On this episode of the Sofa King Podcast, we take a look at some true crime and investigate the disappearance of Madeline McCann. Madeline was a three year old British girl who was with her family on vacation in Portugal in 2007. While she slept alongside her two year old twin brother and sister, her parents ate tapas and partied at a restaurant on the other side of the pool. Several hours later, when the parents came to check on them, Madeline was famously missing.

So, what happened? There is a lot of speculation about that. What is known is that the three children were asleep with the parents, Kate and Gerry McCann went to dinner and drinks. They checked on the sleeping kids from time to time. At one point, the father found them to be asleep but noticed their bedroom door wasn’t where it was when he last checked. At another point, a friend checked on them but didn’t bother going as far as the bedroom to actually look at the kids.

Eventually, at 10:20 PM, Kate went in and found Madeline missing. She sounded the alarm, and the entire resort staff started searching and calling her name. The police came, and then some other ones came, and they did an investigation.

But, the investigation was botched. The crime scene was left open and therefore corrupted, and basic things like locking down the town or doing a door to door search happened hours or days too late. There was a sighting called the Tanner Sighting which pointed police in a direction (which proved to be the wrong direction).

What are the theories of missing Madeline? One biggie that the Portuguese police pursued was that the parents did it. They either gave Madeline a sedative to sleep through their party, and gave her too much, or they left her alone she met some accident in the apartment. They hid the body and covered it up. But then there are other disturbing theories—pedophiles took her and killed her; she was sold into slavery; or she woke up and wandered off and died. Either way, the family spent a ton of money keeping their daughter’s name and face in the press, and the investigation is still going. If you want to know what we think happened, you’ll have to download and dig it!

Visit Our Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disappearance_of_Madeleine_McCann

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/madeleine-mccann-disappearance-latest-what-happened-scenarios-a8632886.html

https://www.biography.com/crime-figure/madeleine-mccann

https://allthatsinteresting.com/madeleine-mccann

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/madeleine-mccann-suspect-martin-ney-paedophile-police-investigation-a8900256.html