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00:00Words cannot describe the anguish and despair that we are feeling as the parents of our
00:09beautiful daughter Madeleine.
00:11We request that anyone who may have any information related to Madeleine's disappearance, no matter
00:20how trivial, contact the Portuguese police and help us get her back safely.
00:30It is every parent's worst nightmare.
00:35Their daughter, only three years old, taken from her bed with no clue left behind.
00:43Seconds turn to minutes, minutes into hours, hours into days, days into months, months
00:53into years.
00:55Long after a decade, her fate still remains unknown.
01:01Before Madeleine was taken, we felt we'd managed to achieve a little perfect nuclear
01:07family of five.
01:12It has been very upsetting and it's caused a lot of frustration and anger, which is a
01:17real negative emotion.
01:19I think we just need to channel that and I just have to hope that in the long run that
01:23justice will prevail and all will be well.
01:50Madeleine Beth McCann is a British missing person who, at the age of three, disappeared
01:56from her bed in a holiday apartment in Praia da Luz in Portugal on the 3rd of May 2007.
02:06She has been described as the most heavily reported missing person in modern history.
02:12Will they ever find Madeleine McCann?
02:22Born on the 12th of May 2003 in Leicester, England, Madeleine was known to be a sweet,
02:28happy young girl with an outgoing personality.
02:32Madeleine is a beautiful, bright, funny and caring little girl.
02:37She is so special.
02:42Please please do not hurt her.
02:44Please don't scare her.
02:47Please tell us where to find her or put her in a place of safety and let somebody know
02:53where she is.
02:56We beg you to let Madeleine come home.
03:00The parents hope their appeal will persuade an abductor that they can safely let Madeleine
03:06go and end this ordeal.
03:09Jerry and Kate McCann were medical professionals.
03:14My understanding is that Jerry McCann was a heart specialist and Kate McCann was a GP,
03:20a general practitioner.
03:22What I like to say is that she looks like Kate but she's got a McCann personality and
03:28if you've seen the rest of my family...
03:29She's loud.
03:30Yeah, she's loud and she's a real extrovert and for one so young, she can express herself
03:36so well and she tends to be the ringleader with the younger kids and during the holidays
03:43she was the oldest of the eight children here and she just loved every minute of it.
03:49Every waking minute she was having a ball and that is certainly the image that I keep
03:55in my head.
03:57Madeleine was last seen days away from her fourth birthday at a holiday resort called
04:08the Ocean Club in Portugal.
04:14Madeleine and her two-year-old twin siblings, Sean and Amelie, were left asleep in the apartment
04:20while their mother and father, Jerry and Kate McCann, had dinner close by with their friends
04:24at a tapas restaurant.
04:26Only a mere 100 yards away.
04:31The table where the McCanns and their friends were sitting that night is about 150, 200
04:38metres away from the apartment.
04:41It takes a couple of minutes to walk that route and from that table, when you're sitting
04:46down, you have no sight of the roads that surround the apartment complex.
04:54All you can basically see are hedges, the second, third floor apartments and the restaurant.
05:02You do not have a great eye-line of all the surrounding areas, far from it.
05:15The couple had devised a rotor system to check on all their children throughout the evening.
05:20Jerry returned to the apartment at 9.05 and noticed the position of the bedroom door
05:25different to how he and his wife had left it when they initially headed out for the
05:29night.
05:30Looking in, Jerry finds all three of his children sound asleep.
05:36Heading back to the restaurant, he stopped for a conversation along the way.
05:41At 9.30 that night, a friend at the dining table, Matthew Oldfield, offered to check
05:46on the McCanns' children whilst making his way to check on his own children in the
05:50apartment next door.
05:52He returned to say all is well.
05:55At 10.00pm, Kate finishes eating and goes back to the apartment.
06:00She notices that the children's bedroom door is left quite open, but as she goes to
06:05close it slightly, a breeze slams it shut.
06:12I thought maybe I'd left the patio doors open, which I hadn't.
06:21I then decided I'd open the door just a little bit again, and that was when I looked in,
06:26and it was dark, so I was trying to make out if Madeline, you know, where is she, you know,
06:32she must be there.
06:33It sounds daft, but, you know, I didn't switch the light on, you know, and your parent knows
06:37that you try and, you don't want to disturb your children, and then suddenly I knew she
06:42wasn't there, so I thought, has she wandered through to our bedroom?
06:46So I went through to our bedroom, and when she wasn't there, that was when the panic
06:49first set in, and as I rushed back into the children's bedroom, that was the point, and
06:54I guess it was chance, there just happened to be a gust of wind, that suddenly the curtains
06:58that were closed over just blew open, and that's when I saw that the shutter had been
07:02raised, and the window was pushed right across, and that's when I knew, I didn't have any
07:08doubt really, I knew that somebody had taken our daughter.
07:14And you ran back to...
07:16Yeah, I quickly ran round the apartment, and I don't know why that was, because I knew
07:20what had happened, but for some reason I thought, oh, maybe someone's been in, and she's hidden,
07:24and she's cowering or something, I don't know, but I just flew out the back of the apartment,
07:29and then as soon as I saw Gerry and our friends, I just started screaming that Madeleine's gone.
