Kate McCann believes a ‘horror’ note in a restaurant reservation book may have led to her daughter Madeleine‘s disappearance.
The three-year-old mysteriously vanished from her holiday apartment in Praia da Luz, Portugal, 17 years ago.
Madeleine’s disappearance remains shrouded in mystery to this day and has been described as ‘the most heavily reported missing-person case in modern history.’
The parents of missing girl Madeleine McCann, Kate and Gerry McCann, remain dedicated to the search for their daughter.
Marking the 17th anniversary of her disappearance, her devastated family shared an emotional update on the Finding Madeleine website.
Before this, Kate made a startling claim about what could have contributed to her daughter’s disappearance.
Madeleine vanished from her bed in a holiday apartment on the night of May 3, 2007. The resort was located in Portugal’s Algarve region.
While she and her twin siblings slept, Kate and Gerry were dining at a nearby restaurant with friends.
A massive search effort was launched after her parents discovered she was missing, spanning across continents.
Despite global attention, Madeleine’s whereabouts remain unknown—though there have been several developments over the years.
BBC Panorama reports that a delegation of senior officers traveled from Lisbon to London in 2023 and met with Madeleine’s father.
They reportedly apologized for how detectives had investigated the case and treated the family.
The McCanns have not commented on the apology.
One of the German prosecutors on the investigation, Hans Christian Wolters, says the apology is ‘a good sign,’ explaining: “It shows that, in Portugal, there’s development in the McCann case.”
German prisoner Christian B was officially named as a suspect in the investigation in 2022.
He has just been cleared by a German court of r*** and s**ual abuse in an unrelated trial, as reported by the BBC.
Christian B has denied all the charges against him and any involvement in Madeleine’s disappearance.
Before updates were made in the case, Madeleine’s mother opened up about an important detail on the night of her daughter’s disappearance.
In her 2011 memoir Madeleine: Our Daughter’s Disappearance and the Continuing Search for Her, Kate reveals a shocking discovery she made a year after police documents were made public.
While reviewing the police files, the mother of the missing girl was horrified to find a note from the holiday apartment complex.
Kate explained in her book that during the holiday when Madeleine disappeared, her group of nine dined at a tapas restaurant every night. At first, it was difficult to find seating for such a large party, but they eventually managed to secure a reserved booking for the remainder of the week.
After combing through police documents, Kate became concerned at how accessible the restaurant book was to the public.
“The note requesting our block booking was written in a staff message book, which sat on a desk at the pool reception for most of the day,” she wrote (via The New Zealand Herald).
“This book was by definition accessible to all staff and, albeit unintentionally, probably to guests and visitors, too.”
One specific detail in this note particularly alarmed Kate – it detailed how the McCanns left their children in the holiday apartment alone.
“To my horror, I saw that no doubt in all innocence and simply to explain why she was bending the rules a bit, the receptionist had added the reason for our request: we wanted to eat close to our apartments as we were leaving our young children alone there and checking on them intermittently,” she continued.
Kate explained how the group of nine would do their own ‘child-checking service’ while dining at the tapas restaurant instead of bringing the children along to dinner or requesting the apartment complex’s own child service.
“We now bitterly regret it and will do so until the end of our days,” Madeleine’s mother concluded.
