On the eve of the 10-year-anniversary of Maddie McCann’s disappearance, Scotland Yard is on the hunt for a female suspect they believe could be the key to finding out what happened to the three-year-old girl while on vacation with her family three years ago.
According to the Sunday Express, a woman who no longer lives in Portugal is thought to have information about Maddie’s disappearance, and was reportedly seen near the McCann family’s vacation apartment in Praia da Luz on May 3, 2007, the night Maddie vanished while her parents were dining at a tapas restaurant elsewhere on the resort property.
A British grandmother reportedly told The Sun that she spotted the “mysterious” woman outside the apartment just two hours before Maddie was discovered missing.
“It was the middle of the evening and I saw the woman standing on the corner of the street just watching intently,” the woman told The Sun:
I don’t know who she was but she caught my eye because she was dressed in purple-plum clothes. It struck me as strange because it’s so unusual for anyone, particularly a woman, to be standing alone on the street in our resort, just watching a building …The next morning we heard that a little girl had gone missing and I later told police about the woman I’d seen right outside.
It is unclear why the search for the woman has taken on an apparent intensity now if the witness reported the sighting to police a decade ago. But sources close to the investigation indicated to the Sunday Express that they were closing in on the woman and felt that she might lead detectives toward solving the case.
“After months of tireless police work they will soon be in a position to move in and finally get some answers after a decade of dead-ends,”a source told the Sunday Express.
“It is a hugely significant line of inquiry that officers hope could lead to an arrest.”
A Metropolitan Police spokesman told the Telegraph they could not discuss specifics of the ongoing investigation, and the identify of the suspect is not known.
Photo: Police handout
