The Maddie files

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Special report ... what happened to Madeleine McCann?

The Sun: paper edition

SUN special report on the girl Britain can never forget
The Maddie files

By Antonella Lazzeri

Chapter 1: The disappearance

Madeleine McCann was snatched from her bed at a holiday apartment in Praia da Luz, Portugal, on May 3, 2007. Her disappearance sparked an immediate search around the holiday resort - a search that was to go on to reach every corner of the globe and turn into one of the biggest manhunts in history. But more than six years on there is still no trace of her. Here in a Sun special we explore the mystery surrounding Madeleine’s disappearance and as the Met police reopen the case we ask, ‘What now?’

Gazing at his daughter Madeleine in bed fast asleep with her blonde hair fanned out on the pillow, Gerry McCann smiled to himself. Worn out after a busy day enjoying herself on holiday, little Madeleine, then aged three, had quickly fallen asleep after being put to bed. Gerry later said that, as he quietly walked out of the bedroom, he was thinking how lucky he and Kate were to have such a gorgeous child.

Six days earlier, he and his wife Kate had flown from Britain to Portugal with Madeleine and their two-year-old twin, Sean and Amelie for a week-long holiday. The two doctors, from Rothley, Leicestershire, had joined seven other friends and their families at the Mark Warner Ocean Club resort, in Praia da Luz, and were having a relaxing joyful break in the sun. But, on May 3, 2007, that happiness was to be cruelly shattered in the most hideous, heart-rending way possible in less than an hour. Gerry had been making one of the regular checks he and Kate had been carrying out on Madeleine and the twins.

Kate was ‘catatonic’ with fear

The children had all been put to bed together in one room at the couple’s holiday apartment, 5a. Kate and Gerry were dining at a tapas bar less than 100metres with the other members of their group. They had arrived at the restaurant at around 8.30pm and Gerry went to make his first check on the children at 9.05pm. Matt Oldfield, one of the holiday group who were later to become known as the “Tapas 7”, offered to look in on the McCann’s children at 9.300pm when he went to check on his own children in a nearby apartment. Crucially, as Kate and Gerry were to discover later, Matt did not actually see Madeleine on that check because her bed was behind the door when he opened it and he didn’t go into the room.

When Kate went to make her check around 10pm she was struck by the fact the door to the children’s room was more open than she and Gerry normally left it. As she grabbed the handle, it slammed shut. Opening it, she found that Madeleine’s bed was empty - her beloved pink Cuddle Cat toy still on the pillow - and the window in the room open with the shutter up. Sean and Amelie were still sound asleep in their travel cots. At first Kate thought Madeleine might be in the couples bed. But when she went to their room, the little girl wasn’t there. She said: “ On the discover of another empty bed the first wave of panic hit me. Nausea, terror, disbelief, fear,, icy fear. Dear God, no! Please no!” Frantically, Kate searched the apartment, quickly realising that Madeleine was gone. Hysterically she ran towards the tapas bar, screaming, “Madeleine’s gone! Someone’s taken her!” She said later that she had never believed that Madeleine had simply wandered out of the apartment. As friends went to alert staff at the complex, Gerry went to comfort Kate.

An immediate search for Madeleine began with the couple’s friends soon joined by resort staff and holidaymakers. Kate - who was described by friends as being “almost catatonic” with fear and panic - rang friends in Britain begging them to pray for Madeleine. At one stage she ran outside the apartment screaming Madeleine’s name before becoming hysterical. Gerry who was helping the search, tried to stay calm but at one stage he broke down - throwing himself on the floor he started sobbing loudly. For friends used to the cardiac specialist being a calm manit was a heart-breaking sight. The first call to the police was made at 10.10pm but they took more than an hour to arrive and then only in the form of two non-speaking English officers [yes, that’s what she’s written].

The cops seemed convinced Madeleine had just wandered off and would soon be found. As Gerry was later to recall: “It was nothing like the response there would have been in Britain, there was no search dogs, no helicopter sent up. We were begging them to do everything they could but nothing seemed to be happening.” The couple felt frustrated at what they saw as a lack of action - they didn’t know at the time but it was to become symptomatic of the whole Portuguese investigation into Madeleine’s disappearance.

