German prosecutor assumes missing British girl Madeleine McCann is dead
- Victim had disappeared in Portugal in 2007, just days before her fourth birthday
- 43-year-old German child abuser is the murder suspect and he’s in jail for unrelated crime
McCann vanished from her bedroom on May 3 during a family holiday in the Algarve while her parents were dining with friends nearby in the resort of Praia da Luz.
Her disappearance sparked an international search, with missing posters of the little girl’s face papered across the world and celebrity appeals for information that could help track her down and bring her abductors to justice.
“We assume that the girl is dead,” Braunschweig state prosecutor Hans Christian Wolters said. “The public prosecutor’s office in Braunschweig is investigating a 43-year-old German national on suspicion of murder.”
No body has ever been found.
But the German statements that the young girl was assumed dead were the most authoritative thus far on her fate. Family and supporters had always held out the hope that she might still be alive somewhere.
