First pictures of Madeleine sighting couple

The first pictures of a couple seen by a woman who reported a potential sighting of Madeleine McCann in Holland were released today.

The artist’s impressions, published in the Daily Mirror, were created with the help of Anna Stam.

In early May last year the 41-year-old shop assistant from Amsterdam spoke to a little girl called “Maddy” who said she had been taken from her mother while on holiday.

The sketches show a dark-featured man aged 35-40 with a moustache, who the paper said was speaking in Portuguese, and a woman in her 40s with brown hair who was speaking French.

Ms Stam’s report was one of a number of potential sightings that emerged in the official police files released this week.

The girl entered Ms Stam’s party shop in early May last year with a man and a woman and two other children, according to a witness statement to Dutch police.

The man – who “did not look like a nice person” – appeared to be speaking Portuguese but the woman spoke in English and told Ms Stam they had a small circus in France.

Ms Stam was at the back of the shop when the young girl approached her and asked in unaccented English: “Do you know where my mummy is?”

On being told that her mother was a little further back in the store, the child replied, “She is not my mummy,” and added: “She is a stranger, she took me from my mummy.”

The Dutchwoman said she thought the girl looked “very much like” Madeleine apart from the colour of her hair.

Madeleine was nearly four when she vanished from her family’s holiday flat in the Algarve resort of Praia da Luz on May 3 last year.

Private detectives working for her parents Kate and Gerry McCann were investigating Ms Stam’s account as well as pursuing newly-revealed leads pointing to a possible Belgian link to their daughter’s disappearance.

The McCanns’ investigators are also looking into a Scotland Yard report suggesting the child may have been snatched to order for a Belgian paedophile ring, despite a warning that the intelligence is “flawed”.

The police files also revealed a string of possible sightings in Belgium.

The Scotland Yard paedophile ring tip-off was contained in an email from the Metropolitan Police’s CO14 clubs and vice unit sent to Leicestershire Police and forwarded to Portuguese detectives.

An informant claimed a photograph was taken of Madeleine on holiday in Portugal and passed to a “purchaser” in Belgium days before she vanished.

Sources cautioned that the information was second or even third-hand and impossible to corroborate with forces in the UK or abroad.

Portuguese police pursued the lead, requesting assistance from Belgium via Interpol, but only limited information was available and the trail ran cold.

The McCanns’ lawyers are now sifting through the massive police dossier of thousands of pages of evidence looking for credible clues that the couple’s private investigators can pursue.

On July 21 Portuguese prosecutors announced they were shelving the Madeleine McCann case, although it can be reopened if credible new evidence comes to light.

At the same time the McCanns and Algarve resident Robert Murat were told they were no longer “arguidos”, or formal suspects, in the investigation.