Where in Portugal did Madeleine McCann disappear and where is the Ocean Club in Praia da Luz?
MADELEINE MCCANN disappeared from her bed while on holiday with her family in Portugal in 2007.
The little girl was last seen when she was just three years old and yet has never been found extensive searches.
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Where is Madeleine McCann missing?
Madeleine disappeared from her family’s holiday apartment in Rua Dr. Agostinho da Silva, Praia da Luzinto a resort the Algarve region of Portugal.
She was on holiday her parents Kate And Gerry McCann And younger brothers and sisters – twins Sean and Amelie – when she went missing.
The McCanns arrived at the site on April 28, 2007 for a seven-night break in the two-bedroom ground floor apartment.
Madeleine disappeared from the accommodation where she had been sleeping with her brother and sister on what would have been the penultimate day of the McCann family holiday.
The children’s parents were at a nearby restaurant.
The disappearance of the three-year-old child remains one of the most important most famous missing persons cases in British history.
Read more about Madeleine McCann
Where is the Ocean Club in Praia da Luz?
The apartment from which Madeleine disappeared is on the edge of travel company Mark Warner’s Ocean Club resort.
The Ocean Club is one of the many tourist attractions in the popular holiday resort of Praia da Luz.
It is close to the larger city of Lagos, approximately an hour’s drive from Faro Airport.
In February 2017 the apartment was sold to a British gran for £113,000 – half the asking price.
When did Madeleine McCann disappear?
Madeleine disappeared on May 3, 2007, after Kate and Gerry let her and her siblings sleep in their apartment while they dined at a nearby tapas bar.
Kate discovered that Madeleine was not in her bed when she returned to check on the children around 10pm that evening.
Gerry and Kate were labeled “arguidos” – people subject to preliminary interrogation – by Portuguese police in September 2007, but the following summer they were cleared by investigators who said they had exhausted all options in the case.
Scotland Yard launched its own investigation into the case in 2011 on behalf of the then Home Secretary, called Operation Grange. Theresa Mei.
Two years later, Scotland Yard said it had uncovered new clues as Portuguese police reopened their case.
Operation Grange was reduced from 29 detectives to just four in October 2015, but the following year the Tory government injected additional funding into the operation as police investigated a new theory that Maddie had been snatched by a human trafficking gang.
Police said in October 2017 that they were hunting for a “person of significance” and in November of that year, researchers traveled to Bulgaria through a new line of research to try to track down the widow of a pedophile.
In March 2018, Scotland Yard won funding from the Home Office continuing to pursue a crucial ‘final line of inquiry’ for another six months.
At the end of that six-month period, a formal request was submitted to the Home Office for a further six months of funding.
In 2022, Portuguese police formally named the convicted rapist Christian Brückner as the main suspect in Madeleine’s disappearance.
In May 2023 it was announced that the police had done so launched a major search for Madeleine’s body in a remote reservoir where Christian would have been.
Brueckner is said to have used the Arade Dam, a 45-minute drive from the Ocean Club holiday resort where Madeleine disappeared, and is said to have called it his “little paradise”.
The search ended after three days on May 25, 2023, but It is not known what the police discovered.
Predator Brueckner was in court in Braunschweig, Germany in February 2024.
He faced claims that he raped three women and twice sexually abused children in Portugal.
Brueckner was born in Germany in 1976 and moved to Portugal in his late teens.
He is serving a prison sentence for the rape of a 72-year-old woman in 2005 and is believed to have a total of 17 convictions against him, including burglary.
How old would Madeleine McCann be now?
Madeleine’s 20th birthday was on May 12, 2023.
On her birthday the The McCann family marked the occasion on their website.
They wrote at the time: “Congratulations Madeleine!
“We love you and we are waiting for you. We will never give up.”
In April 2012, British police released a computer-generated image showing Madeleine what she would look like when she was nine.