Examining the disappearance of Madeleine McCann
- Dark Waves Magazine
- Oct 2, 2020
- 3 min read
On April 28, 2007, a young family arrived in Portugal for their seven-night spring break vacation at The Ocean Club Resort. Praia da Luz had been a quaint village, with a population of 1000 people. On the night of May 3, 2007, a peaceful getaway suddenly turned into a nightmare for the McCann family. The disappearance of Madeleine McCann remains a tragic mystery to this day.
Madeleine entered the world on May 12, 2003, in Leicester, England. Madeleine had been described as a very happy, outgoing little girl. A little ball of energy, Madeleine had a love for dolls, dresses, and all things pink and sparkly.
On the evening of May 3, 2007, Madeleine’s parents, Gerry and Kate McCann met with a group of seven friends at a tapas restaurant at The Ocean Club Resort complex. The restaurant was not far from the apartment the McCann family had been renting for the duration of their holiday. Madeleine had been sleeping in the apartment with her younger brother and sister that night. The McCann parents and their friends had planned to check on their children every twenty to thirty minutes. At around 10 pm, Kate McCann had gone to check on the children. The front door had been locked that evening, but the back patio door had been left unlocked so that the adults could check on the children without disturbing them. When Kate McCann had looked into the room the kids were sleeping in, she noticed that the window in the room was open and that Madeleine was missing. The police had been notified immediately, along with the people working and staying at the resort. The search party for the three-year-old had gone on all night, and come sunrise they had found nothing. In less than twenty-four hours the McCann family held a press conference. This would be one of many public pleas the McCann parents would make. The border officials were on high alert, and staff at the airport were told to keep a lookout.
On May 12 the authorities of Portugal publically announced that they believed that Madeleine had been abducted. They believed that she was still alive and that she was somewhere in the country. Of course, there had been no way to verify this. On May 26, the authorities released a description of a man who was unidentified at that point. This description was based on a friend of the McCann family, Jane Tanner. While I had been researching this case, I found a few conflicting descriptions of this man. In August 2007, officials handling the case acknowledged for the first time that Madeleine McCann might not be found alive.
Let’s stop here for a quick second. Things had been looking extremely messy at this point, and it’s about to get a little messier. The investigation went awry from the start. There were problems with the crime scene; police noticed that the scene was not properly protected. That was bad enough. Madeleine had gone missing in the Internet era. With the Internet comes endless clusters of armchair investigators. Theories and conspiracies had spread like wildfire, and as time went by the speculations got even crazier. After as little as a year, the list of theories was endless; a burglary gone wrong and the involvement of human trafficking rings were prevalent theories. One of the worst theories was that Kate and Gerry McCann had something to do with their daughter’s disappearance. The couple had been labeled as suspects in September of 2007. Sometime after that, the couple and their twins were allowed to return to the UK. It’s often speculated that theories of the McCann parents being involved were merely just a means to protect the tourism industry.
After all these years, authorities finally believe that they have found the person who abducted Madeleine. The investigation is still ongoing at this point, but I’ll leave some links below for further reading.
Trigger warning: Mentions of sexual assault, pedophilia.
Comments