Is this the end of the road in the hunt for Madeleine McCann? How the desperate new search unfolded in Portugal
The mystery of the missing three-year-old Madeleine McCann has preoccupied the British public since she vanished from her family’s holiday apartment in Praia da Luz, in Portugal’s Algarve 18 years ago.
Millions of pounds have been spent on investigation after investigation amid relentless media scrutiny, but progress appeared to have all but stalled until 2020, when German investigators revealed they had identified a prime suspect – convicted rapist Christian Brueckner.
So when German federal officers this week descended on a string of abandoned buildings in a stretch of neglected wasteland near a cottage he used to rent outside Praia da Luz, armed with high-tech ground penetrating radar, the world watched. Was it possible that this time they would uncover the truth?
Officials have not yet commented on what, if anything, they discovered. But as crews packed up with a few soil samples and some animal bones after three days of searches on Thursday, it seemed like they were once again leaving without answers.
Not even Portuguese police, who supported the German search efforts, knew what intelligence had prompted them to suddenly target these remote locations.
But without concrete evidence linking Brueckner to Madeleine’s disappearance, German officers are in a race against time.
The 47-year-old suspect could be freed from Sehnde prison, outside Hanover, by September as his seven-year sentence for a raping a 72-year-old American woman in Praia da Luz in 2005 comes to an end.
Brueckner, who denies any involvement in Madeleine’s disappearance, has already revealed he plans to leave Germany when he’s released, with suggestions he could move to Asia or South America.
Small teams of a dozen-or-so officers spent three days this week in the beating sun as they scoured derelict farmhouses and outbuildings in the stretch of scrubland just over a mile from where Madeleine was last seen.
The 120-acre area, off a dramatic clifftop path along the coast between Atalaia and Lagos, is said to have once been populated by a farming community, but it has long been abandoned because it is so arid.
Officers from Portugal’s most senior force, the Policia Judiciaria, usually spend their time investigating serious organised crime, terrorism and murders, but found themselves shifting rocks and rubble in the unrelenting heat as they were drafted in to support German investigators.
They used shovels and chainsaws as they battled with rock-hard ground and overgrown vegetation. They brought in a digger as they cleared rubble and detritus from inside the old structures, seemingly to clear the path to use ground penetrating radar equipment on the second day.
Fire crews helped them to pump out a disused well at one derelict farm building, which was littered with graffiti.
Watching them work, it was apparent that if the answer to Madeleine’s disappearance lies in this outback, the odds of them finding any meaningful evidence after almost two decades are depressingly slim.
