Senior officers from the Portuguese police travelled to London earlier this year to apologize to the parents of missing toddler Madeleine McCann for how they handled the case.
As CrimeOnline has reported, the 3-year-old disappeared from her parents’ rental apartment in Praia da Luz, where they were on holiday, on May 3, 2007. Gerry and Kate McCann were taking turns checking on Madeleine and her siblings while they dined at a nearby restaurant.
Christian Brueckner, a convicted rapist serving time in prison in his native Germany for raping a 72-year-old woman in the same area of Portugal, has been named a suspect in the little girl’s disappearance and presumed death, but he has publicly denied involvement.
The Portuguese police met with Gerry McCann earlier this year to offer their apology, the BBC reported.
Portuguese investigators named the McCanns suspects in their daughters disappearance in September 2007, four months after the disappearance. At that time, detectives believed they had staged the abduction to conceal Madeleine’s death. Kate McCann said that detectives offered her a deal to admit her involvement in exchange for a shorter sentence.
Police lifted the “arguido” — suspect — status a year later, but they remained under suspicion for some time afterward.
The McCanns sued Goncalo Amaral, the lead detective who was eventually removed from the case but later wrote a book detailing his suspicions about the coupe, but the Portuguese supreme court threw out the case. They appealed to the European Court of Human Rights, where their case failed last year.
The new investigators say the initial investigation was handled improperly for a variety of reasons. They said they updated the McCanns on the investigation and gave their support to German authorities, who have long believed Brueckner, 46, killed the toddler.
“It’s a good sign,” said German prosecutor Hans Christian Wolters. “It shows that, in Portugal, there’s development in the McCann case.”
Earlier this year, German authorities, with the assistance of their Portuguese counterparts, carried out a search of nearby reservoir looking for evidence to link Brueckner to McCann’s disappearance. Brueckner was living near Braia da Luz when the McCanns were visiting there in 2007.
“We think that he was involved in the disappearance of Madeleine McCann and we think that he murdered Madeleine McCann,” Wolters said.
Brueckner has been charged with three more rapes, sexual assault, and sexual assault of a child in Germany, and Wolters said prosecutors expect to bring those charges to trial in 2024. He added the investigators hope to conclude their probe into Madeleine’s disappearance next year as well.
The McCanns have not commented on the apology from Portuguese authorities. They marked the 16th anniversary of their daughter’s disappearance on May 3, saying the girl is “still very much missed” and that they “await a breakthrough.”
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[Featured image: Madeleine McCann/handout]
