Perhaps it’s time to let Madeleine go

Madeleine McCann disappeared on the evening of May 3, 2007, nine days before her fourth birthday, from her bed in a holiday apartment in Praia da Luz in the Algarve, sparking what has been called "the most heavily reported missing-person case in modern history".

I was Publishing Director of the Algarve Resident, a weekly English-language newspaper at the time and by mid-morning on Friday, May 4, 2007 I had briefed our editorial team about how we were going to cover the case. It wasn’t difficult – just stick to the facts and let others speculate.

Relatives based in the UK appeared on breakfast television that Friday morning to publicise the girl’s disappearance and it was evident over the following weekend that international media interest would be immense.

The next few years saw unprecedented coverage of the case.

Arguidos came and went, including Madeleine’s parents Gerry and Kate. Some sued British newspapers who got fact and fiction confused.

Mystics from around the world said they knew where Madeleine’s body was.

And some of the worst bile I have ever seen appeared on forums, making the most outrageous accusations against all sorts of people.

Although the much-criticised Portuguese police investigation come to nothing, Gerry and Kate refused to give up, and their unshakable belief that, as there was no body, Madeleine was probably still alive kept the story in the news.

They even got the Government involved, with the Metropolitan Police tasked with investigating the disappearance after her family made a personal plea to David Cameron in 2011.

A team of more than 30 British detectives are still working exclusively to find Madeleine. But despite costing the British taxpayer a reported £10million and dozens of trips by officers to the Algarve, the inquiry – codenamed Operation Grange – has not led to a single arrest. So now Police chiefs have been urged to wind up the hunt for Madeleine as detectives battle the terror threat and a spate of murders.

Although I have a great deal of sympathy with Gerry and Kate McCann, and feel they have often been misrepresented and vilified unnecessarily, perhaps it is time to wind the investigation down.

And leave the file open, in case some new information does come to light.

There’s always hope.