Madeleine McCann: Sightings across Europe revealed

Aug 5 2008

A little girl calling herself “Maddy” and claiming to have been taken from her mother on holiday was seen in Amsterdam at the time Madeleine McCann disappeared, the case files show.

Possible sightings of the missing little girl flooded into the Algarve police incident room from around the world.

The newly-released documents include scores of e-mails from foreign police forces passing on reports that could provide investigators with a key lead.

But the Amsterdam sighting is one of the most intriguing.

Dutch shop worker Anna Stam, 41, said she spoke to a little girl aged three or four who said her name was “Maddy” and replied to a question about her mother: “They took me from my holiday.”

The girl entered her 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 in the police files.

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 English without an accent: “Do you know where my mummy is?”

The shop assistant answered that her mother was a little further back in the store but the child replied, “She is not my mummy,” and added: “She is a stranger, she took me from my mummy.”

When Ms Stam asked the girl where she last saw her mother, she said: “They took me from my holiday.”

The Dutchwoman went on: “I asked where that holiday was but the little girl was incapable of telling me.

“I even asked if she was on a camping site or in a hotel but she was unable to say.

“I told her I thought she was very cute and asked if she wanted a balloon. She didn’t.

“I thought it all a little odd and then I heard the woman call the girl. She didn’t call her Maddy, but a longer name. She could have said Madeleine but I don’t remember that.”

The girl had dark brown hair in a ponytail, “huge” green-brown eyes and a pale face which showed “little or no emotion”, she said.

Ms Stam said she thought the child looked “very much like” Madeleine apart from the colour of her hair.

The report was sent to the Portuguese authorities on June 18 last year but it is not clear what action was taken.

These are just some of the many other reported sightings listed in the files.

• Dorset: On May 4 last year a witness called Malcolm Smith saw a “very upset” little girl wearing a pink top with a tall man at the Moonfleet Manor Hotel in Fleet, near Weymouth, Dorset.

• Alvor, Portugal: Two British holidaymakers saw a drunken-looking man emerge from a white van cradling a child of about three at Alvor in the Algarve in the early hours of May 5 last year.

Retirees Richard and Susan McCluskey, from Sunderland, also witnessed a “worried-looking” blonde woman running towards the van. A Portuguese couple told the Britons they had seen the man hit the woman.

• Lisbon, Portugal: A Portuguese woman called UK free phone police line Crimestoppers to report seeing a child who looked “just like” Madeleine with two women at a Lisbon subway station on May 5 or 6.

• Gatwick Airport: A woman contacted Leicestershire Police to report seeing Madeleine at Gatwick Airport on May 8.

Mary Jones said she was “convinced” the child she saw - accompanied by a woman whose dark bob haircut “could well have been a wig” - was the missing girl. She speculated that Madeleine could have been at Gatwick en route for Marrakech in Morocco.

• Spain: Leicestershire Police requested via Interpol that the Spanish authorities investigate a series of possible sightings across Spain.

Between May 5 and 17 last year alone the British force logged reports from Marbella, Huelva, Salou, Valencia, Pampaneira, Vera, Riviera del Sol and Guardamar del Segura.

• Riga, Latvia: The Finnish embassy in Estonia passed on a report that a woman clutching a young girl “very much alike” Madeleine had been seen in Riga’s old town on July 3 last year.

The reported sightings were investigated but they all came to nothing. The newly-released Portuguese files also include the checklist for Leicestershire Police officers involved in Operation Task, the British end of the Madeleine investigation.

When interviewing witnesses to potential sightings of the little girl, they should obtain a full statement, find out whether they were staying in Praia da Luz and if so ask whether they were involved in searches for Madeleine.

Officers should also ask whether photographic evidence such as mobile phone pictures and video was available, ask if the witness would recognise the person again and assess whether an e-fit could be produced.