Madeleine (50 page)

It may be suggested that in criticizing individuals and organizations involved in the investigation we are merely seeking someone to blame because Madeleine hasn’t been found. This isn’t true. If we had allowed ourselves to be consumed by bitterness, we wouldn’t have survived this far. What’s done is done, and we are not interested in looking for scapegoats but in focusing on areas of the investigation that may yet yield results and taking our search for our daughter onwards. There are lessons to be learned for the future, in terms of both the handling of crimes against children and the treatment we have received from the authorities and the media, and if some good can come out of our experience, it is that the mistakes made will not be repeated.

And, critically, let’s not forget that the perpetrator of this monstrous crime remains at large. This person who stole a little girl out of her bed and away from her family has been anonymous for far too long. If nothing more is done, he will continue to hide in the shadows, evading justice, and will be free to strike again.

We are still pressing the British and Portuguese governments to do more, or at least
something
. A year after our request for a review of Madeleine’s case, Alan Johnson, the second home secretary we had met, commissioned CEOP to undertake a ‘scoping’ exercise – basically to establish whether they felt a review may be of benefit. Their report has been with the Home Office since March 2010. Although we have not seen it, it has been widely reported that it highlights some deficiencies in the investigation and hence areas that merit further attention.

We have since met the current home secretary, Theresa May, and written to her several times. Currently we do not know whether we are any further forward, or whether the British government has even raised the suggestion of a review with the Portuguese authorities. In November 2010 we started a petition to lobby the two governments to conduct an independent review. We are at a loss to understand why such a commonly used procedure isn’t an obvious option and why our request for such a review has gone unanswered.

While awaiting a response we will endeavour to do all we can to find Madeleine. Our own search, however, has significant limitations. Crucially, we do not have access to all of the information that has come in to the inquiry. The Portuguese authorities possess a great deal of material that was not included in the police file released into the public domain. The British police, too, hold information we do not have. The more data we can acquire, the more complete the picture will be and the stronger our chances of finding our daughter. If a review is declined, or indeed if no decision is ever made, we will be left with no alternative but to seek disclosure of all information possessed by the authorities relating to Madeleine’s disappearance. In the absence of any other active investigation, it must surely be in Madeleine’s best interests that we and our team are given access to records that will otherwise just sit there gathering dust.

People ask why we go on and the answer is that we still have hope – real hope. Madeleine is still alive until someone proves otherwise. And as we know, there is no evidence whatsoever to suggest she has come to any harm, other than as a result of being separated from her family.

There are many examples of abducted children being recovered years later. The most recent to hit the news, in January 2011, was the case of Carlina White, taken from a hospital in Harlem, New York, as a baby in 1987 and brought up by her female kidnapper. Carlina, suspicious of her history, herself sought the help of the NCMEC and as a result was reunited with her family after twenty-three years. Shawn Hornbeck was abducted at the age of ten and recovered four years later. Crystal Anzaldi was found seven years after being snatched at fourteen months old. Steven Stayner, kidnapped at seven, escaped from his abductor seven years later. Jaycee Lee Dugard spent eighteen years with hers. How many more children are out there waiting to be found?

Bolstered by this hope, we have moved forward. We have grown stronger and adapted to our new life. But our daughter is still missing and our family will never be complete without her. We love her beyond words. We will
never
give up on her. We will not allow our story to end here.

If you have any information which may be related to Madeleine’s disappearance, please share it with us. We need you.

On the day this book is published, Madeleine will be eight years old. If you know what has happened to her or where she is now, for her sake and ours, please open your heart and let us know. It is
never
too late to do the right thing.

Please contact:
[email protected]
, 0044 (0)845 838 4699 or PO Box 9880, Leicester, LE7 7UJ, UK. Alternatively, speak to a religious leader in your community.

Thank you for not giving up on Madeleine.

A CALL TO ACTION

Please write to the Home Secretary and Prime Minister, urging the British and Portuguese authorities to commission a joint, independent and comprehensive review of Madeleine’s case.

Please visit
www.findmadeleine.com
to see how you can help the search for Madeleine.

KEY SIGHTINGS

Four years on, as we strive to piece together the puzzle of what happened to Madeleine, many questions remain unanswered and several people who may be able to help us have yet to be identified.

The following sightings are still of great interest to us. Explaining them is very important to our continuing investigation, if only to eliminate the individuals concerned from our inquiry. Artists’ impressions and sketches based on the descriptions given by witnesses can be found at the end of the
Picture Section
.

