Madeleine Beth McCann (born 12May 2003) disappeared on the evening of 3 May 2007 from her bed in aholiday apartment at a resort in Praia da Luz, in the Algarve regionof Portugal. The Daily Telegraph described the disappearance as "themost heavily reported missing-person case in modern history". Her whereabouts remain unknown, and German prosecutors in 2020 havestated that they assume that she is dead.
Madeleine was on holiday from the UKwith her parents, Kate and Gerry McCann; her two-year-old twinsiblings; and a group of family friends and their children. She andthe twins had been left asleep at 20:30 in the ground-floorapartment, while the McCanns and friends dined in a restaurant 55meters (180 ft) away. The parents checked on the children throughoutthe evening, until Kate discovered she was missing at 22:00. Over thefollowing weeks, particularly after misinterpreting a British DNAanalysis, the Portuguese police came to believe that Madeleine haddied in an accident in the apartment and that her parents had coveredit up. The McCanns were given arguido (suspect) status in September2007, which was lifted when Portugal's attorney general archived thecase in July 2008 for lack of evidence.
The parents continued the investigationusing private detectives until Scotland Yard opened its own inquiry,Operation Grange, in 2011. The senior investigating officer announcedthat he was treating the disappearance as "a criminal act bya stranger", most likely a planned abduction or burglarygone wrong. In 2013, Scotland Yard released e-fit images of men theywanted to trace, including one of a man seen carrying a child towardthe beach that night. Shortly after this, the Portuguese policereopened their inquiry. Operation Grange was scaled back in 2015,but the remaining detectives continue to pursue a small number ofinquiries described in April 2017 as significant. In June 2020, thepolice in the German city Braunschweig stated there was a new suspectin McCann's disappearance.
The disappearance attracted sustainedinternational interest and saturation coverage in the UK reminiscentof the death of Diana in 1997. The McCanns were subjected to intensescrutiny and baseless allegations of involvement in their daughter'sdeath, particularly in the tabloid press and on Twitter. In 2008they and their traveling companions received damages and apologiesfrom Express Newspapers, and in 2011 the McCanns testified before theLeveson Inquiry into British press misconduct, lending support tothose arguing for tighter press regulation.
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People
Madeleine McCann
Madeleine was born in Leicester andlived with her family in Rothley, also in Leicestershire. At herparents' request, she was made a ward of court in England shortlyafter the disappearance, which gave the court statutory powers to acton her behalf. Police described Madeleine as blonde-haired, withblue-green eyes, a small brown spot on her left calf, and adistinctive dark strip on the iris of her right eye. In 2009 theMcCanns released age-progressed images of how she may have looked atage six, and in 2012 Scotland Yard commissioned one of her at agenine.