07:43The alarm had been raised.
07:46Well, I think the first thing was it was disbelief, but obviously we jumped up from the table
07:51and ran back to the apartment, and I said, she can't be gone, she can't be gone.
07:55Kate's gone, I'm telling you, she's gone, she's been taken.
07:59She can't.
08:00And I saw the apartment and pretty much instantly knew she'd been taken, and one of the first
08:06things I did is I double-checked all the places Kate had already checked, wardrobes, kitchen
08:10cupboards, and I lowered the shutter, and I went outside, and I was aghast that the shutter
08:17could come up, and on the night, I thought that was how someone had got into the apartment.
08:23But we immediately started searching.
08:26The four men split up.
08:27We went round the immediate blocks of apartments, searching for Madeleine.
08:31We all met back at 5A, and then pretty instantly, within minutes, I asked Matt to go to a 24-hour
08:38reception and call the police.
08:42You know prior deluge, you know how quiet it is.
08:44We didn't even know which number to dial for the police.
08:48We couldn't speak Portuguese, so we acted pretty quickly, really.
08:52And Mark Warner's staff, who were off-duty, started a child search straight away, checking
08:59all the pool areas and everything.
09:01So there was an immediate search once the alert was raised.
09:15At the time that Madeleine went missing, my two youngest children were only a couple of
09:20years older than her.
09:21But never would we have left our young children out of sight and out of earshot.
09:30And regardless of the fact that one of the adults would check on the children every half
09:35an hour, that still left the possibility that for 29 minutes, a child could be crying, for
09:42example, and calling out for its parents.
09:45Or alternatively, there could be a 29-minute window of opportunity for somebody to steal
09:52one of those children away.
09:57I think the school of thought was that they were close by and that they could regularly
10:02go back and check on the children, and the children were sleeping.
10:06A missing person's report was filed.
10:08Blonde hair, blue-green eyes, a small brown spot on her left calf and a distinctive dark
10:15strip on her right iris.
10:23All child abductions normally get reported as a missing person.
10:27How you deal with those early hours of that missing person investigation, I think, is
10:33critical.
10:35If you make mistakes or you don't do the right things in the right order, then you
10:39get off on the wrong foot.
10:41When you get off on the wrong foot, then the investigation tends never to recover from
10:45it.
10:46So if you don't do the right things in a timely fashion very early in the investigation,
10:51then you'll pay the price as the investigation unfolds.
10:54So the longer you don't do those things, the less likely you are to solve the crime
10:59of finding the child.
11:04Police were called.
11:05Border and airport staff notified.
11:08Staff and guests were on high alert, and hundreds of volunteers joined efforts to find Madeleine
11:14in the following days.
11:19For the McCanns, it is now a matter of praying for a breakthrough, and the sense of dread
11:23mounts.
11:25They felt from the beginning this was a case of abduction, of someone snatching their
11:30little girl as she was sleeping in their holiday apartment.
11:33And a short time ago, they made this appeal.
11:36Words cannot describe the anguish and despair that we are feeling as the parents of our
11:43beautiful daughter, Madeleine.
11:46We request that anyone who may have any information related to Madeleine's disappearance, no
11:54matter how trivial, contact the Portuguese police and help us get her back safely.
12:02Please, if you have Madeleine, let her come home to her mummy, daddy, brother and sister.
12:12Kate, since day one, has always been seen holding Madeleine's favourite toy, Cuddle
12:18Cat.
12:19She knew that Madeleine would never be without the fluffy toy when tired, and later recalled
12:25how she knew a crime had been committed for this reason, when it appeared that Cuddle
12:29Cat had been taken from her daughter's arms.
12:32While police initially believed Madeleine could have wandered off and been killed, a
12:37former Scotland Yard detective highly suggests otherwise, stating that had she walked out
12:42of the apartment, she would have walked out with her toy.
12:46It's that lack of sense of urgency.
12:50When you're full of fear for your child, that was really hard to comprehend.
12:55And I guess we tried as well as we could to convey to the police that we know our daughter,
13:01we know she's been taken, and this is an emergency.
13:05And I think them being left till the next morning was just, you can probably imagine
13:11really, in every minute, it was crucifying.
13:16The first 48, 72 hours in particular were, as you can imagine, very difficult, quite
13:23dark, and it was quite difficult to function.
13:28Since that time, through people's help, we have got a lot stronger.
13:33We're very lucky in that we've got a fantastic family, really good friends, and even people
13:38that don't know us at all have been amazing.
13:41I mean, the support we've had has been overwhelming.
13:43And it's that, really, which has kept us strong and kept us positive and hopeful that
13:48we will see Madeleine back again with us.
13:53Over the following weeks, sniffer dogs were released to help with the search and found
13:57traces of blood on a wall in the McCann's holiday apartment.
14:01They acknowledged for the first time that Madeleine could be dead.
