A look into the disappearance of Madeleine McCann, 19 years after the toddler vanished

On May 3, 2007, Kate and Gerry McCann took their three children – Madeleine, Amelie and Sean – on a family holiday at the Ocean Club in Praia da Luz, Portugal. Later that evening, the couple joined a group of friends for dinner at a restaurant about 100 yards away from the ground-floor apartment where the siblings were sleeping.

They checked on their children regularly throughout the night, but Kate discovered that Madeleine was missing at 10 p.m. They alerted authorities, while the resort initiated search procedures for missing children.

“Words cannot describe the fear and despair we feel as parents to our beautiful daughter Madeleine,” Gerry said the next day. ABC News.

He added: “If you have Madeleine, please let her come home to her mum, dad, brother and sister. As everyone can understand how distressing the current situation is, we ask that our privacy is respected so that we can continue to assist the police in their ongoing investigation.”

“It may not be physically difficult, but we worked very hard and did everything we could to get Madeleine back,” said Kate.

Two days after Madeleine disappeared, Portuguese police said they believed the young girl had been kidnapped. They later named resident Robert Murat as a suspect, but he was acquitted in July 2008 due to insufficient evidence.

Madeleine’s parents were also named arguidos (formal suspects under Portuguese law) in September 2007. They remained under suspicion for months before the status was lifted in 2008.

In the midst of the case, Kate and Gerry released the 2011 book, Madeleine: the disappearance of our daughter and the ongoing search for her.

“The decision to publish this book has been very difficult and made with a heavy heart. My reason for writing it is simple: to report the truth,” the matriarch said in the book’s official description.