All the police searches for missing Madeleine McCann over 16 years | World | News
As German authorities begin what is the third search of a reservoir near where Madeleine McCann disappeared 16 years ago, here is a look at everywhere investigators, both civil and private, involved in the case have looked for the missing girl.
Searches for Madeleine began the day of her disappearance on May 3, 2007, in Portugal and frantic sweeps of the area near where she was last seen took place for several following weeks.
Since then, multiple suspects have been identified and dismissed while various locations further afield have also been investigated.
Police were called to the Ocean Club complex on May 3, 2007, after Madeleine’s mother Kate reported her three-year-old daughter was missing.
Madeleine was asleep in the family’s apartment, alongside her twin siblings, 100 yards from the club’s tapas bar located towards the centre of the complex prior to her disappearance.
When Kate returned to the apartment to find her daughter missing, police officers, staff and some of the club’s guests began a frantic search.
They scoured the entire Ocean Club during the evening and through the night until daybreak.
Border police and airport staff were quickly put on alert and hundreds of volunteers joined efforts to find Madeleine in the following days.
Despite the mass search, on 26 May, police issued a description of a man seen on the night of Madeleine’s disappearance, possibly carrying a child, but they had made no significant inroads into locating the young girl.
The following month, a Portuguese police chief admitted vital forensic clues could have been destroyed in the immediate aftermath of Madeleine’s disappearance as hundreds of people attempted to help.
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Madeleine’s parents Gerry and Kate McCann had previously dismissed Mr Correia as a self-publicist and said there was no evidence suggesting any link between their daughter and the reservoir.
In January 2014, British detectives and forensic officers then flew to Portugal amid claims they were planning to make arrests.
They re-searched the municipality of Praia da Luz, within which the Ocean Club is located.
They later searched an area of scrubland situated south-west of the complex, though the investigation yielded nothing of interest.
In 2020, three further searches, one in Portugal and two in Germany, were conducted after convicted sex offender Christian Brueckner was listed as a suspect in Madeleine’s case.
In July, Portuguese police and divers searched three wells in the area of Vila do Bispo, on the Algarve, according to local media, but police said no evidence was found.
German police later that month searched a vegetable garden on the outskirts of the northern city of Hanover believed to have belonged to Brueckner. A small excavator was being used to clear the plot and police officers combed the ground with rakes and shovels, according to footage shown on German media.
A spokeswoman for state prosecutors in the area confirmed that the search was taking place as part of its investigation into the disappearance of three-year-old Madeleine in Portugal in 2007.
And in November that year, German officers equipped with sniffer dogs and a mobile police station descended on a house near Hanover, where suspect Christian Brueckner once lived, after receiving a tip-off from a member of the public.