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Original Source:
Express 13 May 2007 [Now removed from internet] |
Sunday May
13,2007
By Matt Drake in Praia da Luz and David
Pilditch in London |
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Kidnap
family's birthday pleas as police reveal
new clue
THE parents of kidnapped Madeleine
McCann issued a poignant appeal on their
daughter's fourth birthday yesterday:
"Please keep looking, please keep
praying, please bring Madeleine home."
MADELEINE McCANN is believed to be still
alive but in the clutches of a British
paedophile identified to police by
holidaymakers in Portugal.
That is the grim scenario the toddler’s
traumatised family are trying to come to
terms with as the kidnap hunt enters its
10th day today.
Police are also working on the theory
that a gang may have been stalking
Madeleine even before her family flew to
the Algarve for their sunshine break.
Nine British tourists at the holiday
complex where she was taken have been
shown photos of child sex offenders
known to have been in Portugal in recent
months.
Now the search for Madeleine, who should
have been celebrating her fourth
birthday yesterday, is centred on one
paedophile believed to have been picked
out by the witnesses from a dossier of
more than 100 police photos.
As the reward for Madeleine’s safe
return hit £2.5million, her GP mother
Kate and heart surgeon father Gerry
issued an emotional plea for people to
redouble their efforts to find her.
“On Madeleine’s birthday, please keep
looking, please keep praying, please
help bring Madeleine home,” the couple
said in a statement.
“We would like to mark today by asking
people to redouble their efforts. We
know there is already a huge amount of
effort and resources being put into the
search for our daughter. We also know
that offers of support are made daily.
It is this that keeps us strong and
gives us hope.”
Tourists at the Mark Warner holiday
apartments in Praia da Luz have had
their cameras and video recorders taken
by detectives in the hope they may have
inadvertently caught the kidnapper on
film.
We would like to mark today by asking
people to redouble their efforts
Kate and Gerry McCann
It emerged yesterday that Madeleine may
have been bundled into a white van after
being taken as she slept at her family’s
ground floor apartment at around 10pm on
May 3, while her parents were dining at
a tapas restaurant 100 yards away. A
police source revealed the small van was
spotted several days in a row near the
apartment complex. It was not part of
the maintenance team and the vehicle has
not been seen since the child was taken.
The same source told how detectives are
working on a theory that Madeleine was
“marked” for abduction before she left
Britain.
Mr and Mrs McCann, both 38, of Rothley,
Leicestershire, were taken early
yesterday from the apartment complex to
a villa a few miles down the Algarve
coast. Friends of the family are growing
increasingly worried for Kate, who has
barely eaten or slept since her daughter
disappeared. She appeared close to
collapse during a church service in
Praia da Luz on Friday.
It is believed the couple wanted to
spend time alone yesterday with
Madeleine’s twin brother and sister,
Sean and Amelie, aged 18 months.
More than 100 people have now been shown
CCTV footage of three suspects – two men
and a blonde woman – seen with a small
child at a petrol station near Praia da
Luz on the night Madeleine vanished. The
trio were driving a car fitted with
British number plates and were heading
east on the A22 motorway towards the
Spanish border.
The number plates turned out to be
false. One of the men seen at the
filling station resembles a man wanted
by Spanish police for the attempted rape
of a 10-year-old girl in Gran Canaria
last year.
One witness who has seen the CCTV images
revealed the blonde woman is aged about
40 and has her hair tied in a ponytail.
One of the men is also 40, with short
dark hair. The other man is in his
mid-30s. Three days before Madeleine was
snatched the same three suspects were
spotted on the same beach as the McCann
family. They were chased away by another
holidaymaker after being caught taking
photographs of young children.
One of the most poignant moments
yesterday was the release of 40 balloons
tied to messages for Madeleine from
friends of her parents in the
Leicestershire village of Queniborough,
where the McCanns lived until moving to
nearby Rothley.
One balloon carried a note which read:
“Mummy and Daddy, Sean and Amelie –
We’ll see you soon” and was signed with
two kisses.
Hundreds of Britons living in the
Algarve gathered in Praia da Luz
yesterday to tie yellow ribbons around
the railings of the holiday complex
where Madeleine was snatched as a symbol
of hope that she will be returned alive.
Businessmen including Virgin tycoon Sir
Richard Branson and retail billionaire
Sir Philip Green boosted the reward fund
yesterday to £2.5million, the biggest in
British criminal history. In Liverpool,
Madeleine’s grandmother Susan Healy, 61,
wept as she said: “We just have to keep
on praying.” In Glasgow, Madeleine’s
uncle John McCann held an emotional
vigil for the youngster, lighting four
candles on a cake and singing happy
birthday before breaking off to pray for
her safe return.
But in a chilling development, a German
mother told yesterday how her
six-year-old son Rene had been snatched
from a beach 20 miles from Praia da Luz
11 years ago and has not been seen
since.
In a touching message to the McCann
family, Anita B (surnames are not made
public in Germany for legal reasons), of
Bergheim-Elsdorf, near Cologne, said:
“We know what you are going through and
how painful it must be.”
Rene disappeared on a beach while
walking just 20 yards behind his
parents. Each summer they return to the
Algarve hoping to find him. |
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