Madeleine Beth McCain

Status:

Open

Jurisdiction:

Portuguese Judicial Police Pj Scotland Yard Operation Grange German Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA)

Missing From:

Praia da Luz, Portugal

Summary:

Madeleine Beth McCann was a 3-year-old British child who disappeared from her bed in a holiday apartment in Praia da Luz, Lagos, Portugal, on the evening of May 3, 2007. The McCanns set up Madeleine's Fund: Leaving No Stone Unturned Ltd on 15 May 2007 to raise money and awareness. Madeleine's whereabouts remain unknown, although German prosecutors believe she is dead.

Vital Statistics

Circumstances of Disappearance:

The McCanns arrived on 28 April 2007 for their seven-night spring break in Praia da Luz, a village in Portugal's Algarve region, and were placed in 5A Rua Dr Agostinho da Silva, an apartment owned by a retired teacher from Liverpool. The McCann children had been left asleep at 20:30 in the ground-floor apartment while their parents dined with friends in a restaurant 55 metres away. The parents checked on the children about every 30–40 minutes throughout the evening, until Kate discovered Madeleine was missing at 22:00. When Kate McCann returned for a 10:00 PM check, she found Madeleine's bed empty and the window open. The nine adults dined together most evenings at 20:30 in the resort's tapas restaurant, as a result of which the media dubbed the friends the "Tapas Seven". Kate McCann went to the apartment and discovered Madeleine was missing around 10 p.m. Portuguese police initially believed the little girl had wandered off and would be quickly found. As a result, they failed to promptly distribute a description of the missing child or search cars crossing the Portugal-Spain border, less than two hours from Praia da Luz.

Additional Details:

Jane Tanner reported that she saw a man carry a child away from the resort 45 minutes before Madeleine was reported missing, becoming one of the most-discussed aspects of the case. Scotland Yard came to view it as a red herring. On September 7, 2007, Portuguese officials named Gerry and Kate McCann, both of whom are physicians, as suspects in their daughter's disappearance. Soon after, authorities leaked word that Madeleine's DNA had been discovered in the trunk of the car her parents rented in Portugal almost a month after she vanished. In September 2007, Kate and Gerry were labeled arguidos (suspects), but a year later, the label was lifted due to lack of evidence. The Portuguese police investigation into her disappearance closed in July 2008. Scotland Yard began a review of the investigation, known as Operation Grange, in May 2011, and announced in April 2012 that they believed Madeleine might still be alive. In June 2020, German prosecutors stated that they have "concrete evidence" that Christian Brückner killed McCann. He was identified as a prime suspect by German authorities in 2020 as he had been living in Praia da Luz at the time Madeleine vanished. German authorities made him the official prime suspect in 2022. Brückner was jailed in Germany in 2019 for raping a 72-year-old woman and is currently serving a prison sentence that is due to end in September. Although German authorities claimed that they had "concrete evidence" that Brückner had murdered Madeleine, he has never been charged in the case. In May 2024, the Home Office confirmed that up to £192,000 had been approved for Operation Grange for the 2024–25 financial year. This brought the total cost of the investigation to £13.2 million as of 31 March 2024.

Case Last Updated:

Jul 02, 2026