Madeleine McCann asked mum Kate ‘haunting’ question the morning she vanished without a trace
Topics: Madeleine McCann
Britt Jones
Featured Image Credit: Miguel Villagran/Getty Images
Topics: Madeleine McCann
Kate McCann once opened up about a question her daughter Madeleine asked her the morning of her disappearance which has stayed with her ever since.
Madeleine, who was just three years old at the time, was on holiday in Praia da Luz, Portugal when she went missing from her apartment bedroom on 3 May, 2007.
At the time, Madeleine was sharing a room with her twin siblings, Sean and Amelie, and their parents Kate and Gerry had left them to dine out with some friends around 100 yards away from the accommodation.
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Kate - along with other members of the group - kept alternating looking in on the children in the room, but at 10.00pm, she realised Madeleine was nowhere to be seen when she popped in to check.
The search for little Maddie was extensive, but despite millions being poured into the case, as well as the creation of numerous documentaries and even people coming out to claim to be the little girl, Madeleine has never been found.
Throughout the years, Madeleine's parents have maintained the belief that their daughter was taken by a local criminal.
Kate wrote a book titled Madeleine: Our Daughter's Disappearance and the Continuing Search for Her which was published in 2011 and detailed the family's torment.
In that book, Kate recalled a conversation she had with Madeleine on the day of her disappearance which 'haunted' her.
She wrote: "On Thursday, May 3 I awoke in the children’s bedroom. I can’t remember who was up first but I know we had all surfaced by about 7.30am.
“At breakfast time, Madeleine had a question for us – ‘why didn’t you come when Sean and I cried last night?’"
She continued: "We were puzzled, did she mean when they were having their bath? we asked them, or just after they’d gone to bed?
“Children often get a bit fractious around bedtime, though I had no recollection of any tears from either Madeleine or Sean before they settled the previous evening.
“It certainly hadn’t been in the early hours, because I’d been in the room with them, even closer than usual.”
On reflection, this led to Kate worrying there had been an attempted break-in the night before Madeleine went missing.
She added: "Madeleine didn’t answer or elaborate, instead she moved on to some other topic that had popped into her head, apparently unconcerned."
She continued: "Not for a moment did we think there might be some sinister reason for this occurrence if indeed anything had occurred.
“If only foresight came as easily to us as hindsight. Within hours, the explanation for this would seem hugely important and so haunted have I been ever since by Madeleine’s words that morning.”
German authorities stated in 2020 that Christian Brückner was their prime suspect in Madeleine's disappearance, but no charges have been formalised.
Brückner denies any involvement in Madeleine's disappearance.