Almost two decades after three-year-old Madeleine McCann vanished from a holiday apartment in the Algarve, a private investigator who has worked on the case for many years has issued a fresh public plea and restated his long-held theory about what may have happened to her.

Madeleine disappeared on the evening of 3 May 2007 from apartment 5A at the Ocean Club resort in Praia da Luz, Portugal. Her parents, Kate and Gerry McCann, had left her and her younger twin siblings asleep while they dined with friends at a tapas restaurant roughly 55 metres away, taking turns to check on the children. When Kate returned to the apartment at around 10pm, she found Madeleine’s bed empty and the bedroom window open. The discovery launched one of the most intensive and widely reported missing-persons investigations in modern history.

Over the years the inquiry has involved Portuguese police, Britain’s Metropolitan Police through Operation Grange, and later German authorities. Thousands of leads have been examined across Europe. Since 2020, German prosecutors have focused heavily on Christian Brueckner, a convicted Sєx offender whose mobile phone records placed him in the Praia da Luz area on the night Madeleine vanished. Despite that focus, no charges relating to her disappearance or death have been brought against him, and the case has repeatedly encountered legal and procedural obstacles.

Spanish investigator Julián Peribañez, who was engaged by the McCann family in the period after the disappearance, has never fully stepped away from the case. In recent comments he made clear that he continues to hold out hope. “I don’t know if she’s alive or not, because hardly anyone on Earth does,” he said. “But as long as I have hope, I won’t stop looking.”

Peribañez’s working theory has long differed from the main official line of inquiry. He believes Madeleine was taken by an organised Eastern European trafficking network that was operating in the Algarve at the time. He has urged anyone living in or familiar with the region who may have encountered people matching a relevant profile to come forward. His message is direct: “If you’ve had encounters with people who fit the profile, please reach out. All I need is a name. Give me a name, and I’ll chase it wherever I have to.”

The renewed appeal comes at a time when public attention on the case has been refreshed by a recent documentary series examining the disappearance, the official investigations and the intense speculation and online commentary that have surrounded the McCann family for nearly two decades. Meanwhile, in a separate development in late October 2026, German courts ruled that round-the-clock police surveillance of Brueckner would end, although he remains subject to other monitoring measures including an electronic tag.

Nearly 19 years after Madeleine was last seen, the mystery remains unresolved. Official investigations continue in parallel with private efforts such as those pursued by Peribañez. For the family and for those who have followed the case for so long, the search for definitive answers — and for the breakthrough that has so far remained out of reach — continues.