‘WE CAN STILL FIND MADELEINE MCCANN'
SOCIAL MEDIA COULD BE THE KEY TO CRACKING THE CASE 15 YEARS AFTER THE LITTLE GIRL VANISHED
Three-year-old Madeleine Mccann smiles for the camera, her fair hair in a tousled bob and her blue-green eyes open wide. It’s an image that’s instantly recognisable.
On May 3, 2007, Madeleine was taken from her bed at a holiday resort in Portugal, and this photograph appeared in newspapers and on TV channels around the world.
Parents Kate and Gerry were enjoying an evening meal with friends at the resort restaurant, while Madeleine and her younger siblings, Sean and Amelie, slept.
But at 10pm when Gerry
‘WE WILL NEVER GIVE UP HOPE OF FINDING MADELEINE ALIVE’
did a quick check on the children, he discovered Madeleine’s bed was empty.
Fifteen years later, the Mccanns are still waiting to be reunited with their little girl, who would be turning 19 next week.
Yet in a shock twist, Portuguese authorities named German national Christian Brueckner as a person of interest in the case. He has not yet been charged, but this news was welcomed by the Mccanns on April 22.
“This reflects progress in the investigation being conducted by the Portuguese, German and British authorities,” Kate and Gerry said in a joint statement.
“Even though the possibility may be slim, we have not given up hope that Madeleine is still alive and we will be reunited with her.”
Meanwhile, retired British police officer and forensics expert, Mike Neville, believes it is still possible to find Madeleine – or to find out what happened to her after she was snatched from her bed. He believes social media channels like Facebook and Tiktok can play a vital role.
Mike is an expert in image recognition and his expertise has helped identify people in major disasters, including the 2017 Grenfell Tower fire in London when 72 people died. From CCTV footage, he also helped identify the two suspects in the UK Salisbury Poisonings, in which a former Russian military officer and his daughter were poisoned with the Novichok nerve agent.
“It’s hard to live in this world without being captured on an image. You might be in a restaurant or on public transport when someone takes a selfie, and captures you and other people in the background,” he explains.
Mike recruits ‘superrecognisers’ – people with a natural ability to recognise and then recall the faces of criminals and victims – and
he has created pattern recognition software that uses computer technology to swiftly recognise distinctive patterns within images.
He says this technology could be used to scan image databases, like Facebook and Tiktok, to search for images of people with the distinctive marking in Madeleine’s right eye. The marking only occurs in about 70 people per million.
“If she was alive today, Madeleine could be on Facebook and the colour feature in her eye could be recognised by a computer. Facebook has so many images, and we could use the pattern and facial recognition technology that is available to search for her there. I don’t think we’ve done enough to exploit that,” says Mike.
He believes if Madeleine was kidnapped and is still alive, her image could appear in passport photograph databases or on social media platforms – if Madeleine was abducted and raised by another couple, who then photographed her and posted the images online. Some police jurisdictions have also catalogued images of children who have been exploited in films by paedophiles.
While Mike has offered his services to the Mccann family, his offer has not yet been accepted.
This year, the dedicated Metropolitan Police task force searching for Madeleine, Operation Grange, is being wound up, but Mike believes image technology could eventually reveal what happened to Madeleine.
“At the moment, police are focused on trying to find witnesses, but it’s 15 years down the line.
“The technology is there – why not use it?” says Mike. “We have seen miracles happening and kids being found years after they disappeared. We should be doing everything we can to find Madeleine.”