New influx of calls to police team

THE Metropolitan Police have received nearly 400 calls since revealing they are investigating a new suspect in the disappearance of Madeleine McCann.

The 43-year-old man has been named in reports as a convicted German child sex offender, currently in prison in his home country.

A Met spokesman said: “The Op Grange team have had just short of 400 pieces of information through, in calls and e-mails.”

Operation Grange is the force’s active investigation, which the spokesman said officers still consider a missing person inquiry because there is no “definitive evidence whether Madeleine is alive or dead”.

Meanwhile, German prosecutors are reportedly examining any links to the disappearance of two other children.

They believe Madeleine is dead after she vanished from an apartment in Praia da Luz, Portugal, on May 3, 2007, while on holiday with her family, and are investigating the suspect over her murder.

Spokesman Clarence Mitchell said on Friday that Madeleine’s parents, Kate and Gerry McCann, from Rothley, would be encouraged to know the Met’s appeal for information was “yielding results already”.

German news websites have now reported that authorities have contacted the family of Rene Hasee, who went missing in 1996.

According to reports the then six-year-old, from Elsdorf, Germany, went missing from a beach while on holiday with his family in the Portuguese Algarve.

It comes as an investigation has been opened into whether the suspect was involved in the disappearance of Inga Gehricke, who was five when she vanished from a forest in the SaxonyAnhalt region on May 2, 2015.

Prosecutors confirmed they are probing possible connections between the cases of Madeleine and Inga. But they said the man connected with the Madeleine McCann case was not currently a suspect.