As dawn broke over the holiday resort, Kate was filled with a sense of horror and dread. She was worried about the fact Madeleine only had her pyjamas on, that she didn’t have Cuddle Cat with her, that she had spent the night out in the darkness. She was haunted by images of her daughter scared and crying for her parents. She was also tormented by visions of what Madeleine’s abductor could be doing to her, saying later in her book, Madeleine - “ I was crying out that I could see Madeleine lying cold and mottled, on a big grey stone slab.I simply couldn’t rid myself of these evil scenes in the early days and weeks.”

In a statement to Leicestershire police , her friend, Fiona Payne, a doctor, revealed Kate’s heartache on the night Madeleine was taken, saying, “ I’ve never seen such raw emotion in my life and I’ve seen a lot of it in my job. “She was bereft, she didn’t know what to do, she was panicking, extremely frightened for Madeleine. She was angry, really angry, punching walls, kicking walls, because she just didn’t know what else to do. She was praying a lot. And she was howling - it was awful. Kate was desperate to see a priest.” A devout Catholic, Kate prayed with priest when he arrived, tearfully asking God again and again to let her girl be found. She joined in the search that day, saying that when she came to a dumpster-type bin she prayed: “Please God don’t let her be in here.” Kate already knew by then that one of the Tapas 7 - Jane Tanner - had seen a man the previous night carrying a child away from the direction of the McCanns apartment. She had seen him when she went to check on her own two children at around 9.15pm. Jane hadn’t known what kind of pyjamas Madeleine had been wearing but her description matched perfectly the pink and white frilly ones she had on. In an interview with The Sun Jane revealed that she had been “tormented” by the sighting of the man who she believed was Madeleine’s abductor saying: “I wake up to that image every day.”

The backlash against them lasts to this day

“Everyday I see him there, striding away, carrying Madeleine and I try desperately to remember more detail, what his face was like. I think about it over and over again. It’s horrible.” She helped detectives to draw up a sketch of the man she had seen but could not remember any detail of his face, just the clothes he was wearing and that he had dark hair. The man Jane saw was to be the main suspect in the case for the next six years.

Hopes that Madeleine would quickly be found began to dwindle as the days passed. One of the most “unbearable” occasions for Kate and Gerry came nine days after Madeleine went missing. On Saturday May 12, it was her fourth birthday. The family should have been home in Rothley enjoying a joint party that had been planned with two of Madeleine’s friends. The cake had already been made for the day and she had been really exited about the party. In the end, the couple spent Madeleine’s birthday with friends and family in Portugal, but the couple spent most of it just sat mute in despair and anguish. Unbeknown to the couple, despite the horror of their situation, the backlash against them - that tragically lasts, even to this day - had already started both in Portugal and Britain. Why had they left their three children alone that night, and as it turned out, nearly every night of the holiday? Even Madeleine telling them on the morning of her disappearance, “Why didn’t you come last night when Sean and I were crying?” hadn’t stopped them going out that evening. Kate’s mother Susan Healy admitted that she had not approved of the decision but added: “They know this was a mistake, but it wasn’t child neglect, it wasn’t not caring for your children. Kate and Gerry went to a family-friendly resort where there has never been any crime, or any trouble. They felt their children were safe, with the shutters down. You couldn’t have more caring parents. Kate and Gerry are absolutely devastated. I have heard my daughter wailing like a wild animal.”

