Madeleine appeal: 1,000 replies
Police investigating the disappearance of Madeleine McCann have received nearly 1,000 calls and emails in response to a fresh appeal for information.
Police investigating the disappearance of Madeleine McCann have received nearly 1,000 calls and emails in response to a fresh appeal for information.
Police re-investigating the disappearance of Madeleine McCann have been inundated with new and potentially useful information from viewers of a BBC Crimewatch appeal, broadcast last night.
Crimewatch editor Joe Mather said several callers had given the same name for the man spotted carrying a child towards the beach. He told BBC radio 4:
It's been a truly unprecedented response. We had over 300 calls, texts and emails from this specific case, which is extremely unusual for Crimewatch, so we were generally pleased with the response and I think the police were too.
Significantly there were lots of calls from British people who were in Praia da Luz around the time of Madeleine's disappearance who had never previously spoken to the Met so there's lots of information coming through there.
Detectives have ruled out the key sighting that underpinned the original Madeleine McCann investigation and adopted a new focus in the hunt.
On the day she disappeared Madeleine McCann asked her parents a question: “Why didn’t you come when Sean and I cried last night?”
Latest appeal is the parents' best - and most likely their last - hope to find out through police work what happened to their daughter.