Today in Sasha's history.
Author: Sasha
This article was originally written by Sasha and is not allowed to be reproduced by any media
May 3, 2007: The disappearance of British girl Madeleine McCann has been called "the most reported disappearance in modern history".
Madeleine McAhn is the world's most famous missing person case.
Madeleine, an Englishman, mysteriously disappeared in 2003 when she was just 3 years old.
Madeleine is a beautiful little girl, like a cute doll. She is blonde and blue-eyed, and her eyes have a distinctive iris heterochromia, blue and green eyes, and her skin is as white as cream.
Her father was a cardiologist, her mother was an emergency physician and anesthesiologist, and her parents met and married in 1993 and in 1998.
After marriage, the couple had three children, the eldest daughter Madeleine was born in 2003, and a pair of siblings were born in 2005.
Everyone knows that in countries like Britain and the United States, doctors have a high status and a good income, and they belong to the elite.
At the material time, the family, along with nine friends and eight children, was on holiday in the Portuguese village of Luz. Six of the nine friends are doctors, and the other are middle-class lawyers, sales managers, and so on.
On April 28, 2007, Madeleine's family moved into the popular village of Praia da Luz in Portugal. This 1,000-strong village of Luz is a beautiful place for British tourists, nicknamed "Little Britain".
Madeleine's father rented an apartment in a neighborhood called Waterside Village. Although the apartment is convenient, close to tourist attractions and has a great view, the downside is that the complex is open plan and strangers can easily walk through the door and balcony.
Madeleine's family lives in apartment 5A, and there are friends living in 5B and 5D next to it, and some friends live on the second floor.
At 8:30 p.m. on May 3, Madeleine's parents left their three sleeping children at home and went to an open-air restaurant nearby with friends to eat and chat.
The open air restaurant is just over 80 meters from the apartment, you can see the apartment but you can't see the door.
The doors and windows of the house could only be locked from the inside, and Madeleine's parents did not lock the door, but only went back every 30 minutes to check on the children.
At 8:05 p.m., when the couple returned to the apartment to check, they found that the three children were still asleep, and strangely the doors inside the house were all open.
The couple was also big-hearted, and they didn't notice anything abnormal, and chose to return to the restaurant after closing.
While the couple were chatting with five friends, one of them saw a strange thing: a middle-aged man with a child in his arms passed by the apartment where Madeleine lived.
At 9:30 a.m., Madeleine's parents were going to the apartment to check on their children, and their friend Matthew, who was chatting with them, was also going to see the children. So Matthew volunteered to help Madeleine and his wife go to see the child. The belly of the compartment is separated by a mountain, and Matthew doesn't care much about other people's children.
He just took a few looks, and found that the apartment was very quiet, only the door of the children's room was opened, and there was no crying of children. Matthew defaulted to the fact that the children were sleeping, and did not enter the bedroom at all, but turned his head and walked away.
It wasn't until 10 p.m. that Madeleine's irresponsible parents ended their chat and returned to the apartment. They found the 1-year-old dragon and phoenix baby asleep, but the 3-year-old Madeleine was missing. The bedroom windows and blinds were open, and Madeleine's towels and toys were left on the bed.
The parents were so frightened that they spent a few minutes searching around, and in a panic they found the hotel and friends, saying that their child was lost.
Friends called the police at 10:10 in the evening, and the police on duty rushed to the hotel and began to search, and the hotel dispatched more than 60 employees and volunteers to start searching, and many well-meaning tourists also joined in!
At first, everyone just thought that Madeleine woke up and found that her parents were not at home, so she went out to look for her on her own, but she got lost.
So many people found it after 4 a.m. and found nothing. The entire village could hear the name "Madeleine" being called.
When the local police heard that the foreign tourist's child was missing, they were more cautious.
Two police officers arrived at the missing apartment within 10 minutes and reported it to their superiors.
At 2 a.m., the reinforced police brought 2 patrol dogs, and at 8 a.m. they brought 4 more sensitive police dogs.
With the help of police dogs, numerous police officers turned over the entire resort, including sewers, wells, caves and even garbage dumps.
The chief inspector of the local police personally arrived at the scene to take charge of the command.
Afterwards, Madeleine's parents accused the Portuguese police of being inefficient and inactive, and of making some mistakes.
The police believe that the child went missing on his own initiative, not a criminal case. As a result, the Portuguese police did not conduct door-to-door searches, and did not even set up roadblocks until 10 o'clock the next day to check for vehicles entering and leaving.
At the same time, the bedroom where Madeleine was before her disappearance was not protected, and a large number of people entered and exited the room, and it was not until 3 a.m. the next day that the bedroom was sealed.
After the incident, the police classified Madeleine's case as missing, and only then began collecting DNA evidence. As a result, the police found that there were more than 20 unidentified DNA in the house, which should have been tourists and hotel employees who entered and exited the house when they were looking for people.
Madeleine disappeared and was never found.
The police put together a lot of clues, all of which turned out to be ineffective and false.