The couple had taken their children out to the resort’s Millennium Restaurant on the first night they had arrived but it was a long walk from the apartment. They didn’t have a buggy so they had to carry Sean and Amelie and it had proved a difficult outing. The tapas bar was much nearer to 5a and Gerry likened it later to “being sat in your garden with the children in their bedrooms.” All the group left their children in their apartments. At the time Mark Warner offered a “baby listening” service which saw staff going around to check outside apartments that a child wasn’t crying. It wasn’t on offer at the Ocean Club but the Tapas 7 carried out a similar system themselves. Kate has said frequently since that she has crucified herself over the decision, saying: ”I torment myself thinking, ‘Why did I think that was alright, that it was safe.’ Gerry says it won’t help Madeleine to keep doing that. It won’t help us find her.” Gerry himself said: “Who’s thinking about child abductions in a little sleepy out-of-season tourist resort? It never entered our minds. We felt very safe - it was a family resort. If we could turn back the clock, we would.” but there is no doubt that the fact they had left their children alone had, in some ways, tainted the Portuguese investigation into Madeleine’s disappearance.

As soon as police chief Goncalo Amaral took it over, the focus seemed to shift from finding Madeleine - to finding proof of Kate and Gerry’s guilt over lying about her abduction and covering up her death. It was to cause the couple years of torment and also, they believe, hamper their chances of being reunited with their beloved daughter.

Chapter 3: Life with Madeleine

The world knows her as Maddie - the little girl in the red dress who disappeared six years ago. But to her parents she was their longed for daughter Madeleine. As Kate explained in an interview with The Sun two years ago: “Sometimes I feel that the girl in the red dress in the famous photo of her has become almost a fictitious character. But Madeleine is our daughter, a real little girl. She was born after IVF and felt very special. I thanked God every day that we’d finally got our little girl.”

Gerry said: “Sometimes I look back and the things Madeleine was doing at threee, nearly four, I find incredible. She has a very obvious sense of humour. She knew things were funny. She could do accents - she was a very good mimic - and she has a really good imagination. She loved things at a young age that you wouldn’t think she would. She really liked Harry Potter, she really liked Doctor Who. That was her time with me. When the twins had gone to bed, she would sit with me and watch TV. You could have a full conversation with her.” Kate added: “she seemed older. I look at Amelie and Sean now, and we were having conversations like that with Madeleine. She is very gregarious, she would talk to other children like she was looking after them. She’s very bright, enjoys company and enjoys speaking to people.”

Kate also revealed that Gerry and Madeleine always had a a “very special bond”. She explained: “She had colic very badly as a baby and Gerry was there to take over when I was tired. She would be on Gerry’s tummy, writhing in pain. I’m sure it was having gone through those difficult times, that’s why they had such a close bond - thinking back to those intimate moments when he cradled Madeleine.”
Gerry recalled: “The amazing thing is that, as a baby, she was always awake, eyes always open. She really loved being held. She loved that interaction.”

In an earlier interview, Kate had told of her joy at becoming a mother at last after her gruelling IVF treatment. She said: “When I got pregnant with Madeleine it was just fantastic. It didn’t seem true. I did a test at home so I could handle the result the result if it wasn’t good. I was looking at it, thinking, ‘I don’t believe that’. Then I went to the hospital and they checked it. I was really exited.” Talking about the birth of her first child, Kate said: “Madeleine was perfect. She was lovely. She had the most beautiful face.” And she added that when the twins were born, Madeleine loved it. Shedding tears at the memory, Kate said: “ She was amazing. I keep saying that, but she was. She was only twenty months old. She just handled it so well. She was still a baby herself. When the time came to bring Madeleine in, it was in the evening. She came in, and when she saw the twins for the first time, it was lovely. It was so nice, this expression. She sat on the end of my bed. She would look at me and say. ‘Hold it, hold it’, meaning she wanted to hold one of the babies”.

Chapter 4: The campaign

From the first hours of Madeleine going missing, her parents vowed they would never give up looking for her. They never have. For years Kate McCann has spent her days sitting at a desk in her home, pictures of Madeleine pinned on a wall in front of her, poring over every word of the Portuguese police files of the investigation into her abduction. Never far from her side is Cuddle Cat - Madeleine’s pink soft toy, which Kate takes with her everywhere she goes. She gave up her job as a GP on the couple’s return to Britain in September 2007 to devote her time to finding anything that might help find her daughter.

