How cross-border investigation identified prime suspect in Madeleine McCann case
Ten years after Madeleine McCann’s disappearance, her parents Kate and Gerry made a fresh appeal for information which perhaps elicited more sympathy than hope from most of those watching.
They told the public they would do “whatever it takes, for as long as it takes” to find their daughter, who was last seen on May 3, 2007 in the Portuguese resort of Praia da Luz.
“There is still hope that we can find Madeleine,” said Mrs McCann, though with only four Scotland Yard detectives working on the case — rather than the 30 originally in the incident room — it seemed like a lost cause.
On Wednesday night, however, the Metropolitan Police revealed that the 2017 appeal had paid dividends, resulting in a tip-off about a German man who was known to have been in Praia da Luz at the relevant time.
For the past three years the Met has been secretly working with Germany’s Bundeskriminalamt (BKA) and Portugal’s Policia Judiciaria to track the movements of the 43-year-old drifter who has now become the first person publicly described by the Met as: “A suspect in Madeleine’s disappearance.”
The Met’s Operation Grange team, led by Detective Inspector Mark Cranwell, spent months working on the tip about the unknown German, before contacting the BKA in November 2017 to ask for their help.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/06/03/across-border-investigation-identifiedprime-suspect-case-madeleine/?li_source=LI&li_medium=liftigniter-rhr