Six Months Later, Maddie Search Goes On
Maddie McCann went missing while on vacation with her parents last summer.
Nov. 3, 2007 — -- Gerry McCann went back to work as a cardiologist at Glenfield Hospital in Leicester this week. Looking pale and drawn, he said that he and his wife Kate had done as much as they could in the search for their little girl.
"Unless Madeleine is found, we are not expecting any significant developments in the near future," Gerry McCann said, as he spoke into a battery of microphones at a press conference about his missing daughter.
Within hours of her disappearance in southern Portugal on May 3, the story of Madeleine McCann came under the scorching searchlight of the international media, and has remained that way ever since.
Madeleine, or Maddie as so many have come to know her, vanished from the family's holiday apartment in the resort of Praia da Luz while her parents -- both doctors -- were having dinner 100 yards away in the same holiday compound.
Almost immediately, a huge publicity campaign went into gear, with celebrities including author J. K. Rowling and soccer player David Beckham appealing for help in finding the little girl , who has a distinctive black mark in the iris of her right eye.
The McCanns toured Europe to raise awareness of the case. They even had an audience with the pope. They gave dozens of interviews, as press and TV teams from around the world documented their every move.
"'Please, please continue to pray for Madeleine," Kate McCann cried during one television appeal.
"We are doing absolutely everything to assist the police with their investigation, and we will leave no stone unturned in the search for our daughter," her husband Gerry said.
In mid May, just after Madeleine's fourth birthday, Portuguese police named a British expatriate, Robert Murat, as an official suspect. Murat lived next door to the McCann apartment. But police didn't have enough evidence to actually charge him.
Then in mid-June, police admitted vital forensic clues might have been destroyed because of their failure to seal the crime scene properly.
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