MPS abduction team: Still a chance missing Madeleine McCann is alive
A small, dedicated band of detectives investigating the disappearance of Madeleine McCann still hope that she could be found alive despite the drastic scaling back of the police inquiry.
Apr 19, 2016
By Nick Hudson
A small, dedicated band of detectives investigating the disappearance of Madeleine McCann still hope that she could be found alive despite the drastic scaling back of the police inquiry.
Officers from the Metropolitan Police Services (MPS) Operation Grange are pursuing justifiable and reasonable leads in the investigation of the little girl who went missing from a holiday apartment in Portugal in 2007 when she was three.
Detective Chief Superintendent Mick Duthie, head of the MPS Homicide and Major Crime Command, believes the ongoing inquiry can still reach a conclusion all parties want.
In April, the MPS was provided with only enough funds to keep the investigation going for a further six months.
The Home Office set a budget for this year of just under £95,000. But this is expected to only cover the first half of the financial year until the autumn.
The sum will just about pay for salaries of the four-person team working on the case down from 29 but puts into serious question other vital incidentals such as flights to Portugal and expensive forensic work.
Come October, it is the five-year review and investigation will be wound up.
But Det Chief Supt Duthie told the Evening Standard that the inquiry is “ongoing work”, adding: There is always a possibility that we will find Madeleine and we hope that we will find her alive.
“That`s what we want and that`s what the family and the public want and that is why the Home Office continue to fund it. There is work that needs to be done still.”
He stressed the team will go back to the Home Office and ask for more money if they have not finished their inquiries within six months.
Det Chief Supt Duthie admitted detectives did not have a full understanding of what happened to Madeleine or why she was taken but added: That is why the work continues.
We have a smaller team dealing with it because we have less inquiries to deal with but we still have a job to do.
“There is a missing girl and if she has been murdered, and if we think we have got justifiable and reasonable lines of inquiry to pursue then they should be dealt with.”
Madeleine disappeared in May 2007 just days before her fourth birthday while she was on holiday with her parents Kate, 48, and Gerry, 47, in the resort of Praia da Luz.
Mrs McCann, from Rothley in Leicestershire, has always said she believes her daughter`s kidnapper did not take her “a million miles” from the Algarve.
The couple vowed they would “never give up” hope of finding their daughter.
The MPS launched an investigation codenamed Operation Grange in 2011 at the request of the family and the Home Secretary after the Portuguese authorities closed down their inquiry into the case.
Since then the MPS detectives have taken more than 1,338 statements and investigated more than 60 persons of interest in an inquiry which is estimated to have cost £12 million.
Officers have interviewed a number of suspects, including three former workers at the Ocean Club, where the McCanns were staying, and carried out an eight day search of scrubland close to where Madeleine disappeared.
But the McCanns, whose daughter would be turning 13 next month, feared the inquiry would be shut this year and said they would pay for private detectives to search if the police case closes.
A spokesman for the family said: Kate and Gerry remain incredibly grateful to the officers working on Operation Grange and to the Met in gener