What Would Missing Maddie McCann Look Like Now?

Maddie's mother tells Oprah, "I feel awful" about leaving her alone.

ByABC News
May 4, 2009, 6:49 AM

LONDON, May 4, 2009 — -- Two years after a 3-year-old British girl named Madeleine McCann went missing from a Portuguese resort town, her parents have released a new "age progression" photograph of her.

The picture, produced by the U.S. National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, shows Madeleine as she would look now, a few days shy of what would be her sixth birthday.

Kate and Gerry McCann launched the picture with a fresh appeal for information about her whereabouts on "The Oprah Winfrey Show" today.

In an exclusive interview with Winfrey about their continuing effort to find their daughter, the McCanns shared their grief over her disappearance. Kate McCann told Winfrey, "Not a day goes by when I don't think about her. I feel Madeleine is still close to me and alive."

She told the talk show host that she visits Madeleine's bedroom twice a day, "usually I tend to open and close the curtains, just to say hello really, tell [her] we're still going to do everything we can to find her."

It's been nine months since Portuguese authorities closed the case and cleared Kate and Gerry McCann of any involvement in her disappearance. But criticism of the couple -- and their decision to leave Madeleine unattended in the hotel room -- persists in some quarters.

In her interview with Winfrey, Kate McCann acknowledged the criticism and said, "I can persecute myself every day about that. I feel awful that we weren't there, at that minute, somebody took an opportunity to take Madeleine."

But she also expressed her suspicion that someone was watching the family over a period of days leading up to Madeleine's disappearance, saying, "It makes you feel sick when you think about it."