Next week, the McCann family will mark 18 aching years of loss and life without Madeleine.
Her disappearance from a holiday apartment on the Portuguese Algarve coast is now an adult lifetime away. And yet little Madeleine – about to turn four when she was snatched – remains one of our nation’s most familiar faces.
Images of the little girl which stared out from newspapers and TV bulletins remain seared into our consciousness: Madeleine in a pink sun hat holding an armful of tennis balls; Madeleine in a Snow White dressing up outfit; Madeleine in her Everton top; Madeleine close up in a picture to show the distinctive smudge in the iris of her right eye.
They were pictures which dominated the British media for years. Pictures of innocence, each reminding us of how that innocence can be shattered. And a terror for parents forced to face that sometimes the very worst can happen: a child can be lost. No explanation, no motivation, and no end.
Except that now, it may just be that an end is in sight.
In the documentary Madeleine McCann: The Unseen Evidence, created by The Sun and available now on Channel 4, new evidence is presented which German prosecutors hope will enable them to charge chief suspect Christian Brueckner. German police are reportedly reluctant to charge Brueckner without forensic evidence, which they believe is needed to secure a conviction in the country.
Brueckner, 47, is serving seven years in jail for raping a pensioner in Portugal two years before Madeleine went missing.
The documentary tells how a dog walker near a small town in eastern Germany was alerted to the remains of a dead dog near a derelict box factory, which Bruecker had bought in 2008.
Beneath the animal’s remains was a wallet containing six USB sticks and two memory cards, which held stories Brueckner had written about child abduction. Among his twisted writings is the line about how an abducted child looks at him “with wide, horrified eyes”. It is impossible to read those words without imagining Madeleine’s terror.
German police also found 75 toddlers’ swim suits, children’s bikes and toys, three working guns, a mask, a suitcase containing pictures of young children and phone numbers.
Without detailing all the evidence they have, police have said they believe Madeleine was killed shortly after her abduction. And so, despite the tragedy of this revelation, for the McCann family there is a sliver of belief that resolution of the crime may lie ahead, and that a line may be drawn beneath a case which has transfixed the nation for nearly two decades.
Many have criticised the media’s fascination with the story, questioning whether the blonde-haired little girl from a respectable middle-class family made her an “ideal victim” when so many other crimes slide from view.
square JON CLARKE I was one of the first reporters on the scene after Madeleine McCann's disappearance
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It’s a fair criticism. But the media does not work in a vacuum: it was responding to a ferocious appetite for information on missing Madeleine McCann.
When she went missing in 2007, I was an assistant editor on the red-top Daily Mirror. Day after day, we featured the twists and turns of the investigation on page one. Were we feeding the public’s prurient interest in a private family tragedy? Possibly. But at first, both the family and police were desperate for public awareness, which might help find Madeleine. Too often, critics of the press fail to appreciate how many families want their missing or dead child to be featured or remembered in the press.
During my career, there has been no other story which has attracted such public fascination. Not 9/11, not even Princess Diana’s death.
And it wasn’t just the tabloid market – BBC and ITV bulletins led on the story for weeks on end. The entire British news media camped up in Praia da Luz and stayed for months, because the case was driving TV ratings and selling newspapers. And in those early days of the internet it was offering hope of that digital holy grail: engagement.
Coverage moved beyond news lines about the investigation into cultural talking points which cut across gender, class and nationality. Much of that conversation – particularly in newly formed chat rooms – was a pre-cursor to the polarising angry culture wars which followed. At the heart of the debate lay the question: had the McCann’s failed by leaving Maddie alone that night?
Questions whirled: Why couldn’t middle-class parents just stick their kids in a buggy with an ice cream when they went out at night? Why did the McCann’s keep going for a run each day despite their missing child? Who even eats tapas?
Why didn’t they just bring their 18-month-old twins home, away from the media gaze? Or how could they ever consider leaving Portugal? Was Gerry a bit too controlled and surly? Or was he just being “a Scottish bloke”? Had Kate become too thin? Too timid? Had she had her highlights done?
Why had they employed a PR executive? Were they enjoying the spotlight too much?
It sounds horrendous now, but these were the unfounded questions being asked. Day in. Day out.
When Portuguese police made Madeleine’s parents arguidos – or suspects – the fevered reporting went stratospheric. The police later dropped their suspect status and apologised to Gerry and Kate.
The Daily Express’ coverage tipped into unhinged cruelty, splashing the paper every day for months, leading to a £500,000 payout to the McCann’s for false allegations.
But such allegations sold newspapers. The McCann family tragedy came with a commercial benefit for the news industry, albeit in the short term. I wonder if in the longer term it added to a sense that some British journalism was losing its way.
Media interest in the case has waned in recent years. Both due to the passing of time, and the sobering of our news industry to a more sensible state where victims are better recognised and responsibility far greater. If only the same could be said of social media.
The next few weeks are essential if police are to build a case against Brueckner strong enough to get to court ahead of his prison release date. If not, he could disappear forever back into an itinerant lifestyle.
Last year, he was cleared of the 2004 rape of Hazel Behan, 20 miles from Praia de Luz. It is most likely now that Madeleine may never be found. That makes a successful conviction difficult, but not impossible. Only then can something be retrieved for her family: the truth. Finally, this tragic story will end.
Alison Phillips was editor of the Daily Mirror from 2018-24; she won Columnist of the Year at the 2018 National Press Awards.
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