The parents of Madeleine McCann, a British girl who disappeared 14 years ago in Portugal, said Tuesday, May 4, to keep the hope of seeing their daughter again, in a message published a few days before her 18th birthday.
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Madeleine McCann disappeared from her bedroom on May 3, 2007, shortly before her fourth birthday on May 12, in the small seaside resort of Praia da Luz, in southern Portugal, where she was staying on vacation with her family.
“
Every May is tough - a reminder of the years that have passed, the years together lost or stolen. This year is particularly poignant as we should be celebrating Madeleine's 18th birthday
, ”said Kate and Gerry McCann. "
We cling to the hope, even if it is thin, to see Madeleine again
", they continued in this message published on the website devoted to the search for their daughter, "
Find Madeleine
".
After years of fruitless research, the much-publicized Maddie case saw a sudden acceleration in June 2020 with the identification by the German police of a suspect, the German Christian B., a repetitive pedophile already convicted of a rape in Portugal and currently detained in Germany. This forty-year-old was sentenced in December 2019 to seven years in prison for the rape of a 72-year-old American in 2005 in the village where Maddie disappeared.
German investigators do not exclude that Christian B. may be involved in other cases not yet clarified. He is also the subject of an investigation into the rape in 2004 of an Irish woman then aged 20, in the Algarve region, a 30-minute drive from the place of the girl's disappearance. Despite the pandemic, "
the investigation to find Madeleine and her captor continued,
" thanked her parents. "
As we have said time and time again, we need to know what happened to our adorable daughter
."
