German suspect could be the last chance for the Madeleine McCann investigation

Analysis: After 13 years and many fruitless leads, another dead end could finish the £12.3m investigation for good, Lizzie Dearden writes

Madeleine’s disappearance commanded global attention and her parents’ struggle for answers still resonates strongly with much of the British public (AP)

This is a significant point in time for the Met’s investigation,” said the officer overseeing the probe into Madeleine McCann’s disappearance. Deputy Assistant Commissioner Stuart Cundy was announcing what may be the most significant development in the 13-year mystery – or another dead end that could prove fatal for the inquiry.

The new suspect is a German man whose phone records show he was near the McCanns’ apartment shortly before Madeleine’s disappearance, and who has a history of child sex offences and burgling holiday resorts.

The man is in prison in Germany after being convicted of raping an American woman in Portugal a year and a half earlier, but officers need more evidence to charge him in relation to the McCann case.

He is already appealing his rape conviction and unless new witnesses come forward with critical details of the suspect’s movements in Portugal, and those of his campervan and Jaguar, the trail will go cold once more.

Thirteen years of investigation and £12.3m of funding have led up to this point, and if the latest lead again proves fruitless it could be the end of the probe.

While the McCann inquiry has stopped and started several times, if fresh evidence is not found and charges do not result against this suspect, it could be finished for good.

Portuguese police closed their original investigation in 2008 and progress stalled until 2011, when the Home Office paid for Scotland Yard to review the available evidence.

Two years later, it opened its own probe but in 2015 the team dedicated to it was cut from 29 officers to five after “genuinely new” lines of inquiry led nowhere.

Four male suspects were previously identified in 2013 but a search of a large area of land in Portugal turned up nothing and they were eliminated from the investigation.

Scotland Yard has made several further funding requests and the government, now led by a prime minister who called historic child sex abuse investigations “spaffing money up the wall”, will be reluctant to grant any more if results are not on the horizon.

Madeleine’s disappearance commanded global attention and her parents’ struggle for answers still resonates strongly with much of the British public.

But more than a decade on, questions of proportionality will loom large for a government battling the coronavirus pandemic and an oncoming recession.

Scotland Yard admitted that it had already looked at more than 600 people identified as potentially significant.

A VW Westfalia campervan that the suspect used (EPA)

Memories are fading and the likelihood of uncovering substantial new leads looks slim.

But the passage of time that hampers an evidential investigation also bolsters the possibility that former friends of the culprit will break their silence.

As the senior investigating officer said in his appeal: “More than 13 years have passed and loyalties may have changed.”

Both British and German authorities believe the suspect, who had lived in Portugal, may have confided in someone about his actions.

Germany’s Federal Criminal Police Office, which is treating its own probe as a murder inquiry, said: “There is reason to assume that there are other persons, apart from the suspect, who have concrete knowledge of the course of the crime and maybe also of the place where the body was left.”

Officers must hope someone discovers their conscience, or the mystery of Madeleine McCann’s disappearance may never be solved.