McCanns to probe 'Maddie sighting'

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LONDON, England (CN*) -- Newly released police files relating to the case of missing Madeleine McCann have revealed that a shop assistant in the Netherlands claimed to have talked to a young girl calling herself "Maddie" soon after the three-year-old's disappearance from a Portuguese vacation villa.


Madeleine McCann went missing in May 2007 after being left at a holiday apartment in the Algarve region.

1 of 2 more photos »  The reported sighting dominated British newspaper front pages Wednesday. "'My name is Maddie and she's not my mummy,'" said the Sun's headline. "The haunting sighting police kept from McCanns," said the Daily Mail. The case has gripped British media since Madeleine's disappearance in May last year.

Anna Stam told police that the girl had entered the Amsterdam party store where she worked last June with a man and a woman and two more children. Stam said the girl "looked very much" like Madeleine apart from the color of her hair.

Stam said the woman told her that the couple had a small circus in France. While the woman accompanying her was at the back of the shop the girl asked Stam in English, "Do you know where my mummy is?"

Told where the woman was, the girl replied: "She is not my mummy. She is a stranger, she took me from my mummy... They took me from my holiday."

Stam gave a witness statement to Dutch police which was passed onto Portuguese authorities on June 18, the UK's Press Association said. It was not clear whether detectives had followed up the possible sighting which was only made public this week with the release of thousands of pages of police files relating to the case.

A spokesman for Madeleine's parents, Kate and Gerry McCann, said it was "tragic" that information of the possible sighting had only just emerged and said private detectives working for the couple would make further inquiries.

"It is harrowing to hear a child saying that. If it was Madeleine, it was a disgrace that it was not passed on," Clarence Mitchell said.

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"We need to know what happened with this. This is exactly the sort of primary information that we need to know if it was followed up properly by the police. If that hasn't been done, that is exactly the kind of information that the private investigators are going to follow up."

Lawyers working for the McCanns were given access to the police files last week and have been studying them for fresh leads in the case.  Watch how new material reveals a glimpse into the heart of the McCann case »

The papers also revealed two previously unreleased computer-generated images of men spotted in the Algarve resort of Praia da Luz, based on witness statements, prior to Madeline's disappearance.

British tourist Derek Flack told police he had seen a man aged 25 to 35 acting suspiciously near the Ocean Club where the McCanns were staying in an apartment.

The man, who was Caucasian and tanned, appeared to be monitoring a footpath giving access to the McCann's apartment where a van was parked, according to Flack's statement to Portuguese police.

"He concluded that the man was monitoring the movements near that path and into the apartment. The man looked suspicious, he was watching the apartment," the report said.

Another image, based on a sighting by British ex-pat Lance Purser showed a thin scruffy man in his late 30s and dressed in dark clothes. Purser said he had seen the man several times in Praia da Luz about two weeks before Madeleine's disappearance, according to Portuguese police reports.


Mitchell said the McCanns had never been told of the images: "Kate was not aware of these (images), nor is she aware of what happened to the Dutch sighting -- they were never told anything about it or whether any of these sightings were followed up properly. That is the most frustrating thing."

Portuguese police announced on July 21 they were closing the investigation into Madeleine's disappearance, as well as lifting the "arguido," or formal suspect, status which had been applied to the McCanns and a Praia da Luz resident, Robert Murat, during the inquiry.
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