14:06Only four months after the initial search, Mr. and Mrs. McCann were made arguidos, meaning
14:13they were suspects in their daughter's disappearance.
14:20That just gave the conspiracy theorists more to bang on about.
14:26I am entirely confident that 15 years after Madeleine went missing, the McCanns have been
14:33witnesses of truth.
14:35They've been thrust in front of the world's media, which must have been extremely challenging.
14:41They, of course, suffered the worst thing imaginable in the fact that one of their much
14:48loved children has gone missing.
14:51They have my sympathy.
14:53And with the amount of attention and police attention that they have garnered in 15 years,
15:01I have no qualms in saying I am entirely convinced they are absolutely not connected
15:10in any criminal way to the disappearance of Madeleine.
15:15They may have been negligent, but they certainly were not criminal.
15:20There's absolutely no evidence that Madeleine is dead.
15:24So let me finish, please.
15:25There's absolutely no evidence that Madeleine is dead, and there's absolutely no evidence
15:29that we were involved in her disappearance.
15:31One of the unusual things about the investigation into Madeleine McCann is that you would expect
15:36the parents to be suspects very early on and to be eliminated from the investigation.
15:42For some unknown reason, it took the police in Portugal four months to make Jerry and
15:48Kate McCann officially or guidos or suspects.
15:52And then it took them nearly a year to then decide that they weren't suspects.
15:57So again, that's a quite strange tactic on the part of the Portuguese police.
16:04Normally, if that investigation was being run in the UK,
16:07then we would look to eliminate the parents from the investigation within the first couple of days.
16:15The Portuguese investigation, I believe, was pretty slow to get up to full speed.
16:23It was, of course, carried out in the glare of worldwide publicity,
16:28which brings pressures of its own upon an investigating team.
16:34I think they dragged their heels to start with.
16:38I think perhaps the Portuguese were hoping that Madeleine would return,
16:43that maybe she had clambered out of the apartment,
16:47gone of her own free will and would be found wandering fairly soon.
16:51Tragically, of course, we all know that's not been the case.
16:56These pictures of police on the Spanish border are deeply worrying.
17:00The officers are supposed to be checking vehicles leaving Portugal.
17:03Instead, for 40 minutes, they sit in their own cars out of the rain.
17:08A van with blacked out windows drives by.
17:11This was filmed by ITV News just 48 hours after Madeleine went missing.
17:19Even after the rain stops, the officers stood by the side of the road chatting
17:24before finally resuming their checks.
17:30The dogs were the turning point where suddenly they felt this was a way to make it go away.
17:37The sniffer dogs, the police dogs, who they said could smell a cadaver, a dead body?
17:42Supposedly.
17:42Supposedly. And you think that they just wanted to brush it under the carpet
17:47to make you go away, to make that crime disappear?
17:50That's certainly what it looked like and how it felt to us, really, because,
17:55you know, you have to assume people that are leading these investigations,
17:59senior detectives, are intelligent people.
18:01And if you sat down for 10 minutes and even thought about the logistics
18:05of what they were suggesting, it just isn't possible.
18:11I suspect the Portuguese didn't appreciate the potential seriousness of this situation.
18:18Hence, so many people were allowed to trample through and around the crime scene.
18:25That may have dealt a fatal blow to there ever being any chance of solving this crime.
18:41Although not wanting to leave without their daughter,
18:44the couple eventually returned to the UK with their two-year-old twins, Sean and Amelie.
18:53Before Madeleine was taken, we felt we'd managed to achieve a little perfect nuclear family of five.
19:01We had that for a short period and I suppose it's almost the same way as if your child
19:09becomes ill or seriously ill or has died, like many other families have suffered,
19:15then your vision is altered and you have to adapt.
19:20And I think that's a theme that, speaking to other people who have gone through
19:26terribly traumatic processes with children and other loved ones, that is something that
19:31gradually happens and you adapt and you have a new normality.
19:36And unfortunately for us, our new normality at the minute is a family of four.
19:43At some point you've got to realise that, you know, time is not frozen and
19:51I think both of us realise that we owe it to the twins to make sure that their life is as
19:58fulfilling as they deserve and we've certainly tried our best to achieve that.
20:09I think there's a general fallacy around people that don't understand people that abduct children.
20:16They think that children are taken to order, they're shipped across the world and clearly
20:21that does happen in some parts of the world. In my experience, and I've interviewed
20:26hundreds of men that have sexually abused children and lots of them men have abducted
20:31them and murdered some of those children and I don't know anyone that has abducted a child
20:36for the purpose of trafficking them to a particular organisation or particular part of the world.
20:42This is a very unique kind of crime, it's really rare and that's why very few police
20:47officers have experience of dealing with it. What happens is, is most of the time if a child
20:54is abducted for the purpose of some kind of sexual gratification then in most cases that
21:01child is dead within six hours. If they're going to be killed they're dead very quickly
21:08and the reason for that is, is the logistics of keeping the child alive, keeping them quiet,
21:13keeping them fed, keeping them healthy and then transporting them without anyone seeing them
21:18are huge and offenders don't normally think that far in advance and if they did,
21:24to be able to do it takes a lot of planning and that's why it's a really unusual event.
