On May 3, 2007, Kate and Gerry McCann embarked on a family vacation at the Ocean Club in Praia da Luz, Portugal, accompanied by their three children – Madeleine, Amelie, and Sean. That evening, the couple dined with friends at a restaurant approximately 100 yards from their ground-floor apartment, where the children were sleeping.
Throughout the night, the McCanns checked on their children, but at 10 p.m., Kate discovered that Madeleine was missing. They immediately contacted the authorities, and the resort began its procedures for locating a missing child.
“Words cannot describe the anguish and despair that we are feeling as the parents of our beautiful daughter Madeleine,” expressed Gerry the following day, as reported by ABC News.
He further pleaded, “Please, if you have Madeleine, let her come home to her mummy, daddy, brother, and sister. As everyone can understand how distressing the current situation is, we ask that our privacy is respected to allow us to continue assisting the police in their current investigation.”
Kate added, “It might not be physically searching, but we have been working really hard and doing absolutely everything we can, really, to get Madeleine back.”
Two days after Madeleine’s disappearance, Portuguese authorities suspected abduction. They identified local resident Robert Murat as a suspect, but he was cleared of involvement in July 2008 due to insufficient evidence.
In September 2007, Madeleine’s parents were also designated as arguidos, or formal suspects, under Portuguese law. They remained under scrutiny for several months until the status was removed in 2008.
During the ongoing investigation, Kate and Gerry published a book in 2011 titled Madeleine: Our Daughter’s Disappearance and the Continuing Search for Her.
“The decision to publish this book has been very difficult, and taken with heavy hearts. My reason for writing it is simple: to give an account of the truth,” Kate explained in the book’s official description.
