The search for Madeleine McCann in the Algarve has ended, and the collected samples will be sent to Germany

Portuguese and German authorities have completed the last monitoring operations in the frame of Madeleine McCann’s disappearance, which started on Tuesday in the Arade Reservoir, in the Algarve, and lasted a day longer than expected, until Thursday afternoon, due to unfavorable weather conditions. Local journalists displaced in Arade emphasize that relevant material could be found, alluding to a large and prolonged concentration of officers in a certain area.

As confirmed by the Portuguese judicial police, all the obtained samples will be sent to Germany in order to analyze in the laboratory. It was the German prosecutor’s office that requested the continuation of the search with a European investigation warrant. He will now try to establish some relationship between the evidence collected and Christian Bruecknerthe main suspect in the murder of little Maddie.

Both Scotland Yard and the Portuguese Judicial Police avoid using this terminology and still treat the case as a disappearance. In addition, they also agree in admitting that they do not have all the information that motivated the German prosecutor’s request Hans Christian Wolters, who claimed to be “convinced” of his suspect’s guilt.

The search lasted for three days, during which the agents concentrated on an area of ​​about 500 square meters on the perimeter of the reservoir. Although they used boats, there is no record that there were diving teams there remove funds, and they limited themselves to a superficial examination of the shores. So they focused on the perimeter (now in the open due to the drought, but in 2007 under water), where light machinery such as pickaxes and chainsaws, canine units and georadar were used.

Arade is 50 kilometers from where Madeleine McCann disappeared 16 years ago, when she was sleeping with her two brothers in the Praia da Luz resort, where the family was on holiday. After his arrest for sexual offenses and after various investigations, the suspect was connected to this area when a minor English girl disappeared.

The case of Madeleine, the most famous disappearance in the world

He disappeared in the most mysterious way possible when he was only three years old. And almost 16 years have passed since then. However, the case of the British woman madeleine mccann It is one of the most enigmatic in the world. Because of the way it all happened, because the image of that blonde girl with a spot in her eye – a coloboma on the iris – is etched in the public’s imagination, but also because after years of silence and from what seemed like a thorough investigation, from time to time it emerges new clues that, so far, did not lead anywhere.

May 3, 2007, the day that was lost

The reconstruction and alleged step-by-step of Maddie’s disappearance is one of the most repeated accounts of criminal events in recent history.

Jerry and Kate McCann, two doctors from Leicester, traveled to Praia da Luz, a tourist spot in the Algarve, to spend a few days of vacation with a group of friends, also with small children. Maddie spent that night in an apartment rented by her parents in a tourist resort with her younger brothers. Despite the young age of their eldest daughter, who is only three years old, the McCanns dined at a restaurant at the resort with friends. Adults visited the apartments to keep an eye on their children. In one of those surveillances, Kate McCann realized this Madeleine was not in the room. The alarm was immediately raised and the entire hotel complex turned to look for the girl in the first minutes.

Within a few hours, the news about the disappearance of a little British girl in the Algarve went around the world. The case had everything: her youth, the fact that she was left alone in the room and the possibility that it was her kidnap.

Media from all over the world came to Praia da Luz. The image of the broken Kate and Jerry McCann was on the screens and newspapers of all countries. A lot was raised, but the investigation seems to have borne little fruit.

From the first moment it was said that it was the alleged one crime scene, the room where the children slept, was disturbed by the comings and goings of adults looking for Maddie. On the other hand, the Portuguese police have been criticized for the way they are handling the case.

the main suspects

In those two weeks, there were two suspects. Two foreigners who lived in the area. One of them, Robert Murat, a Briton living in Portugal, worked as a translator for the international media and the police in those days. His dedication to the investigation brought him into the limelight. The police searched his house, which was very close to the hotel, and even dug up his garden. That line of inquiry ended in a dead end. The second person questioned is a young man of Russian origin, Sergej Malinka, who was related to Murat and whom he allegedly invited to talk about the Maddie case. They searched his computer equipment and interrogated him for hours. There were no results either.

Parents in the spotlight

Four months after Madeleine’s disappearance, the public image of Madeleine’s parents changes by 180 degrees. From looking like broken parents, they have become for many the main suspects in the disappearance of the minor. Kate McCann is first questioned by the Portuguese police, and after a few days, Maddie’s parents are considered suspects. A figure that in Portugal gets the name “arguido”.

Jim Gable himself, one of the main people in charge of the investigation from the British police, claimed that at first he thought that the girl’s father was responsible for the disappearance, although he assured that a little later he believed in his innocence.

Another critical moment occurred when the investigators discovered the DNA sample in Maddie’s bedroom. The correspondence was more than 80% with the McCanns. There was talk of another bloody death, which investigators would find in the trunk of a car the family had rented for vacation. After some time, the car was thought to have been rented, but after the disappearance of the girl.

After these events, the family returns to the United Kingdom, but the McCanns travel around the world to preserve the memory of their daughter. In parallel, the girl’s parents open a new line of investigation outside the Portuguese police and Scotland Yard. Backed by private capital, the McCanns hired detectives to search for their daughter all over the world.

Since then, all steps have been in the wrong direction. In 2019 Mirror He exclusively predicted that British police could be close to solving the case after considering a new suspect, a foreigner who was in the Algarve at the time of the girl’s disappearance in 2007.

Portuguese agents claimed that “closer than ever to finding out what happened to Madeleine.

Already in 2020, a new suspect, a 43-year-old German so-called Christian Brueckner, a man with a long criminal record who is in prison. He was convicted of sexually assaulting a woman in the area where Maddie disappeared.