Out of the blue, more than 13 years after Madeleine McCann disappeared, it seemed as if a resolution to the case might be in sight when German police this month identified a new prime suspect and launched an international appeal for information.
Circumstantial evidence placed Christian Brückner, a convicted paedophile currently in prison, in the town of Praia de Luz on the day of the disappearance, 3 May 2007. “It was a real bombshell in Germany,” said Roman Lehberger, a journalist at the news magazine Der Spiegel. “It was clear to all of us immediately that this was a huge breakthrough.”
A fortnight later, the clarity that the McCann family have sought so desperately is yet to be found. Even as the German prosecutor referred to “concrete evidence” that Madeleine was dead, a saga seen by some as one of the most unedifying in the history of the British media has reverted to type. There are sharp disagreements between police forces, anonymised and libellous warfare on social media, dubious claims reported as fact, exhaustion in Praia de Luz – and, at the centre of it all, a family whose only defence against the world is silence.
“This is the first time in many years that it seems like a real suspect has been brought forward. There are real facts,” said Robbyn Swan, a co-author with Anthony Summers of the 2014 book Looking for Madeleine. “But we are seeing, sadly, a repeat of the behaviour that we saw years ago.”
With hundreds of leads flooding in to police, the fact that the case has not yet been solved should not be viewed as reason to think it never will be. “It’s really early, and they’re keeping their cards very close to their chests,” Lehberger said. “My sense is that there has not yet been a major breakthrough – they would have announced it by now if there was solid evidence. But they need time to get a clear picture.”
But he added: “He [Brückner] has months to serve still, but his release is on the horizon. They’re getting a little bit nervous and they need to pin this on him now. This is their last resort.”
Observers of the circus that has long followed the McCann story say that in the vacuum created by the wait since that appeal for a clear outcome, the narrative has reverted to type.
Dr John Synnott, a senior lecturer in investigative and forensic psychology at the University of Huddersfield, published a study in 2017 of the behaviour of online trolls who maintain that Kate and Gerry McCann were responsible for their daughter’s disappearance, against all evidence to the contrary. Three years later, he says the behaviour of his subjects remains the same.
One thread on a popular messageboard, whose members accuse the McCanns, has drawn almost 1,000 posts in the past fortnight, while the #mccann hashtag on Twitter has become a torrent of speculation and abuse.
The trolls jump on any new information and find their own angle. “It is hugely important to a lot of people’s identities,” Synnott said. “They see new information, but they find something in there that aligns with their existing critique, and they regurgitate it.”
If the trolls have reverted to type, so too have parts of the media, publishing anonymous second-hand source accounts of Brückner’s confession, suggestions that he “turned his friend into a paedophile”, and speculation on his mental state from an expert who “once examined Adolf and Eva Hitler’s skulls”. One story focused on pictures of an apartment Brückner once lived in featuring a child’s cuddly horse – only to note in the caption that the pictures had been taken after he moved out and the flat was redecorated.
Meanwhile, the police forces of the three countries involved are said to have been in dispute, with questions in Germany over whether British investigators acted on leads relating to Brückner shared by their German counterparts between 2013 and 2017, and accounts emerging from Portugal of anger at an “arrogant” German request to retest a saliva sample.
In Portugal, where the case has gripped public attention over the years just as it has in the UK, updates have led broadcast news bulletins and front pages. Rui Gustavo, a journalist for the Expresso newspaper, said police disagreements were overplayed, and readers were following the case as closely as ever. “People are reacting with surprise because everyone thought the case was dead,” he said. “It’s an incredible phenomenon.”
In Germany it is suspected either that the proof of Madeleine’s death may not be admissible in court because of how it was obtained, or that police are deliberately holding back information that could only be known to the perpetrator in order not to jeopardise the investigation.
Until the police have followed up every tip, the picture will remain as opaque and as open to speculation as it has always been. “They needed that response from the public,” said Anthony Summers. “A lot of it will be useless, but investigations really are resolved this way: the idea that there’s someone, somewhere, who knows the little bit that we need to slot the thing together.”
Like Synnott, Summers fears that for some it will never be enough. “There is a hardcore cadre who will never believe any resolution,” he said. “They will take this to the ‘we never landed on the moon’ level.”
Swan, the author, said such accounts should not overwhelm the smaller and more significant story at the centre of the maelstrom. “If we’re talking about a suspect convicted of child sexual assault and abuse and that is the kind of person who is ultimately found to be guilty – those are the people who do it again if they aren’t stopped,” she said.
“And we try to remind ourselves every time we talk about it that there is this family at the heart of it, to speak with some care and some empathy for what they must go through every time her name is mentioned. The world talks about it as a case; for them it is their lives.”
Additional reporting: Mia Alberti in Lagos, Portugal