Madeleine's parents were very anxious and used the media to ask for help, which was widely reported by the media in various countries. For a time, Madeleine's disappearance became a hot topic in Europe and the United States: by the beginning of June, journalists began to worry about the impact of professional public relations activities on their interviews. If the Madeleine incident were the front page, a British newspaper could sell up to 30,000 copies. On May 28, 2007, Madeleine appeared on the cover of People magazine, and for almost six months she appeared on the front pages of British newspapers, and even Sky News' menu options opened up a section for Madeleine. Between May 2007 and July 2008, the Portuguese tabloid Morning Post published 384 articles by Madeleine. By June 2008, a search for Madeleine on YouTube yielded 3,680 videos and 700 million posts.
This media attention did nothing to help find Madeleine.
The police quickly named several suspects!
At the top of the list is a 34-year-old British man named Robert Murat.
At the time of the crime, Robert, who was a real estate agent, lived in his mother's apartment more than 100 meters away from the apartment.
Robert was named the prime suspect because someone who looked close to him was seen walking past the door of his apartment, seemingly holding a child in his hand.
Robert vehemently denied going out at this point in time, claiming to have spent the whole night at home watching television, as his mother and a close friend could fully attest.
Twelve days after Madeleine's disappearance, the police officially began investigating Robert.
The police searched Robert's house, examined his car, computer, cell phone and nearby surveillance footage, searched the entire house with police dogs and metal detectors, and even emptied the swimming pool for clues.
However, the police found nothing. Robert was annoyed by this, believing that he had a daughter about Madeleine's age and would never do such a conscientious thing.
The incident had a great negative impact on Robert, who was not only unemployed, but also attacked by the media as a "child murderer who escaped the law". Some people even set fire to his car and spray-painted the words "tell the truth" on the door of his house with red paint.
Friends who testified for him also often received anonymous phone calls, angrily accusing him of being a "liar" and "accomplice of murderers". His company didn't want to be negatively affected and fired his friend outright.
Robert was so upset that he sued for defamation in 2008 and was awarded 600,000 euros in damages after winning.
There is no point in winning the lawsuit, the police did not completely let Robert go!
In 2014, Robert, his wife and several friends were interrogated by the British police, but nothing was asked.
In 2017, Robert's mother came out and spoke out, arguing that the reason why her son was identified as the biggest suspect was because the Portuguese police were withholding a lot of key information.
That night, Robert's mother saw a suspicious young woman in a red blouse and a sneaky demeanor wandering around Madeleine's apartment, a hundred meters away.
She also saw a brown local taxi, oddly speeding in the wrong direction of Madeleine's apartment.
The police intentionally or unintentionally ignored these clues and focused the suspicion mainly on Robert. Because Robert was an Englishman, not Portuguese, could reduce media attacks on Portugal.
According to Robert's mother, the village of Luz is not safe. In the months leading up to the incident, there had been four times as many burglaries in the village of Luz as before. The apartment complex where Madeleine lived, there were two burglaries a week before the disappearance, with thieves jumping into the burglary through a window.
In order to ensure tourism income, this is never publicized, and the media rarely reports on it, and only local residents know about it. Madeleine's parents left without locking the door, leaving the child to sleep alone.
After an investigation by the media, it was proved that Robert's mother was not lying.
In fact, the police got a lot of similar leads.
Two weeks before Madeleine's disappearance, a female tourist reported that a disheveled man had forcibly begged her for money to build an orphanage at the door of her apartment, and she was terrified. The police informed the female tourist that the person was a liar. The population around the village of Luz is very small, there is no orphanage in the area, and there is no need to build an orphanage.
A week before the accident, Madeleine's apartment had been rented by other tourists. The visitor noticed a man suddenly appearing on his balcony, disheveled. The tourist sternly asked him what he was doing, but the man replied indifferently that he had come to knock on the door and ask for donations for the purpose of building an orphanage.
The police believe that the tourist is referring to two different men, which may not be related to the case.
This also objectively shows that the law and order in Luz Village is chaotic.
After investigation, on the day of Madeleine's disappearance, the two scammers made at least 4 donations near the missing apartment, all targeting British tourists.
The police never found the two men, suspecting that they were fraudsters who had mixed in with the tourists.
The police investigation went nowhere, and some media outlets began to turn to conspiracy theories that Madeleine's parents were the killers.
Just one month after the case, some media either explicitly or implicitly believed that Madeleine's parents were suspected of committing the crime.
On June 30, the Portuguese weekly newspaper Le Soleil published a 3,000-word article entitled "The Madeleine Case: The Treaty of the Seal", in which she bluntly stated that Madeleine's parents were suspects, stressed the inconsistencies between the two men's accounts, and said that some of their friends' testimonies were fabricated.
The media attacks were even more intense: The Sun's article and subsequent reports made a number of allegations without evidence, which were closely followed up by the British media, leaving Madeleine's parents facing social media criticism in the years that followed. The allegations include that Madeleine's parents played a "wife-swapping game" with the other seven, sedated their children, and reached a "gag treaty" with friends about the night. Some media outlets even believe that Madeleine's parents forcibly gave their children sedative drugs in order to play group sex parties with friends. As a result, the young Madeleine suffered an adverse drug reaction and unfortunately died. In order to cover up the scandal, his parents shouted to catch the thief and his friends faked that the child had been kidnapped, while hiding the body in a secret place.