21:35In 2008, Kate and Gerry made headlines on the front of every newspaper with an official apology
21:41from the Daily Express for allegations that they were responsible for their daughter's
21:45disappearance. Over the course of this year, the friends the McCann's travelled with,
21:51known as Tapas 7, were interviewed and re-interviewed. Nearly all of the friends
21:57received serious defamatory articles connecting them with Madeleine's disappearance,
22:01but only shortly after received libel damages. In July of 2008, Portugal's Attorney General
22:09archived the case for lack of evidence. We welcome the news today although it is no cause
22:16for celebration. It's hard to describe how utterly disturbing it was to be named our guido
22:25and subsequently portrayed in the media as suspects in our own daughter's abduction and worse.
22:33Equally, it has been devastating to witness the detrimental effect this status has had
22:39on the search for Madeleine. We look forward to scrutinising the police files to see what has
22:47actually been done and more importantly what can still be done as we leave no stone unturned
22:55in the search for our little girl.
22:57Missing person inquiries are often very challenging because in the overwhelming majority of cases
23:06people reported missing turn up not long afterwards. It's always a kind of juggling act
23:13for the officer in charge as to what resources do they deploy. Will this person turn up again?
23:20But in the case of a three-year-old going missing in these circumstances, it should be blatantly
23:26obvious to everyone that there is sufficient cause to treat this crime with the utmost seriousness
23:35and deploy every resource possible to it. It didn't happen. There was delay. I think there
23:43was some pondering and procrastination and wondering about what they should do and that
23:50may have damaged the inquiry, particularly in evidential terms, that it may simply never be solved.
24:01I'm pretty certain that the local Portuguese police were not equipped to deal with a child
24:06I'm pretty certain that the local Portuguese police were not equipped to deal with a child
24:11abduction of any size, let alone one of this magnitude and scale. Very quickly the local
24:20police would have called in more experienced detectives and they would have called in more
24:27experienced people from Lisbon. They would have formed the investigation team for them to
24:32investigate this crime. But if you're asking me were they equipped to deal with
24:38a child abduction of this type, then the answer would be no.
24:43People can say whatever they want about us. We've always been totally honest about what we did and
24:48we gave every single piece of information that we knew at that time in the book to the police.
24:54The key thing though is Madeleine's done nothing wrong. She's an innocent child and whoever's
24:59responsible for the abduction is still out there. So the children are at risk and people need to
25:05remember that Madeleine's missing and those responsible have not been brought to justice
25:10and that's why the investigation should continue as much as anything.
25:16This case was only at the beginning and the McCanns felt an extreme lack of effort by the
25:21Portuguese police to actually prioritise finding their missing daughter. Not giving up in 2009
25:29an appeal was launched in Algarve when Gerry first returned to Portugal after coming back to the UK.
25:35Later this year they joined Oprah Winfrey to mark two years since their daughter's disappearance.
25:42At the end of what is the ever more sorry story of the investigation into the disappearance of
25:49Madeleine McCann, there is one fact on which everyone can be agreed. She is still missing.
25:56Madeleine was three years old when she vanished. If she is still alive she's now spent two birthdays
26:03away from the people who love her. As soon as I realised the story or theory or whatever you want to call it
26:14was that Madeleine was dead and that we'd been involved somehow. It just hit home
26:26they haven't been looking for Madeleine.
26:31The couple turned to the UK government for help. They also released a book
26:36Madeleine to keep her in the public eye for as long as possible.
26:42Even as Kate and Gerry McCann began a news conference today to ask for the government's
26:47help, ministers were working to provide them with an answer. What is needed in the search
26:53for their daughter, the couple said, is a review of all the evidence. We want a review, you know,
26:59absolutely that is our number one thing. We think it should be done, it's the right thing.
27:04Us asking Portugal for it is perceived very differently. We shouldn't have to be parents
27:10doing this. So we're asking our government to engage with the Portuguese authorities directly.
27:15We're both part of the European Union. Reviews are standard practice in this country
27:20and it's a major unsolved crime and other children are at risk. We do not think the
27:25barriers are insurmountable and what we're asking for is entirely reasonable.
27:29So we want our government to do it. If governments say children are important then we'd like them
27:34to show that really. So you want action? Absolutely, I mean words aren't enough really. We
27:40really need the government to demonstrate that children matter and Madeleine matters. And of
27:44course we want the public to tell the Prime Minister that they think it's important.
27:51They continued using private detectives until Scotland Yard
27:55opened their own investigation, Operation Grange, in 2011.
28:02Okay, so you have to look at the events that happened. Madeleine went missing in 2007.
