From the Times today
Why is the Portugal reservoir search for Madeleine McCann significant?
Sean O’NeillMay 04 2023, 6.00pm
Madeleine’s younger sister Amelie, 18, attended a small gathering in her home village of Rothley, Leicestershire, lighting a candle and thanking people for attending a “sad occasion”. Later Kate and Gerry McCann, the missing girl’s parents, said in a statement: “We love you and we’re waiting for you. We’re never going to give up.”
Privately, they know and understand that German, Portuguese and British police think their daughter was murdered by Christian Brueckner, a known sex offender serving a prison sentence in Germany for rape.
Brueckner, 45, denies any involvement but has been the prime suspect in Madeleine’s disappearance since 2020. He is an opportunistic sex offender with a history of burglary and petty theft. Police suspect that he entered the McCann’s unlocked holiday apartment intent on burglary and abducted Madeleine because he could.
However, despite extensive investigations across Europe, police have not found the evidence to bring him to court.
Brueckner is known to have frequented the area around Praia da Luz, where the McCanns were on holiday, and mobile phone records place him close to their apartment on the night she was taken. German authorities say “certain tip-offs” have led them to begin searching a reservoir and surrounding land about 30 miles from Praia da Luz. They appear to be conducting carefully planned searches as they look for Madeleine’s remains.
The developments will provoke mixed emotions in the McCann home. If police find what they are looking for it will dash the family’s slim hopes. Yet, as one family member said recently, “bad news” could bring some closure.
The McCanns may also take some comfort in knowing their persistence, specifically appeals on the tenth anniversary of Madeleine’s disappearance in 2017, led to Brueckner being identified as a suspect.
They have not wavered in the face of vilification and abuse. The couple, both doctors, have been asked at a press conference whether they murdered their child, officially named as suspects by the Portuguese police, booed by crowds in the weeks after Madeleine’s disappearance and relentlessly trolled on social media.
Yet they persisted. They persuaded the Labour home secretary Alan Johnson to commission a report into the handling of the case by Jim Gamble of the Child Exploitation and Online Protection centre. When his report was ignored by the Home Office, the McCanns forced David Cameron, the prime minister, to launch a Scotland Yard review of the case in 2010.
The McCanns never gave up and made repeated appeals, including in 2012, when they released an image of what Madeleine would look like five years after she went missing
The McCanns never gave up and made repeated appeals, including in 2012, when they released an image of what Madeleine would look like five years after she went missing
Gamble says the new searches “have the potential to be more than a false dawn — the police are not just going through the motions”.
More than £13 million of public money has been spent on the UK arm of the investigation and there has been criticism that other unsolved murders do not get the same attention — but is it wrong for grief-stricken parents to fight for justice and use every available weapon?
It is also worth remembering that the present investigation might not have been necessary if police had done their job properly, in terms of basic searches, examining phone data and keeping an open mind, in 2007.
