Madeleine McCann, Tot Abducted in 2007, May Be Alive, Police Say

Madeleine McCann was four years old when she vanished from a hotel room on holiday with her family in Portugal (while her parents dined just feet away from the crime scene), and the length of time the child has been missing has led many to believe the chances she will ever be recovered alive are quite remote.

McCann would be nine years old now (the image above is an age progression), and police in the UK have told press they are in the process of reviewing extensive amounts of information collected in the case with the aim of bringing the little girl home. Yesterday, the Met Police’s Det. Ch. Insp. Andy Redwood said during the BBC’s Panorama that a significant amount of information in the Madeleine McCann case was awaiting reevaluation in concert with Portuguese authorities including information Redwood says is new:

“The intention is to identify from that material investigative opportunities which we will then present to the Portuguese authorities who retain primacy for the investigation… Officers have so far identified around 195 such opportunities within the historic material, and are also developing what they believe to be genuinely new material.”

Redwood confirmed that police are still investigating the possibilities in the McCann case, and said that even after all these years, Madeleine could be alive and well:

“From the outset we have approached this review with a completely open mind, placing Madeleine McCann at the heart of everything we do… We are working on the basis of two possibilities here – one is that Madeleine is still alive; and the second that she is sadly dead.”

The new review in the Madeleine McCann case began following a plea from parents Gerry and Kate for closure in their daughter’s abduction.