Friday, 29 Mar 2024

Kate McCann: Why Maddie’s ‘worrying’ comment left mother ‘puzzled’ on day of disappearance

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Last night, in what Kate and Gerry McCann said was a “potentially very significant” development, police at Scotland Yard announce a child sex offender was their new prime suspect In the disappearance of Madeleine McCann. An international appeal for information in under way after police in Britain, Germany and Portugal revealed the 43-year-old man, who is currently serving a long prison sentence in Germany for an “unrelated matter,” is believed to have been in Praia da Luz, on the Algarve coast, around the time Maddie vanished on May 3, 2007. The German authorities, who are due to deliver more details in a press conference at 12pm today, believe the suspect, described as white, with short blonde hair, around six-feet-tall with a slim build, received a half-an-hour phone call on his Portuguese mobile around an hour before Maddie is thought to have vanished.

Maddie disappeared from Apartment 5A of the Ocean Club complex, while her parents ate dinner with friends at a tapas restaurant just metres away, and her mother Kate revealed a heartbreaking final memory during her book ‘Madeleine McCann: Our Daughter’s Disappearance and the Continuing Search for Her’.

She wrote in 2011: “At breakfast time, Madeleine had a question for us: ‘Why didn’t you come when Sean and I cried last night?’

“We were puzzled, did she mean when they were having a bath, or when they had gone to bed?

“It certainly had not been in the early hours because I’d been in the room with them.

“Madeleine didn’t answer or elaborate, instead she moved onto some other topic that had popped into her head.”

Kate went on to detail how the remark had made her wonder if her daughter had cried while they were out for dinner the night before, which was concerning to her.

She added: “Gerry and I were disconcerted, could Madeleine and Sean have woken up while we were at dinner?

“If so, it was worrying, obviously, but it did not seem probable. 

“As I’ve said, not only did they rarely stir at all at night, but if they did it was hardly ever, and I mean ever, before the early hours. 

“If they had done so on this occasion, it would mean they had woken up, cried for a while, calmed themselves down and fallen asleep again.”

Kate went on to explain the idea of both the children waking up and not being noticed by the parents doing checks was unlikely, but not impossible.

She continued: “All of this would have been in the space of 30 or 45 minutes.

“Children usually need some soothing back to sleep once they’ve woken, especially if two of them are awake and upset at the same time. 

“It seems highly unlikely they would have gone through all these stages without one of them overlapping with one of our checks. 

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“It was not impossible, but it seemed implausible.”

The joint appeal from the British, German and Portuguese police is offering a £20,000 reward for information that leads to a conviction concerning a van and the suspect’s other vehicle, which was transferred to someone else’s name the day after Maddie vanished.

The Met Police police said the case remained a “missing persons” investigation because it does not have “definitive evidence” as to whether Madeleine is alive or not.

DCI Mark Cranwell, who is leading the Met inquiry, said yesterday: “Someone out there knows a lot more than they’re letting on.”

He added that the prisoner, then aged 30, frequented the Algarve between 1995 and 2007, staying for “days upon end” in his camper van and living a “transient lifestyle”.

The suspect has been linked to an early Eighties VW T3 Westfalia camper van – with a white upper body and yellow skirting, registered in Portugal – which was pictured in the Algarve in 2007.

Scotland Yard said he was driving the vehicle in the Praia da Luz area in the days before Maddie’s disappearance and is believed to have been living in it for days or weeks before and after May 3.

The suspect has also been linked to a 1993 Jaguar XJR6 with a German number plate seen in Praia da Luz and surrounding areas in 2006 and 2007.

Police said the German authorities had taken the lead on this aspect of the case because the suspect was in custody in their country and an appeal on German television was broadcast last night at 7:15pm.

Police released details of the suspect’s phone number and the number he dialled saying any information could be “critical” to the inquiry and have asked the person who called the suspect to come forward.

The suspect is one of 600 people that detectives on the inquiry, known as Operation Grange, originally looked at.

After an appeal in 2017, “significant” fresh information about him was provided.

Since then, Met detectives have carried out “extensive inquiries” in Portugal and Germany in order to gather more details about him.

Scotland Yard said they were trying to “prove or disprove” his involvement in the case and retained an “open mind”.

‘Madeleine: Our daughter’s disappearance and the continuing search for her’ was published by Transworld Publishers Ltd and is available here.

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