28:08In 2009, the then Home Secretary was a man called Alan Johnson and he asked for a review
28:16of the Portuguese investigation to be conducted by SEOP. I was head of behavioural analysis at
28:22the time and I was the person that did that review and I wrote a review that was then
28:28submitted to the Home Secretary. That report sort of became known as the Gamble Report because the
28:34man in charge of SEOP was a man called Jim Gamble but actually I did the review and I wrote the
28:40review and that review went to the Home Secretary. The Home Office decided that the Metropolitan
28:47Police would open up their own investigation into Madeleine's disappearance. They called
28:52it Operation Grange and that's still running right up to this day. Operation Grange was set
29:01up to review all of the investigations that had been previously conducted into the circumstances
29:06of Madeleine McCann's disappearance. However, the work done to try to collaborate with the
29:12Portuguese authorities isn't something talked about fondly. If you look at the relationship
29:19between the Portuguese police and the British police, that's the Leicestershire Police, that's
29:26the National Crime Agency, National Police Improvement Agency then and then you've got
29:31SEOP. All of those organisations were trying to help the Portuguese police and that didn't work
29:41very well because the Portuguese police didn't want any help. They found it quite insulting that
29:47people would come to their country and try and offer them advice how to investigate a crime that
29:53happened in their country so from the get-go it was really evident that the relationships between
30:01police forces internationally were quite fraught and I think that that was an issue
30:05and has remained an issue for the last 17 years. I'm going to hypothesise now but let's imagine
30:15that these circumstances were identical and had happened in the UK. Say for example
30:23at a holiday resort like Centre Parcs. I firmly believe that if parents had left their children
30:31in the UK like the McCann's did in Portugal that the police would have gathered a file of evidence
30:38which would have been sent to the Crown Prosecution Service to consider a charge of neglect.
30:45I'm no expert on the Portuguese judicial system or whether in fact they have crimes such as that
30:53on their statute book but if it had been in the UK I'm pretty confident that is what would have happened.
31:03How did things go so wrong do you think? Why didn't the Portuguese police
31:12understand your point of view? Why did they take the attitude that they did do you think?
31:18I was going to say we can't be certain. We have to speak to those involved. We don't believe for
31:25one minute that they thought we were involved in Madeline's disappearance.
31:28I think there was tremendous pressure to make the crime go away.
31:34In 2012 Scotland Yard released an artist's impression of what she had done.
31:39Yard released an artist's impression of what she may look like as a nine-year-old to help with
31:44possible sightings from the public. The senior investigating officer said that he was treating
31:49the case as a burglary gone wrong or as a criminal act by a stranger, most likely a planned abduction.
32:03With regards to the age progression, if you have seen a little girl who looks like this
32:08or if you see a little girl who looks like this please contact the police immediately.
32:13Please don't hesitate just contact them straight away. I'd like to appeal to the general public as
32:20well. First of all I'd like to say thank you because I know how much you've helped us in the
32:23last five years but we'd like to reach out to you for your help again. Can we encourage you to have
32:30a long look at the new age progression image and if you could help us by circulating it and
32:36distributing it to all your contacts far and wide that would really help the search.
32:46One of the important things about when you investigate child abduction is that you have
32:50to look at every piece of information that comes in and you have to assess it and grade it and
32:54decide whether or not it's worth you developing that piece of information. The situation was
33:01is that very quickly there was an artist impression released that generated lots more
33:06information people supplying names and who it may or may not be and all of that is going to create
33:13a lot of new information to go into the investigation to add to the vast amounts of
33:19information they've already got. So whilst it's important for the media to be used positively
33:25it can have a negative effect on investigations and slow them down. For 15 years Madeleine's face
33:32has been beamed around the world together with appeals for information so it's not surprising
33:39that there have been quite a number of reported sightings none of which appear to have been
33:45confirmed at any point. Ari and Ray Pollard didn't even know that Madeleine was missing
33:51but recognised her photo as soon as they saw it on television back home in Spain.
33:55Despite their constant calls to police in Portugal, Spain and the UK
33:59it was more than 10 days before there was any response. She had this pretty face and long
34:06blonde hair and on the side of the shoulders green eyes and she had little like sad look
34:14in her face. She responded to this man and said
34:21on me the accent and can we see mommy now. Was Madeleine here seen momentarily by this shop
34:29assistant in Amsterdam and how fully did police investigate? And then she came in like this
34:37down the aisle there. Yeah. Amsterdam says a little girl appeared in her party shop
34:43with an unknown couple she didn't know Madeleine had disappeared. I wanted to give her a balloon
34:50but she didn't want that she only wants her mommy she said and she said that these people took her
34:58from her mommy. Did she say anything else to you? Yeah I thought she said at that time that she took
35:05me from my holiday. I asked her her name and I thought at first she said her name was Maggie
35:12so I said oh Maggie that's a nice name and then she said no it's not Maggie it's Maddie.
35:17I understand why people make these reported sightings because they are very well-intentioned
35:24people. They want to do the right thing. She's a very recognizable young girl. They report it when
35:30they think they've seen a child that may have been her or now of course a young woman but sadly
35:37none of these sightings have ever been confirmed. So here you are again talking to the press
35:44talking to the media trying to get some action trying to get your little girl back but meanwhile
35:49life has to go on. Your home life has to continue. How does that happen? What happens with Sean and
35:55Amelie? Well you know a lot of the work that we do we do during the time that they're in school.
