Snatched to order or simple kidnap: many theories, no answers

From the idea that a grieving parent took Madeleine to the possibility she died the night she went missing, police have ruled out nothing, write John Bingham and Sam Marsden.

SINCE Madeleine McCann disappeared on May 3, police have been following multiple lines of inquiry.

Theories considered ranged from the possibility that she was snatched “to order” — for child traffickers or a paedophile ring — to abduction by a lone intruder or a botched kidnap.

There have been reports this week that detectives suspect she was not abducted alive but died in the apartment on the night she vanished.

Police even revealed they were not ruling out the hundreds of messages from self-styled psychics claiming to have information on where she was.

Within hours of Madeleine’s abduction it was clear the hunt would have an international dimension.

Theories abounded that she had been taken out of the country to other parts of Europe, North Africa or even across the Atlantic.

Nevertheless police said throughout they could not rule out the possibility that she was still in the Algarve. Praia da Luz is just a few miles from both the port of Lagos — where boats could depart for north Africa — and the main east-west motorway linking southern Spain and Portugal.

It emerged detectives were investigating a claim that a girl was seen being dragged towards the marina at Lagos by a man shortly after Madeleine’s abduction. Although the report led nowhere, police continued to carry out investigations around the marina.

Reports of possible sightings came in from across southern Europe and beyond. Amid hopes that Madeleine was snatched by or on behalf of someone who had lost a child rather than a paedophile ring, detectives toured the area around Praia da Luz asking locals whether they had seen a “English-looking blonde woman”.

Similarly, some speculated that she was snatched for adoption abroad.

The theory may have stemmed from a sighting of a girl resembling Madeleine seen with a woman at a petrol station just outside Praia Da Luz.

Others suggested she was abducted by gypsies. The theory gained credence after Portuguese media reported the case of some Romanian gypsies arrested near Lisbon trying to sell a baby. But police could not ignore the possibility that Madeleine was abducted by a paedophile. Specialists from Britain’s anti-paedophile Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre jetted out to Portugal soon after Madeleine’s disappearance to work with Portuguese police.

They launched an unprecedented trawl of holiday photographs taken by other tourists who had been in the Algarve at the time of the abduction, scanning the faces of bystanders and checking them against biometric facial maps of known paedophiles.

Several suspicious incidents in the area were given added importance amid an international abduction investigation. Among them a complaint by a Portuguese man that a foreigner had been photographing his daughter in the nearby town of Sagres was examined, but any link was ruled out.

One theory was that she had been snatched by a kidnapper for ransom but that the massive exposure given to the case had frightened her abductor out of making contact.

More recently, speculation in the Portuguese media has centred on the possibility that Madeleine was killed in the McCanns’ flat on May 3.

This theory was bolstered by the discovery last week of traces of blood on a wall in the apartment — although police are still awaiting tests to confirm whether it came from the young girl.