Two days ago, German authorities resumed the search for Maddie McCann, who disappeared in Portugal in 2007.
Portuguese, German and British investigators investigating the mysterious disappearance of little Madeleine McCann in 2007 conducted their second day of research on the banks of a reservoir in southern Portugal on Wednesday.
Police left the scene at the end of the day on Wednesday after continuing excavation and raking certain parts of the land along the banks of this reservoir using special clearing machines, AFP journalists reported. According to local media, the excavations, which were initially supposed to last two days, will continue on Thursday.
This new investigation was launched on Tuesday at the request of German authorities, who since 2020 said they were convinced the British girl was dead and suspected a German multiple-recidivist sex offender already jailed in Germany for a rape in Portugal.
In addition to police officers from the three countries involved, the operation also mobilized gendarmes, firefighters and civil protection officers near the Arade dam, which is about fifty kilometers from the site of “Maddie’s” disappearance. On Tuesday, investigators had also been studying the dried-up shores of this lake in Silves, a town in the hinterland of the Algarve tourist region, until heavy rain began to fall at the end of the day.
The Portuguese Criminal Police announced on Monday that “new excavations” would be carried out “in the coming days”, but have not yet communicated this. Investigators reportedly collected soil samples and collected several scraps of cloth found at the scene, but have not been able to link the case to this date.
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Maddie McCann case: new excavations are underway in Portugal to find the body of the missing girl
According to the popular Portuguese daily Correio da Manha, which is usually well informed by local police sources, police are looking for a pink blanket or the pajamas Maddie was wearing on the evening of her disappearance, May 3, 2007, just before his fourth birthday.
The girl was vacationing with her family in the resort of Praia da Luz when she disappeared from her room at a resort while her parents were dining with friends at a nearby restaurant. Her parents, a pair of British doctors, then launched an extraordinary international campaign to find her, but the case remains one of the great criminal mysteries of recent years.
The research center had already been searched in 2008, including by divers who had only found animal remains. According to local media, the German suspect went there regularly and described the place as his “little paradise”. This man, who is serving a prison sentence in Germany for the 2005 rape of a 72-year-old American woman in Portugal, was identified by German investigators in 2020 as Christian Brueckner, a repeat pedophile who lived in the Algarve for several years.
According to the weekly Expresso, it was the testimony of an informant collected by German investigators that was considered “very credible” and led the police to take a renewed interest in the area.