36:02The last eight months I have to be honest have been incredibly busy and so as soon as they go
36:06to bed I'm in the garage and working away at my computer so you know it has been very intense.
36:126 a.m starts and yeah I went through a phase of I'll work till two in the morning and then I get
36:16tired and go okay well I'll get up and start work at six in the morning so you know most of my work
36:21is done when Sean and Amelie sort of otherwise engaged whether that be at school or asleep
36:27and you know we've you know I've said all along our family's been incredible we have such support
36:32from our family and friends and you know Sean and Amelie are always in a loving environment so even
36:36if there's a meeting we have to go to for example we know that they're with people who they're very
36:41familiar with and love them very much so. And do they understand what happened to Madeleine? Yeah
36:46no they they know everything they you know we've answered any question they've asked we've
36:51we've answered as openly and honestly as we can and that's certainly been the advice we've had as
36:55well they know that a man's taken Madeleine and they call him the naughty man because they
37:00they know it's wrong they know that burglary of any kind which is obviously what they understand
37:05and even if you really want something you shouldn't take it if it doesn't belong to you
37:09they know Madeleine's our daughter she's their big sister and she belongs with our family.
37:14And you still believe that she's alive and she's out there somewhere?
37:18Oh we know there's a very good chance that she is yes. There's absolutely nothing to suggest
37:23otherwise Mary and as parents we've just got to keep going and I don't think any parent could
37:28accept that their child was dead without concrete proof of that so from our point of view we've got
37:34to keep going. In 2013 Scotland Yard released e-fit images of men they wanted to trace including one
37:43of a man who was seen carrying a child toward the beach on the night Madeleine vanished. And this
37:49drawing was obtained by talking to a witness in fact I believe a friend of the McCann's.
37:58Before Matt went into check for the McCann's at 9 30 that night Jane Tanner at 9 15 walks past
38:05the apartment as she goes to check in on her own children and sees a man carrying a child in his
38:11arms. He then became the primary suspect from that night. Six years later the Metropolitan Police
38:19concluded that this man seen was an innocent British holidaymaker carrying his daughter home
38:25from a crash. This case has got a long way to go it's going to run and run and run.
38:36And I just hope that sooner rather than later we get the answers that so many millions of people
38:44around the world pray for. Everyone is so curious about you two what are they really like you've
38:53met them you know what do you think happened there is an enormous appetite still curiosity
38:59appetite still curiosity about Madeleine and and the thing I always say is that you just
39:06work and work and work and the tragic thing about it is I get the sense very much with you both
39:12and in a sense perhaps almost more with you Jerry that everything you've achieved in life
39:17you've done through hard work and if Madeleine doesn't come back it will be because you feel
39:22you haven't worked hard enough. I don't know if I'd be quite as hard on myself as that but
39:28I think what we want to be able to look back both of us if we don't find Madeleine is to say that
39:34we we did everything humanly possible and we did consider everything so we will keep doing that
39:44and we've got a lot of tremendously good people helping us and and coming up with new ways of
39:49continuing the search. Kate McCann soon reveals that she has had thoughts
39:57about being wiped out in a motorway crash to end the pain of losing Madeleine but vows never to
40:03give up. At the request of the Metropolitan Police the Portuguese police reopened their inquiry.
40:10Over the next few years several investigations into new leads were followed by both the UK
40:17and Portuguese authorities in the Algarve area where Madeleine disappeared. But despite huge
40:23efforts being made including an e-fit of a potential suspect and searches of several areas
40:29no clue had been found.
40:35This is a very difficult time of year and it's the 10-year anniversary obviously an anniversary
40:40you hoped you would never see.
40:44Yeah I mean I never thought we'd still be in this situation so so far along the the line
40:51and it's a huge amount of time in some ways it feels like it was only a few weeks ago and
40:57other times it's felt really long um but it's a hard marker of time I think. And you've referred
41:04to it on your website as stolen time. Well yeah I mean it's time that we should have had with
41:08Madeleine we should have been a family of five for all that time and yeah it does feel stolen.
41:15And you could never have imagined 10 years ago that you would you would still be in this situation.
41:21I think the situation is that we tried everything in our power to not have a long protracted
41:29missing person case like this. It's devastating and you know early on I threw myself into trying
41:35to do everything we could to help find her. Obviously that hasn't worked yet but you know
41:43we are still looking forward I think that's the most important thing and there's still hope.
41:48And how are you doing as a family the pair of you? I think we're in a new normality really
41:57particularly over probably the last seems like a long time saying it but over the last five years
42:02since the Metropolitan Police actually started their investigation it's taken a huge pressure
42:09off us individually and as a family. Because before that you were trying to fight the case
42:15yourselves trying to encourage the police to look for Madeleine get the Portuguese police involved.
42:20Yeah the I think the key thing was and I suppose the injustice of it was that after the initial
42:26Portuguese investigation closed essentially no one other than us was actually doing anything
42:32proactively to try and find Madeleine. And I think every parent could understand that
42:38what you want and what we have aspired to is to have all the reasonable lines of inquiry
42:44followed to a logical conclusion as far as you can do that and that was incredibly frustrating.
