A man and woman were arrested for allegedly trying to extort money from the McCanns in exchange for information about their daughter, and those wouldn't be the only arrests of that kind. People started "seeing" Madeleine everywhere, and bogus tips poured in. Witnesses recalled seeing a man carrying a child who fit the missing girl's description at roughly 10 p.m., about 500 yards away from the apartment (sketches were mocked up and the mystery man remained a suspect for years until 2013, when London's Metropolitan Police positively determined his identity as a British vacationer who had been carrying his own daughter). A 33-year-old British expatriate who lived about 150 yards away from the resort with his mother was questioned and his home was searched, much to his protest that he was being scapegoated (the man, Robert Murat, would later win $785,000 in libel damages from multiple media outlets for their coverage of him). In the ensuing weeks and month, Portuguese authorities would cast a wide net hoping to find any valid clue that would lead to Madeleine's whereabouts. "Please, please do not hurt her," she said into the camera. Kate McCann made her first televised appeal for her daughter's safe return on May 7. the next day, and a global missing persons alert didn't go out for five days they would also later be criticized for not immediately sealing off the apartment as a possible crime scene. Police were on the scene immediately but reportedly no road blocks were put up until 10 a.m. She had been wearing Eeyore pajamas from Marks & Spencer and had gone to sleep with her pink blanket and her Cuddle Cat.
After a quick, frantic search of the resort grounds, they reported Madeleine missing at 10:14 p.m. She then realized that, while twins Amelie and Sean were fast asleep, Madeleine, who was going to turn 4 on May 12, was gone. At first she didn't notice anything amiss but then saw that the curtains were moving in the breeze, meaning the window was open.
Kate returned to the apartment at 10 p.m. but later couldn't definitively say whether Madeleine had been in bed or not. Matthew Oldfield, another member of their party, went in at 9:30 p.m. Gerry checked on the children at 9:05 p.m. Every 30 minutes, someone would go and check on the kids. The group they ate dinner with that night, including some fellow parents, would come to be known to police and the media as the Tapas Seven. and went to join friends in the hotel restaurant, barely 75 yards away from their flat, unit 5A. Gerry and Kate, both doctors, tucked their three kids into bed at around 8:30 p.m. On May 3, 2007, the couple, who are also parents of now 12-year-old twins, were vacationing at the Ocean Resort in the beachside village of Praia da Luz, Portugal.Īfter an afternoon spent playing in the pool, Madeleine was last seen by non-family members at around 6 p.m. It's a level of disrespect, along with the flippant commentary and morbid humor, that's plagued the McCanns for the last decade. "It is right the material has been deleted." "Kate and Gerry have never dignified this sort of offensive and cretinous behavior with any sort of comment at all and they are not going to start now," a family spokesperson told the site. Just days ago, an Australian man named Daniel Gearie dressed up as Madeleine for Halloween-he donned a blond wig and a royal blue Everton jersey like the one the smiling toddler wore in a widely disseminated picture of her-and knowing he was doing something appalling, he captioned the pic, "You've taken it too far daniel." He also tweeted, "and before you say 'this is sick' etc I know it is but I'm not the one who left a child unattended in a Portuguese hotel." There's also been no escaping a world that still looks at them slightly askance-if not necessarily with suspicion, then with judgment. But 10 years-a horrible marker of time, stolen time." Most days are similar to the rest-another day. "Now here we are.Madeleine, our Madeleine-10 years.
I remember when Madeleine first disappeared, I couldn't even begin to consider anything in terms of years," the McCanns said in a statement on the 10-year anniversary of her disappearance earlier this year. "Ten years-there's no easy way to say it, describe it, accept it. Ten years ago, Kate and Gerry McCann suffered every parent's worst nightmare when their 3-year-old daughter, Madeleine McCann, went missing.Īnd for the McCanns there has been no waking up, no reprieve from the horror that is living every day not knowing what happened to her.
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