we have played no part in the disappearance of our lovely daughter, madeleine. 14 months pass since madeleine s disappearance, with no progress, and no charges filed. in july 2008, stunning news. the portuguese attorney general was closing the case. translator: at a certain point i realized there were no reliable clues any more solid than others. it reminded me of a cat trying to catch its own tail. his decision cleared all suspects, including robert marat. he was more of a victim. he needed someone to blame. just left me completely destroyed. not only myself, my family. it s hard to describe how despairingly it was to be named
portugal s history was underway. during the first three weeks, there were thousands all over the country to rescue madeleine mccann. then 11 days after the d disappearance, a potential break in the case. portuguese police, also known as the p.j., named the first formal suspect. who was robert muratsome robert murat is a british-portuguese resident of praia da luz who lived in 2007 there with his mother, only some 100 yards from apartment 5-a. after madeleine s disappearance made the morning news, robert murat walked out to his yard. that s when i met an english guy that had known the family. so he asked me if i would mind
may 2011. four years after she vanished from a portuguese resort, madeleine mccann was still missing. and the only ones still searching were her parents. no law enforcement agency or police force has been looking for madeleine for three years. we ve been doing it on our own. but kate and gerry mccann weren t giving up, they were taking action. i m absolutely confident t t that kate mccann spoke and it included a plea to reopen the case. thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen. a plea the mccanns would aim next at britain s prime minister. in a letter printed in one of the big tabloid newspapers in the uk, they essentially begged
balcony near the mccann s apartment just hours before madeleine disappeared. meanwhile, an upstairs neighbor saw another mann acting very suspiciously in the little pathway between the pool garden and apartment 5-a. and there was more. british police released a sketch of one of the men they say approached nearby apartments, asking residents for donations to a local orphanage. now, there was no such orphanage. so clearly these men were involved in some kind of a crime. possibly just burglary, but possibly something else. we ve got a lot of work to do. we ve also done a lot of work. we are wholly committed to making a difference in this case. we re fighting for madeleine mccann. a fight that has lasted far longer than any had hoped. there s no evidence that she s dead. so certainly from my point of
4-year-old girl is missing. from the beginning, the british media had a ferocious appetite for anything related to the mccann case. many salacious newspaper headlines even implied the mccanns had something to do with the death or disappearance of their daughter. so in 2008, the mccanns sued several of those papers for libel and won. many issued apologies and awarded more than $1 million into a fund established to find madeleine. gerry and kate weren t the only victims of false reports. robert murat was also awarded over $1 million in libel damages. and their friends settled a case for six figures. but what the mccanns wanted most was answers. so they turned to private investigators. julian paravongage was a field a