42:50And you talked at the time about what a blow that was. It was terrible I mean it's horrible and you
42:56know as much as we tried and fortunate to have had so many donations into Madeleine's fund and
43:03use that money to try and investigate your hands are tied you don't have the powers that law
43:10enforcement have so. So how much of a difference has it made so for the last five years the police
43:15have been actively investigating? Huge. Absolutely huge and I can't emphasize enough just what a
43:23massive burden that's lifted from us and those around us.
43:31In October 2016 the Met Police's team investigating the Madeleine McCann case
43:37was cut from 29 full-time officers to just four. This was made to prioritize smaller lines of
43:44inquiries until new evidence had been found. Each year hundreds of thousands of pounds are spent on
43:51attempts to find Madeleine with a total of 13 million pounds being spent since 2011.
43:59During a BBC interview in 2017 the couple vowed to do whatever it takes for as long as it takes
44:06to find their daughter. We don't dwell too much on things unnecessarily so I think there's probably
44:12a self-protective thing there as well but we do have a very full life and as normal as we can make
44:19it. And how much do you do you make Madeleine a part of it and do you talk about Madeleine is she
44:26is she a name that crops up every day? Yeah I mean she's always still part of our life
44:33there's photographs all around the house. Obviously at this time of year then we can't
44:40even have conversations that doesn't involve the kids know that we're doing our interview today
44:46you know the anniversary's coming up so she is still part of it but obviously. Yeah I mean I
44:54think every kind of event that we do whether it be a birthday or a family occasion or even
45:02an achievement or something I mean that's kind of when you really feel her absence.
45:09It's slightly different to how it was in the early days when everything we were doing was
45:13was to find Madeleine whereas now we are having to get on and live a life as well but
45:19it's not that any day she's not there if you know what I mean. And last time we talked you told me
45:27how you were still buying birthday presents and Christmas presents for Madeleine are you
45:32with 10 years now are you still doing that? I still do that yeah. So you go around the shops
45:38and you think Madeleine would be this age now what would she want? That's it so I mean I obviously
45:44have to think about what age she is and something that you know whenever we find her still be
45:52appropriate so there's a lot of thought goes into it but I couldn't not you know she's still
45:58our daughter she'll always be our daughter. It's because Kate does all the present buying. I always
46:02do the present buying you know and yeah there'll be another one coming up in you know next few weeks.
46:09Then a new suspect 13 years after her disappearance.
46:23In 2020 a lead having been the most significant development in 13 years was made. Police in the
46:31German city of Braunschweig brought a German convicted sex offender to light. He has allegedly
46:38confessed to his part in Madeleine's disappearance to a man in a bar Christian Bruchner.
46:51He has a history of sexual offending against children. He has a history of adult rape and
46:59burglary and in fact my understanding is that that actual rape took place when he actually broke into
47:06the victim's home. He has a history of theft and drug dealing so he is a risk taker by nature.
47:17If you get someone who is a burglar someone who has a sexual interest in children and someone who
47:22is an habitual risk taker then you have the criteria for someone that is capable of breaking
47:30into an apartment and taking a child like Madeleine McCann. So in terms of the offender profile
47:38then he fits quite nicely into what we would be looking for for someone that has the the attitude
47:46the character and the capability because like I said before there are millions and millions of men
47:53and women across the world that have a sexual interest in children. There are very very few
47:59that would break into an apartment and take a child to feed that need of sexual gratification
48:05with a child. So whoever took Madeleine McCann is in a very very unique club and so what you're
48:13looking for is someone that not only has a sexual interest in children you're looking for someone
48:18that has the capabilities of committing that type of crime and if you look at Christian Bruchner
48:24he fits into that quite nicely. He's a risk taker, he's an habitual criminal, he breaks
48:30into houses and he's a sexual offender. He's sexually and morally indiscriminate and he'll
48:36offend against adult women, elderly women and he'll offend against children. So that puts him into a
48:42very rare club. The suspect is linked to an early 1980s VW camper van in 2007. This van was initially
48:54registered in his own name. Scotland Yard says he was driving the vehicle in the prior deluge area
49:01in the days before Madeleine's disappearance. Amongst other things he is known to have sent
49:07sick messages including swapping child abuse images with an undertaker as well as sharing
49:12thoughts of imprisoning a child. Only a day after Madeleine's disappearance it appears that he also
49:19re-registered the car into someone else's name. Bruchner is currently serving a prison sentence
49:27for an unrelated sex crime and has two previous convictions for sexual contact with girls.
49:36It appears that there is some circumstantial evidence that might link the man who's currently
49:42in a German prison. For example he lived on the Algarve in Portugal at the time. He has
49:51some criminal convictions. He lived a fairly transient sort of lifestyle and drove a sort of
50:00camper van type vehicle. But that's just circumstantial evidence. It's not direct
50:09evidence that would link him to the crime, the crime scene and the disappearance of Madeleine.
