Hunt goes on for Maddie McCann
New funds have been released for police to pursue ‘critical leads’ in their 10-year hunt for Madeleine McCann
TEN long years, more than £11 million (R198 million) spent and a monumental cross-border search. Unprecedented media coverage resulted in about 8 000 reported “sightings” of the little blonde girl – but a decade later there’s still no sign of Madeleine McCann. Her parents, Gerry and Kate McCann, had been bracing themselves to accept the inevitable: the money supplied by the British government to hunt for their firstborn was drying up and there seemed little chance of more coming their way.
Then came renewed hope when the British Home Office announced it had freed up a further £154 000 (R2,77 million) to continue the search a little longer.
The latest cash injection means Scotland Yard’s Operation Grange – as the search for Maddie is known – will have six more months to try to get to the bottom of one of the most enduring mysteries in modern times.
Scotland Yard – the headquarters of the London Metropolitan Police – reignited the McCanns’ hopes for answers when they uncovered new information in 2013, prompting Portuguese police to reopen their own case.
The investigation was taken on by the Metropolitan Police in 2011 after the girl’s parents appealed to then UK home secretary (and now prime minister) Theresa May in 2010.
Portuguese authorities had called off their own search in 2008, declaring they’d exhausted all leads.
But the whole undertaking has been cripplingly expensive – as well as controversial. The cost of the search has met with resistance from the British public, a sizeable sector of which feels the money could’ve been put to better use. Instead the money has all but gone down the drain as lead after lead turned up nothing, critics say.
To date, it’s cost British taxpayers £11,2 million (R201,6 million). In 2014, Operation Grange officers spent almost £16 000 (R288 000) on 67 return flights to Portugal, the country where Maddie disappeared. In October of that year, they had to scale down the 29 detectives on the case to just four – and in August this year it emerged Operation Grange had just two months of funding left.
The police had already received an extra £85 000 (R1,36 million) to cover “operational costs” between April and September as they chased a new theory that Maddie had been snatched by a human trafficking ring. This brings the total cost of the investigation for the 2017-2018 financial year to £309 000 (R5,56 million), a Home Office spokesman revealed to
British newspaper The Mirror.
And yet the powers that be are determined to continue. “We want a breakthrough,” says Mark Rowley, Scotland Yard’s assistant commissioner, adding there are still “critical leads” investigators want to pursue. But he concedes there’s no definite evidence that Madeleine, who would be 14 now, is alive.
Gerry has defended the amount spent on the search. “I know it’s a single missing child but millions of British tourists go to the Algarve [Portugal’s holiday playground] and you have a British subject who was the subject of a crime.
“There were other crimes that came to light following Madeleine’s abduction that involved British tourists, so I think prosecuting it to a reasonable end is what you’d expect.”
MADDIE’S disappearance had become global news. The then three-year-old vanished from the family’s hotel room in Praia da Luz, Portugal, in 2007 while Kate and Gerry enjoyed dinner with friends at a nearby tapas bar.
The couple, also parents to twins Sean and Amelie (now 12), vowed not to rest until she was found.
The parents have frequented headlines for the past decade, their gaunt faces becoming regular features at press conferences as they refused to let the world forget about their daughter.
Kate (49) and Gerry (48) were subjected to criticism for leaving the children alone while they dined out that night. But they maintain they did what many parents did and regularly left the restaurant to check on their kids, believing them safe in the cluster of holiday villas.
When Kate returned to the flat at 10pm, she found the bedroom window open, the shutter raised and Maddie gone.
“We felt so secure we simply didn’t think hiring a nanny was necessary,” Kate wrote in her 2011 book, Madeleine: Our Daughter’s Disappearance and The Continuing Search. “It goes without saying that we now bitterly regret it.”
Gerry was also consumed with remorse. “No one will ever feel as guilty as we do over the fact that we weren’t with Madeleine at the time,” he said.
But one thing that haunts Kate to this day is something Maddie said on the morning of her disappearance: “Why didn’t you come when Sean and I cried last night?”
Kate now believes her children had been crying because someone had tried to break into their room the night before.
“So haunted have I been ever since by Madeleine’s words that I’ve continued to blame myself for not making completely certain there was no more information I could draw out of her.”
Portuguese police launched an investigation into Kate and Gerry but they were eventually cleared – although this didn’t silence critics who believed the McCanns faked Maddie’s abduction to hide her death.
The McCanns have even been dubbed the McScams by people who believe they’re lying about Maddie’s disappearance.
Gonçalo Amaral, the Portuguese police detective who initially headed the search for Maddie, also pointed the finger at them in his 2008 book, The Truth of the Lie. The couple tried and failed to sue him for libel – Portuguese courts upheld his right to freedom of expression.
He’s now reportedly planning a sequel and may even consider suing the McCanns for “damaging his reputation” and causing him “years of anguish”.
But a close friend of the McCanns told the Daily Mail the family will fight back. “If that happens, it would be a relentless battle. Kate and Gerry only took civil action against Mr Amaral in the first place to stop him spouting his malicious lies. He’s profited from their pain.”
THE family still live in the same house in Rothley, Leicestershire.
Gerry, a heart specialist, still has the same job as a consultant cardiologist at Glenfield Hospital. Kate, also a doctor, used to work as a GP but handed in her notice at her practice after Maddie’s disappearance. But in April she announced she was taking “the big step” to return to work in the medical sector.
“Ultimately you have to keep going, especially when you have other children involved.”
She admits she struggles to let the twins out of her sight. “Some of that is subconscious, I think – your mind and body just take over to a certain extent.”
Sean and Amelie are well informed about the search for their sister. “They’re up to date, they know everything, they know if we’re meeting police,” Kate says. “There’s nothing kept from them.”
The twins are “doing really well”, she adds. “They’ve grown up knowing their sister is missing and they want her back.”
The couple worry about the effect the constant scrutiny – and take-no-prisoners social media trolls – may have on their youngsters.
“People need to think before they write and consider the effect it has,” Gerry says.
“I think we’ve seen the worst and the best of human nature. But I think it’s safe to say our experience, other than on the internet, has been overwhelmingly about seeing the better side of human nature.” SOURCES: BBC, MAILONLINE, THE SUN, THE MIRROR, THE INDEPENDENT, SKY NEWS, THE GUARDIAN