SIGHTINGS ONE AND TWO

Witness One: Jane Tanner

Witness Two: Holidaymaker from Ireland

These two crucial sightings of a man carrying a child in the street, made around the time of Madeleine’s abduction on the night of 3 May 2007, have been discussed in detail in this book. The description of the man seen by Jane Tanner was eventually made public three weeks after Madeleine’s disappearance and an artist’s impression commissioned by our own investigative team was released in October 2007. Yet to this day no man has come forward to identify himself as the father, relative or family friend of the child in either case.

Although the police appear to have considered these sightings to be unrelated on the basis of the forty-five-minute gap between them, the similarities speak for themselves.

Artist’s impressions of the man seen by Jane Tanner are reproduced at the end of the
Picture Section
.

SIGHTINGS THREE TO
EIGHT

It was only from the police files, to which we were given access in August 2008, fifteen months after Madeleine’s abduction, that we learned of six sightings by four independent witnesses in the five days prior to her disappearance. A ‘suspicious’ male had been noticed watching our apartment and/or acting oddly nearby. In three of these reports a man was seen standing by the small car park directly opposite the entrance to the Ocean Club’s swimming pool and Tapas restaurant (Ocean Club Waterside Gardens) on Rua Dr Francisco Gentil Martins. In two accounts, a ‘suspicious’ man was observed on the access path between the Ocean Club apartments (which include apartment 5A) and the pool and Tapas restaurant area.

Witness Three

This witness is a young girl whose grandparents used to own apartment 5A. As this flat is familiar and of interest to her, her report is very precise and credible. She saw the same individual watching our apartment closely on two separate days. On Monday, 30 April 2007, at around 8am, she noticed a man standing on the narrow access path running between the apartments and the pool and Tapas restaurant area. He was leaning with his palms against the wall surrounding the garden area of apartment 5A and looking up at the veranda.

On Wednesday, 2 May 2007, the witness saw the same man near the car park opposite the entrance to the pool and Tapas restaurant area on Rua Dr Gentil Martins. He appeared to be just standing there and watching apartment 5A.

Description
: Caucasian male; light-skinned; 1.8m (5ft 11ins) tall; slim build; aged 30–35; short cropped hair, thought to be light in colour. He had spots and was ‘ugly, disgusting even’.

Clothing
: Thin, black leather jacket; light T-shirt; jeans with belt; trainers; dark, thick-framed sunglasses.

Portrait
: Sketch number 1 in the
Picture Section
.

Witness Four

On Sunday, 29 April 2007, between 8 and 9am, this witness noticed a man loitering on Rua do Ramelhete whose appearance unnerved her. Three days later, in mid-afternoon on Wednesday 2 May, the witness saw the same man on Rua Dr Gentil Martins, on the opposite side of the road to apartment 5A, near the car park across from the entrance to the Ocean Club’s pool and Tapas restaurant area. The witness said that the man was standing still and looking over in the direction of apartment 5A.

Description
: Male of Portuguese appearance; approximately 5ft 10ins (1.78m) tall; slim build; ‘very ugly – pitted skin with a large nose’.

Clothing
: Casual; jeans.

Portrait
: Sketch number 2 in the
Picture Section
.

Witness Five

This witness was walking down Rua Dr Francisco Gentil Martins with his partner around lunchtime on either Wednesday 2 May or Thursday 3 May 2007. They passed a man who was standing by the wall near the car park opposite the entrance to the Ocean Club’s swimming pool and Tapas restaurant. The witness followed the man’s line of sight and reported that he was ‘staring fixedly’ at an area close to our apartment block, where a white van was parked.

Description
: Caucasian male with dark skin; assumed to be Portuguese and not a tourist; aged 25–35; 1.7–1.75m (5ft 7ins–5ft 9ins) tall; medium build; short, thick, dark hair reaching collar-level at the back.

Clothing
: Plain light-coloured T-shirt.

Portrait
: Sketch number 3 in the
Picture Section
.

Witness Six

On 3 May 2007, this witness was standing on the veranda of a first-floor apartment in the same block as 5A, overlooking the pool and Tapas restaurant area. Some time between 4pm and 5pm, she noticed a man coming out through one of the little gates leading from the terraces of the ground-floor apartments to the access path. His behaviour struck the witness as suspicious: he appeared to be trying to close the gate quietly, using both hands, and very slowly and deliberately checking in both directions before walking to the end of the pathway and on to Rua Dr Gentil Martins. The witness thought this was the first gate along the pathway from the road. If her recollection is correct, it was the gate to apartment 5B, where our friends Matt and Rachael were staying. That afternoon, Rachael, Matt and their daughter were on the beach at Praia da Luz with the rest of our friends. They were away from the Ocean Club complex from before 3pm until 6pm.