50:16I make no apology for reinforcing the fact that as a former detective I'm interested only in
50:25evidence in a case like this. And at the moment it appears to me that sufficient evidence to charge
50:34anyone simply doesn't exist. German prosecutor Hans Christian Wolters said he has written to
50:43Madeleine's parents telling them he has concrete evidence she is dead but refused to tell them why.
50:55It's not the case that charges are imminent because the evidence isn't strong enough at
50:59the moment. But we feel that we can go public with this now because the suspicion is based on facts.
51:08If somebody in the UK said that under our criminal justice system in all likelihood
51:14that would have jeopardized any chance of a person getting a fair trial. So I remain shocked
51:21that he speaks in this way and continues to do so. If you've got the evidence
51:29charge someone. If you haven't then be very very cautious about what you say
51:37because any experienced and pragmatic detective will tell you
51:43it's one thing knowing something but it's a very very different thing proving something.
51:51So the real question here is not who is Christian Bruckner. The real question is did the Portuguese
52:02police know about Christian Bruckner in 2007? Was he on their list of potential suspects and did they
52:09eliminate him from their investigation then because they didn't think he did it? Or was he not on their
52:14list? And if so why wasn't he on their list? Because he was a known sex offender who broke
52:19into houses and he lived in the area. So he would have been a natural suspect for this investigation.
52:31In 2023 a reservoir in Portugal was searched, a Raj Dam. This search came more than 16 years
52:39after McCann went missing and was made to help with the investigation into Christian Bruckner.
52:45It was the first McCann active search in almost 10 years. Bruckner allegedly frequented regularly
52:53with his drug dealer, describing it as his paradise. It lasted an extensive three days
52:59and resulted in the collection of some material. But upsettingly it hasn't done anything yet to
53:05aid in the mystery of Madeleine's disappearance. The reservoir was previously scoured by private
53:12investigators in 2008. A Portuguese lawyer claimed to have been tipped off by criminal contacts
53:18that her body was in the reservoir but nothing had been found.
53:23Clearly the investigation took some time to crank into action. It took some time to be regarded
53:32as a kidnap rather than perhaps just a missing person inquiry. And it may be that
53:40opportunities to gather evidence were lost and lost forever. Quite simply we might never know.
53:54Investigators combing through 8,000 photographs belonging to Christian Bruckner
53:59said they have found some potential lines of inquiry
54:02but Bruckner denies any connection to Madeleine. Their 16 year ordeal continues.
54:10There's a lot about this case which is unusual. The leaving of the children, the fact she's never
54:19been found, the fact that nobody's ever been charged in connection with this case, the fact
54:26that it's received global media attention for 15 years. It is probably the most famous crime
54:34of the 21st century on the entire planet and yes no one has yet been charged.
54:46In those first couple of days you seem to be wasting away really in front of our eyes and
54:52then there seemed to be a transformation and you seem to gather strength from somewhere.
54:57How did that happen? Again as I say I think the support that we had through people,
55:04through prayer has made a huge difference and it's true to say that the first two days we didn't
55:10sleep much, we didn't eat much but that was a few days and certainly since then things have
55:16picked up and we have been able to be stronger. But you still don't seem to be any closer to
55:22finding Madeleine. I think what you have to remember are there is a huge amount of work
55:28going on in the background and we know that there's a absolutely huge amount of
55:33information coming through and leads are being followed.
55:43The disappearance of Madeleine McCann has lasted a heart-wrenching number of 16 years.
55:49As each year passes the couple can only hang on to the very little hope they have
55:54of their daughter still being found today.
55:59I think we're seeing the worst and the best of human nature and experiencing
56:03in our personal experience rather than on the internet has been overwhelmingly
56:08seeing the better side of human nature and I think we need to remember that actually.
56:13The main thing that we've experienced is the goodness of people and the support that we've
56:16had over 10 years which hasn't wavered in all that time. In May of 2023 Madeleine turned 20
56:26and has spent a total of 17 years without her family.
56:33You must have imagined over the years
56:40if you saw her and what you'd say to her how your lives would change.
56:46Yeah I think I try not to go there too often to be honest it's one of those real
56:52bittersweet kind of thoughts.
56:57Yeah I mean I can't imagine I'd say 10 years is a long time but ultimately
57:03we're a mum and dad and she's our daughter and she's got brother and sister,
57:07grandparents and lots of family and friends you know.
57:13So it'd be absolutely fine you know it'd be well
57:17it's beyond words really, we'll cope with anything yeah.
57:23To have the strength and power to get through these years
57:26is something every parent should never have to face.
57:30Observing another milestone date without their daughter
57:34Geri and Kate McCann posted a poem on their Find Madeleine website
57:38reminding readers that she is still missing, still very much missed.
57:44Together with the police and the public the search for Madeleine continues.
57:51Whatever it takes for as long as it takes you know but there's still hope that we can find Madeleine.
57:56And if you do find Madeleine you will be able to show her everything you did to try and find her?
58:02Absolutely and I guess for her just knowing how many people have been there will and are home,
58:08really important.