Madeleine is probably dead, admit parents

Madeleine McCann’s parents accept she is now probably dead, their spokesman admitted for the first time.

But he said that while Kate and Gerry McCann knew there was a “probability” she was dead they had not given up all hope.

Family spokesman Clarence Mitchell also dismissed reports that a computer used by Mr McCann had been seized by Portuguese police, saying officers would find nothing of interest on it.

Mr Mitchell told reporters: “Kate and Gerry are realistic enough to know that there is a probability she is dead.

“They have not given up hope that she is still alive and is being looked after somewhere. But human nature is that you always fear the worst and they need to know what has happened.”

The computer in question had largely sat unused “gathering dust” in the corner of the family apartment in Praia da Luz after being loaned to them by a local computer shop.

When the couple left Portugal for the UK it was left behind in the apartment.

Mr Mitchell said: “We were offered a PC and it proved useless.

“If that is the computer they are talking about then the police are welcome to it. They will be bored rigid.

“There is nothing incriminating on it because there is nothing incriminating to find.

“It was only used to print out statements for them (Gerry and Kate) to read out and as a rudimentary database of press contacts.

“In the end we gave up on the thing and it sat in the corner gathering dust.”

A family source confirmed later that Gerry McCann’s private laptop, which was with him in Portugal, had not been taken in by police and is still at the family home in Rothley.

Yesterday Susan Healy, the missing girl’s grandmother, said her daughter Mrs McCann fears she is being “persecuted” by people who believe she is involved in her daughter Madeleine’s disappearance because she does not look maternal enough.

She acknowledged that Mrs McCann and her husband Gerry made a “terrible mistake” in leaving their three children alone in the family’s Portuguese holiday apartment.

But she strongly defended her daughter, who along with Mr McCann has been named a formal suspect in Madeleine’s disappearance on May 3.

Mrs Healy told the Liverpool Echo: “She said, ’If I weighed another two stone, had a bigger bosom and looked more maternal, people would be more sympathetic’.

“I think it’s terrible that she’s having to think like that.

“She does feel persecuted – not by the general public, who have been extremely supportive, but by some sections of the media, and I just feel it’s important I let people know she is not this person who is in control all the time.”

Mrs Healy and her husband Brian, from Allerton, Merseyside, told the paper they were clinging to the hope that Madeleine will be found alive.

But they admitted reports that Portuguese police are planning to search a large lake about 15 miles from where the young girl vanished 166 days ago were “scary”.

The Find Madeleine campaign yesterday released new appeal posters, which will be published in local newspapers in Spain and Portugal in the coming weeks.

The Portuguese poster, which can be downloaded from the official findmadeleine.com website, has a picture of Madeleine and the caption: “Don’t forget me – help us to find Madeleine!

“Please be alert. If you see me contact the local police now.”