Talking about her search Kate, 45, said : “How can any parent give u on their child? We can’t. It’s important that a meaningful search for an innocent and vulnerable little girl, our dearly beloved Madeleine, is properly carried out. We couldn’t give up on our child without concrete evidence that she’s no longer alive - so in our minds, Madeleine’s alive.”

Kate has often returned to Praia da Luz over the years because it is where she says she feels “closest to Madeleine”. On some visits Kate has turned amateur detective herself trying to work out what happened that awful night on May 3, 2007. In an interview with The Sun, she revealed: “I look at the apartment, I kind of step into that person’s shoes - and I think, ‘Where did you go?’. I think it was someone who knew our movements. I don’t think someone was passing by chance and took a child. I find it helpful trying to work things out. I just want to try to understand it. I’m probably wasting my time but I just have this need to do it.”

Dozens of sightings had been ignored

The official Portuguese police case was shelved in July, 2008. Even though the McCanns believed the search for Madeleine had ended within days of her being taken, the decision to formally close the hunt still came as a crushing blow. Kate said: “It’s as if they have given up on her - and that’s not fair.” There was now not a single enforcement agency actively for Madeleine anywhere. The Portuguese police files on Madeleine’s case were released to the public in August 2008. Until then, even the McCanns had been denied access. Reading them made their hearts sink. Their greatest fears were realised. There were dozens and dozens of reported sightings, most of which had been ignored, stamped with the equivalent of ’not relevant’ by a Portuguese police officer.

Within months of Madeleine going missing, the Find Madeleine fund, set up to aid the search for her, had reached a massive £1 million, thanks to the generosity of the public. Money from the fund was used to set up a website, print posters and badges with Madeleine’s picture on and even produce a “Find Madeleine” kit that holidaymakers could take abroad with them. But the majority of the money has been used to pay for a team of private investigators to continue the hunt. Their task has taken them to virtually every corner of the globe. After the Portuguese case was shelved, the PIs were the only investigators looking for her.

Sightings of Madeleine have been reported in Australia, New Zealand, America, North Africa and virtually every country in Europe. Every sighting is investigated thoroughly before it is discounted. For her parents it has often been a painful process. There would be a phone call, then the long wait while the sighting was investigated - and then finally the news that “it isn’t her”. In the early years, Spanish company Metodo 3 was employed by the fund. Its professionalism and reputation promised much. Shortly after being tasked with finding Madeleine, Francisco Marco, the firm’s director-general, even boasted that they knew who Madeleine’s abductor was. He said: “God willing, I hope she will be back with her parents before Christmas.” But she wasn’t. At Christmas, like every Christmas and birthday since, Madeleine’s presents were carefully placed in her bedroom, ready for when she finally returned home. It was later revealed that Metodo 3 was at one time charging the fund £50,000 a month for its services.

The company was replaced by a team led by former RUC police chief Dave Edgar and Arthur Cowley, who had 30 years’ experience with the British police. These experienced detectives brought a fresh and newly meticulous method of investigating the disappearance. Edgar said he firmly believed there was a good chance that Madeleine was still alive. He said: “This rural, sprawling terrain makes it extremely difficult to search. You could quite easily keep a child there for years and no one else would know.” He said there were as many as NINE sex attacks on children in the area around Praia da Luz between 2005 and 2007. The victims included British kids. Some cases happened just 20 miles from the resort.

Six of the victims were girls aged between three and ten. Speaking about Madeleine, Edgar said: “The key thing is, no body has been found. When paedophiles kill, they often dump the body nearby - and this isn’t the case here. Even if Maddie had been dumped in the sea by the resort, the ocean often gives up its victims. Until I find evidence that she is dead, I will keep going.” Edgar’s team made huge strides, tracking down witnesses, producing e-fits of suspects and identifying new leads. One of their appeals was for a “Victoria Beckham lookalike” seen at a harbour in Barcelona three days after Madeleine went missing. She had approached a man, asking him: “Have you brought my new daughter?” Edgar believed Madeleine may have been taken from Praia da Luz to Spain by boat. Despite the appeal and a photo fit being produced of the woman, who spoke with an Australian or New Zealand accent, she has never been traced.

