What happened to Madeleine McCann? Timeline of the missing girl mystery as ‘police seek suspect for UK trial’
British police are seeking to extradite a German man to stand trial in the UK in connection with the disappearance of Madeleine McCann.
The man, identified by local media as Christian Brueckner, was released in September 2025 after serving a seven-year sentence in Germany for the rape of an elderly woman in Praia da Luz, Portugal, in 2005.
However, Met Police said at the time that the 49-year-old remains a suspect in the Madeleine case – with Portuguese and German authorities also probing the three-year-old girl’s disappearance.
Scotland Yard are now hoping to bring him to the UK to stand trial relating to the suspected abduction and murder of the young girl, according to the Telegraph.
Brueckner has consistently denied any involvement in Madeleine’s disappearance.
The mystery of what happens to the young girl remains unsolved. Her body has never been found.
Here is a reminder of the events of the case.
The story began when the McCanns – doctors Kate and Gerry, their three-year-old daughter Madeleine and her two-year-old twin siblings Amelia and Sean – joined a group of seven family friends and their five children on holiday at the Ocean Club in the village of Praia da Luz on the southwestern tip of Portugal on 28 April 2007.
After a pleasant spring break by the sea, the adults in the party went out for dinner at the resort’s open-air tapas bar on 3 May, gathering at 8.30pm. The children were left behind sleeping in their respective apartments with the doors unlocked and a rota system in place among the parents to ensure that someone returned every half-hour to check on them.
When Kate McCann took her turn and returned to her apartment at 10pm, she raced back to the restaurant screaming “Madeleine’s gone! Someone’s taken her!” The police were quickly called and 60 staff and fellow guests searched the complex, calling out the girl’s name in vain until daybreak the following morning.
Border police and airport staff were put on alert and hundreds of volunteers joined the efforts to find the missing girl over the coming days, the case fast becoming a sensation.
The Portuguese authorities would later attract criticism over their conduct in the crucial earliest hours of the investigation when the trail might still have been warm, accused of making rudimentary mistakes like failing to conduct a house-by-house search of every local residence or interview all of the other guests at the resort, acting slowly to erect roadblocks and potentially compromising forensic evidence at the crime scene.
The police initially stated that they believed Madeleine was still alive and had been abducted from the room by a stranger as the parents described their “anguish and despair” over her vanishing, a worst fear realised for any parent.
The search continued as the summer progressed amid a wild media circus and with huge fundraising activities underway, the McCanns setting up Madeleine’s Fund on 15 May to raise cash to support further investigation and keep the profile of the case high, attracting generous donations from celebrities like Richard Branson, Simon Cowell, JK Rowling and Coleen Rooney.
