These Days

Look her in the eye

The disappearance of Madeleine McCann occurred on the evening of Thursday, 3 May 2007 when a then three year old British girl, Madeleine McCann, went missing from a holiday apartment in Praia da Luz, Algarve in Portugal,
which she was staying in with her parents. Madeleine, who was in a
bedroom with her two two-year old siblings, was initially thought to
have only "wandered off" by Portuguese Police, but further
investigation by Portuguese police suggested an abduction.

Madeleine Beth McCann (born 12 May 2003 in Leicester, England)^[2] is a British girl who is the eldest daughter of Kate, a general practitioner in Melton Mowbray, and Gerry McCann, a cardiologist at Glenfield Hospital in Leicester. Madeleine, who has a brother and a sister, twins Sean and Amelie, two years old, lived with her family in Rothley, England.

A notable identification feature is her right eye that has a type of coloboma, a complete split in the iris (a black radial strip reaching from the pupil out to the edge of the white) at '7 o'clock' position (i.e. about 30° clockwise from the bottom).^[3]

Madeleine disappeared from the apartment where the family was staying on the evening of 3 May. At the time, her parents had put Madeleine and her two-year-old twin siblings to bed, and were dining 100 yards away with friends at a restaurant near the Mark Warner Ocean Summer Club.^[4]
Kate and Gerry McCann reported to the police that they were taking
turns checking on their children and that at approximately 21:00 Western European Summer Time Gerry checked on the children and they were all fine.^[1]
At around 21:45 the couple returned from the restaurant to find an
empty bed and the apartment door and window wide open and reported the
incident to the police at 22:00. Staff and guests at the complex
searched until 04:30 whilst police on the Spanish border and all
airports in Portugal and Spain were notified.^[5]

The parents have been criticized for leaving their children alone
while they ate at a nearby restaurant despite the availability of a babysitting service and a creche.^[70] There has also been criticism of the parents in the Portuguese media. The Diário de Notícias
insisted that Mr and Mrs McCann were suspects and claimed that on the
night Madeleine disappeared they had not checked on her, contrary to
what they told police.^[71] The Daily Telegraph
has reported "Portugal has been stung by suggestions that the
investigation has been handled ineptly, and while there is much
sympathy locally for the McCanns they have also been criticised for
leaving their children alone."^[72]

The couple were questioned by police on 10 May about why Madeleine was left alone in an apartment with the patio doors unlocked while they dined at the restaurant.^[14] In an interview with the BBC on 25 May,
Gerry and Kate acknowledged the criticism, and spoke of the guilt they
felt. They also said they were sure that Madeleine was still alive,
Gerry McCann stated that he believed that "If anything really bad had
happened we would have found her by now".^[73]

The McCann family have released two video appeals themselves.^[86] The first is a photograph and video montage set to Simple Minds' song "Don't You (Forget About Me)" and includes an animation of the the word LOOK in uppercase with a reproduction of her coloboma as a radial line inside the first letter O, which blinks.^[87] The second features a montage of images with a voice over by actress Zoë Wanamaker
mentioning her coloboma, asking for information of her whereabouts, and
to download and display a poster of her from the official site.^[88]

An unofficial one minute's silence was held for Madeleine on 21 May^[65] but since it was organised by an anonymous viral email, it was not thought to be widely observed.^[89] Robert Murat has tried to generate his own publicity by selling his story. However, publicist Max Clifford indicated that he would only represent Murat if he was cleared of suspicion of kidnapping.^[90]