The Disappearance of Madeleine McCann

The evening of 3 May 2007

Madeleine McCann, a three-year-old British girl, was on a family holiday in Praia da Luz, a resort village in Portugal's Algarve, with her parents Kate and Gerry McCann and her younger twin siblings. On the evening of 3 May 2007 the three children were left asleep in the family's holiday apartment while the parents ate with friends at a tapas restaurant nearby. Gerry McCann checked on the children shortly after 9 p.m. When Kate McCann went to the apartment at around 10 p.m., Madeleine was gone. A large search began that night, and she has not been found since.

The Portuguese investigation, 2007–2008

Portugal's Polícia Judiciária led the first inquiry. On 14 May 2007 the property developer Robert Murat was made an arguido, a formal suspect under Portuguese criminal procedure. In August investigators acknowledged publicly for the first time that Madeleine might be dead, and on 7 September 2007 her parents were also made arguidos. The McCanns returned to England with the twins two days later. On 21 July 2008 the Portuguese authorities shelved the case and lifted arguido status for the parents and for Murat. None of them was ever charged with anything, and all three are innocent in law.

The arguido status is worth understanding: it gives a person certain procedural rights and duties during an investigation, but it is not an accusation decided by a court. Being named an arguido does not mean that a person has been charged, let alone found guilty.

British and Portuguese reviews

In 2011 the Metropolitan Police in London began reviewing the case at the request of the then Home Secretary, Theresa May. In July 2013 the review became a full investigation, known as Operation Grange, which at that point had identified 38 people of interest. Portuguese police reopened their own inquiry in October 2013 after a review found new lines of investigation. Scotland Yard has described its work as a missing-person inquiry, and in April 2025 ministers approved more than 100,000 pounds of additional funding for it.

The German suspect

On 3 June 2020 police disclosed that a German prisoner, later identified in the media as Christian Brückner, was a suspect. German prosecutors said they were treating the case as a murder inquiry and assumed that Madeleine was dead. Portuguese authorities made him an arguido in April 2022. Brückner denies any involvement, and he has never been charged in connection with Madeleine's disappearance. He is also treated as a suspect by the Metropolitan Police, whose request to interview him he refused.

Brückner has a separate conviction: in 2019 a German court sentenced him to seven years in prison for raping a 72-year-old American woman in Portugal. He was released from prison in Sehnde, near Hannover, on 17 September 2025 after serving that sentence. According to his lawyer, the conditions of release included an electronic ankle tag, regular contact with probation services and surrendering his passport.

Searches requested by German investigators have taken place in the Algarve. In May 2023 officers searched land near the Arade reservoir, about 30 miles from Praia da Luz; a German prosecutor said afterwards that items had been seized but that their relevance was unclear. In June 2025 German and Portuguese officers searched plots of land and ruined buildings a few miles from the resort. No breakthrough has been announced from either operation.

Other court cases, 2024–2026

On 8 October 2024 the regional court in Braunschweig acquitted Brückner of five unrelated sexual offences that prosecutors alleged had been committed in Portugal between 2000 and 2017; the judge cited insufficient evidence and unreliable witnesses. Prosecutors appealed on points of law, and Germany's Federal Court of Justice has scheduled a hearing for 11 January 2027. That hearing is a legal review of the verdict, not a retrial, and the acquittal stands unless it is overturned.

On 13 October 2026 Brückner appeared before the regional court in Oldenburg in an appeal over insulting a prison officer in October 2023. He admitted the insult and apologised, and the court replaced an earlier six-week prison sentence with a fine of 3,000 euros. German news agency dpa reported that the ruling was not yet final.

Separately, in November 2025 a jury at Leicester Crown Court found Julia Wandelt, a Polish woman who had claimed to be Madeleine, guilty of harassing Kate and Gerry McCann; she was cleared of stalking and sentenced to six months. A co-defendant was acquitted.

Where the case stands

Madeleine McCann remains a missing person, and nobody has been charged over her disappearance. The case still involves police in three countries, each working under its own legal system, which is one reason why progress has been slow and public information limited. Her parents have said they still hope to see their daughter again, and unproven claims about any individual, including the German suspect, should be read with that in mind: only a court can establish guilt.