I dream that I’m holding her. I can feel her and smell her, she’s right there… then I wake up

KATE McCANN

Over the years, Kate and Gerry have strived continuously to keep Madeleine in the public eye. They appeared on Oprah Winfrey’s television show in the US to appeal to the public there. Kate told Oprah how she went into Madeleine’s at least twice a day to “speak to her”. She said: “Just to say hello, really. Just to tell her that we are still going to do everything we can to find her.” In the US they also met with Ernie Allen, who co-founded the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. The centre has found 160,000 missing children since it was set up more than 30 years ago. In an interview with The Sun, Ernie said: “ There is always hope. I told Kate and Gerry that. You never give up on a missing child. We have had cases of children being found many years after they disappeared. You don’t ever close missing child cases. These children are still out there. Miracles happen. It doesn’t matter how long a child has been missing. Until Madeleine is found or we know for certain what has happened, we will not give up.” He advised the McCannson how they could keep the search for their daughter going.

‘I try to imagine Madeleine at eight’

It was Allen’s idea to release an age-progressed picture of Madeleine in 2009, two years after she went missing. The picture showed how Madeleine may have looked aged six. It was greeted with shock. Until then, the world had known Madeleine only as the cherub-faced, big eyed little girl forever frozen in timein the famous picture of her in a red dress. It had become the iconic image. In the new picture she looked very grown up. Her chubby baby-face was gone and her hair was long, with a fringe, held back by an Alice band. Even Kate admitted to being “very shocked” when she first saw the picture. She told Oprah: “I didn’t know who that little girl was.” It was after meeting Allen that Kate and Gerry began their campaign for a system based on America’s “Amber Alert” scheme to be adopted across Europe. The US scheme is named after Amber Hagerman, a girl of nine who was abducted and murdered in Arlington, Texas, in 1996. When a child is abducted, an alert is broadcast on TV and radio, as well as on billboards at railways and airports. In one case, a man driving behind a van recognised it from the information being broadcast and called the police. They rescued an abducted child from the van.

The McCanns believed that if such a system had been in use back in 2007, they would “at least have had a chance” of finding Madeleine. They travelled to Brussels to lobby European Mps about Amber Alert. To their satisfaction, the system is now being adopted across Europe. Dubbed the “Child Rescue Alert” in Britain, it was first used hear in 2012 after the abduction of April Jones. In 2011, Kate wrote her book Madeleine, a searingly emotional account of the ordeal and its aftermath. It was published to boost the dwindling resources of the Find Madeleine fund. The McCanns feared that if the fund ran out of money, they alone would be left looking for their daughter. The book was published in the same month that Madeleine would have turned eight. In an interview with The Sun, Kate admitted at the time: “I find that quite shocking. I can’t even imagine her. Eight sounds so old. I do sometimes think about what it would be like to have an eight-year-old now. I find it really strange. How has that time flown by? It was her fourth birthday - and then suddenly it’s her eighth. I see girls of eight and I try to imagine Madeleine like that. And I just can’t.” Kate said when she dreamt of her daughter she looked as she did when she vanished - cherubic face, mop of beautiful blonde hair and huge eyes. Talking in 2011, Kate said: “I’ve had three dreams of her, all of them similar. We get a call that Madeleine’s been found. And there she is and I’m cuddling her.” Reaching out her arms as if she is holding a small child, Kate added: “The thing is, it is so tangible. I can feel her, smell her, feel her snuggling into me like she always did. She’s there, I’m holding her, I’m so happy. And then I wake up. Of course she’s not there. The pain is crippling.”

All through their search for Madeleine, Kate and Gerry have been conscious of their twins Sean and Amelie’s growing awareness of what happened to their sister. They were just two when Madeleine went missing - but they have always talked about her. Kate told The Sun in 2011 how Amelie had said to her: “ ‘Mummy’s sad because Madeleine is not here. But Amelie’s here and Amelie and Sean will always be here’. Sean said to me recently, ‘When you’re old, me and Amelie will look for Madeleine’."