In pictures: Search for Madeleine
Intense media interest continues on 10 May as the police say they are scaling back local searches.
&%+((£ Wonder if there might have been a connection ? Police scale back local searches ... missing child's desperate parents employ private detestives.
I don't think so, the parents never seemed to think local searches were useful because they were convinced she'd been abducted, weren't they? Kate never mentioned the searches being stopped, at any rate.
It was 11th May when IFLG came to Portugal to discuss if and how they could help. I assume the McCanns could have turned them away, so it's strange that they seem to have brought Control Risks Group with them.
There were meetings that weekend when the discussions included the possibility of being charged with neglect, the Ward of Court application which would help to overcome data protection laws when asking for records which could 'help their case' [what case; neglect?] and the setting up of the 'fighting fund'.
'Hugh' from CRG attended some of these meetings. An anonymous donor had set aside funds to hire detectives, apparently, the inference being that CRG were the ones hired. By Sunday 13th they were giving their statements to two detectives from CRG, anyway.
So on the weekend of Madeleine's birthday, ten days after her disappearance, the first detectives started work, paid for by an anonymous donor.
All info from Kate's book.