When Madeleine McCann was just three years old in 2007, she vanished from the vacation rental owned by her family. The girl was found missing by her mother when she went to check on her younger siblings, the twins Sean and Amelie, who were sleeping in a room with her parents Kate and Gerry McCann, who were having dinner nearby.
The McCanns resided in Praia Da Luz at 5A RuaDr. Agostinho da Silva, a two-bedroom apartment on the ground level. After some 20 people contaminated the crime scene by entering it, the Portuguese authorities came under heavy fire. One officer even referred to the site as the “worst preserved crime scene” he had ever seen.
Remarkably, the property was rented out again in 2008 after the room was examined for forensic evidence. Two families stayed there. But shortly after, the owners put the apartment up for sale for £250,000. In the end, Kathleen Macguire-Cotton, a British woman, bought the property for less than half of the asking price due to the circumstances surrounding the sale.
The parents of Madeleine McCann, age three, Gerry and Kate McCann, read a statement to the media on May 11, 2007, outside their resort apartment.
She disclosed her intentions to remain in the flat after allegedly paying £113,000 for it in 2017. “I’ve been offered money by the whole world [to visit the apartment] but I’m not interested. I don’t think that’s very fair to the McCann family or the people of Praia da Luz, upsetting everybody – it’s terrible. It happened a long time ago and I don’t have any opinions on it,” the Sun said.
During a 2007 press appearance, Kate McCann, the mother of the missing 4-year-old British girl Madeleine McCann, examines a poster depicting her daughter.
“I went through to our bedroom to see if Madeleine had gotten into our bed when I realized she wasn’t actually there,” the woman wrote. That would account for the bedroom door being open. The first wave of panic hit me when I saw there was another unoccupied bed.