These speculations are close to nonsense.
Over the years, in order to find the child, the British police spent 13 million pounds (100 million yuan). Many people spontaneously donated money for her to offer clues, and the highest bounty was as high as 2.6 million pounds (21.7 million yuan). The photographs used to find Madeleine were printed thousands of times and pasted on the streets of Europe, hoping to find clues.
Over the years, 8,685 people in 101 countries and territories around the world claimed to have seen Madeleine. His parents and the police have also traveled to many countries to investigate according to clues, and many celebrities, including the Pope, have reached out to help, but the case has not progressed any way.
Originally, the case would have been closed like this, but in 2020, the German police unexpectedly announced that they had caught the suspect in the disappearance of Madeleine. The guy is 43 years old and his name is Christian Brückner.
Brückner was a pedophile with a bad record and a rapist.
This guy has committed a lot of crimes, having sexually assaulted children before the age of 18, and there are many charges involving drug trafficking and violent crimes.
In 2004, he raped a young woman with a knife in the area near the village of Luz, and in 2005 he robbed and raped a 72-year-old lady in the same area. In addition, he brutally sexually abused a 14-year-old girl.
These felonies led to Brückner's arrest and he was on the run.
Brückner liked the area and had been roaming the neighborhood to commit crimes.
The man was only arrested in Germany in 2018 and sentenced to seven years in prison in 2019.
When the German police investigated, it was found that Brückner was likely involved in Madeleine's disappearance.
At the time of Madeleine's disappearance, she was committing a burglary at the resort. On the night of Madeleine's disappearance, police found Brückner on the phone for 30 minutes near the apartment where the crime occurred. One hour after the call, Madeleine mysteriously disappeared.
Even more bizarrely, Brückner has been living in this part of Portugal for 12 years, even though he is wanted for several rapes.
The day after the incident, Brückner suddenly sold his car to someone else, quickly fled Portugal, and returned to Germany.
One of the guys, Christian Poster, who is investigating Brückner's fox friends, said that Brückner had publicly confessed to him in 2017.
While the two were fooling around at the bar, the news of Madeleine's disappearance was broadcast on television.
Brückner drunkenly told Post that he had done the case, and shamelessly detailed the details of the crime.
Brückner was supposed to be in the middle of a burglary and accidentally found 3 sleeping children.
The pedophile could not control his evil mentality and took the older Madeleine away, sparing the baby.
Brückner drove Madeleine out of the village overnight, sexually assaulted her, and then brutally murdered her body.
The man who witnessed the child was not Robert, but Brückner.
Although Poster was not a good man, he was shocked to hear about these heinous atrocities.
Post later told the police, "I just felt nauseous and wanted to vomit"!
In Germany, even the most vicious gangsters and murderers do not torture children, which is considered extremely vicious and cowardly. Once a child murderer enters prison, he is often beaten by the inmates and even forced to commit suicide. Although Post did not call the police, he did not contact the man again.
However, Post was not surprised that Brückner had committed such a serious crime.
Poster has been in contact with a lot of scum and has a certain understanding of the pedophile mentality: there is a switch in the brain of a pedophile that cannot be turned off. If he sees a little girl asleep in the apartment, he will definitely take her away. ”
However, Brückner has denied any involvement in Madeleine's disappearance, and he remains on trial in Germany until 2024.
Why did Sasha write this article?
As of December 2021, the police have cracked more than 350 cases of child abduction and trafficking, arrested 890 suspects of abduction and trafficking, and carried out more than 2,900 family recognition activities. A total of 10,932 abducted children have been recovered, of whom 2,538 have been missing for 20 to 30 years, 1,812 have been missing for 30 to 40 years, 371 have been missing for 40 to 50 years, 190 have been missing for 50 to 60 years, 110 have been missing for more than 60 years, and have been separated from their relatives for up to 74 years. The addresses and contact numbers of more than 3,000 free blood collection points across the country have been released, and as of December, 19,000 people have taken the initiative to receive free blood collection from the public security organs.
But there was other news: when the "Baby Come Home" website was launched in 2007, no one came to their door, so they went out to invite parents who had lost their children to register, and did everything they could to help find their children. Over the years, some people have always asked them if they have any plans, and they always patiently explain, and some people have even made disrespectful remarks about Zhang Baoyan and his wife and the volunteers, but they can always turn their grievances into motivation. "Sister, do you really want nothing?" said a parent who saw the volunteers selflessly helping him find his child, and couldn't help but ask Zhang Baoyan, the founder of the website. "Over the years, I understand the pain of parents who have been separated from their children. Zhang Baoyan said.
"What is happiness? A family living together is happiness. Zhang Baoyan said that in the past ten years, she has seen many family joys and sorrows, and also seen many families reunited, which makes her feel very responsible, after all, there are more than 70,000 pieces of information on the "Baby Come Home" website without results.
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