We'll Never Give Up On You

As police focus on a new suspect, Madeleine McCann’s parents continue to hold out hope for their missing girl

- Jane Vorster

It looks like a typical little girl’s bedroom. The walls are painted a pinkish hue, the ceiling is adorned with glowing stars, and dolls and teddy bears are arranged in a neat row, ready for their owner to play with them.

For more than 13 years this is how the room has remained, as if frozen in time, waiting for the door to swing open and for three-year-old Madeleine McCann to bound in.

Although for most people it seems extremely unlikely that the girl – who went missing on holiday with her parents in Portugal in 2007 – will ever return, her parents, Kate and Gerry, have refused to give up hope.

For Kate (52), the twice-daily ritual of walking into her firstborn’s bedroom to open and close the curtains has become her way of showing the world she still steadfastly believes that Maddie, who would now be 17, will return home.

Over the years there’ve been many red herrings and leads that went nowhere. But now new information has surfaced that could finally solve the mystery.

Police have a prime suspect: Christian Brueckner (43), a German paedophile, drug trafficker and burglar who was living in Praia da Luz in Portugal’s Algarve region at the time Maddie went missing.

He’s currently in jail in Kiel, northern Germany, serving a seven-year sentence for raping a 72-year-old US tourist in Praia da Luz in 2005.

There are also sex convictions dating back to 1994, including a sex attack on a nine-year-old girl. And he’s been linked to the disappearance of a five-year-old German girl. Now his possible involvement in Maddie’s abduction is the subject of intense investigation.