 December 2016 at the Wayback Machine, The Guardian, 14 October 2013.
  12. ^ Cite error: The named reference BBC24Oct2013 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  13. ^ a b Cite error: The named reference Evans26April2017 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  14. ^ Cite error: The named reference BBC5June2019 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  15. ^ Quinn, Ben; Oltermann, Philip (3 June 2020). "Madeleine McCann: German paedophile identified as new prime suspect". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 4 June 2020. Retrieved 4 June 2020.
  16. ^ Fricker, Martin (9 October 2021). "Madeleine McCann prosecutor 100% convinced Christian B abducted and murdered her". mirror.co.uk. London: The Mirror. Archived from the original on 3 February 2022. Retrieved 4 February 2022.
  17. ^ Rehling 2012, p. 152: "Within a few weeks, it was possible to talk about the 'Maddification' of Britain, akin to the 'Dianification' of Britain that followed the death of the equally photogenic, white, blonde Princess ten years earlier."
    Also see Rafael Epstein, "Britain gripped by kidnap case" Archived 7 March 2017 at the Wayback Machine, AM, ABC Radio (Australia): "In Britain, the disappearance of four-year-old Madeleine McCann has gripped the nation, so much so that its effect is being compared to the death of Diana, Princess of Wales."
    John Ward Anderson, "The Campaign" Archived 5 March 2017 at the Wayback Machine, The Washington Post, 12 August 2007. Allan Massie, "Weep not only for Madeleine" Archived 20 September 2018 at the Wayback Machine, The Daily Telegraph, 4 June 2007.
  18. ^ a b Richard Bilton, "Madeleine McCann: 10 Years On", BBC Panorama, 3 May 2017; do Carmo: 00:25:32; Foy: 00:35:58.
  19. ^ Esther Addley, "Madeleine McCann: hope and persistence rewarded" Archived 18 January 2017 at the Wayback Machine, The Guardian, 27 April 2012
  20. ^ Brian Cathcart, "The Real McCann Scandal" Archived 26 February 2021 at the Wayback Machine, New Statesman, 23 October 2008.
  21. ^ Cite error: The named reference OHanlon was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  22. ^ "The dark side of social media" Archived 6 March 2017 at the Wayback Machine, Nature, editorial, 15 February 2017
  23. ^ Cite error: The named reference damages was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  24. ^ James Robinson, "Leveson inquiry: McCanns deliver damning two-hour testimony" Archived 13 February 2017 at the Wayback Machine, The Guardian, 23 November 2011.
  25. ^ Cite error: The named reference McCanntestimony was invoked but never defined (see the help page).


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