Madeleine McCann’s parents share heartbreaking message on her 21st birthday

Madeleine McCann’s parents have said they still miss their daughter in a heartbreaking tribute to mark her 21st birthday.

“Happy 21st Birthday Madeleine,” read a message shared on the official Find Madeline campaign Facebook page. “Still missing, still gone, still wanted.”

Madeleine went missing in the Portuguese resort of Praia da Luz in the Algarve on May 3, 2007, while on holiday with her parents.

Despite a multi-million pound investigation – involving detectives in the UK and Portugal – she has never been found.

SATURDAY The Independent revealed that the private investigator hired by the McCann family was returning to the scene where Madeleine disappeared.

Julian Peribañez was part of the private investigation firm Metodo 3, hired by the McCann family to explore leads that were not being considered by the police in Portugal.

He revealed that he was returning to the family’s holiday apartment, Rua Dr Agostinho da Silva, in Praia da Luz, to follow leads and seek answers that he said the police would be unable to obtain.

The McCanns admitted leaving the three-year-old girl and her younger twin siblings asleep in the apartment while they went out to dinner with friends.

Mr Peribañez spoke after the Metropolitan Police received £192,000 from the Home Office for Operation Grange – their ongoing investigation into the disappearance.

He said The Independent:”The problem is that the only way to get information, in my opinion, is to go to certain people who would never talk to the police.

“The kind of person who knows what happened is hiding in the undergrounds of every city or town. I’m not the one who can tell Operation Grange what to do.

“I think it’s good for everyone to do their own investigations. It would be nice to be able to share between us, but I know how the police force works and I understand that they don’t disclose any information.

“I am happy to say that if I find anything relevant, I will personally pass that information on to them.”

The night Madeleine disappeared, the McCanns, wealthy doctors, were out to dinner with people they had met while staying at the Ocean Club in the village of Praia da Luz.

The children in the group were left to sleep in their respective apartments with the doors unlocked, and a rotation system was in place among the parents to ensure that someone returned every half hour to check on them.

When Kate McCann took her turn and returned to her apartment at 10 p.m., she found that Madeleine had disappeared.

She rushed to the restaurant shouting, “Madeleine is gone! Someone took her!”

Christian Brueckner, a convicted rapist whose name has been mentioned in the media but who is known as Christian B in Germany because of the country’s strict privacy laws, is the prime suspect in the case.

He was tried in February at the state court in Brunswick, northern Germany, accused of multiple sex offences he allegedly committed in Portugal between 2000 and 2017, unrelated to the disappearance of the British girl.

The 47-year-old German’s appearance at trial on Friday marked the first time he had been photographed in public since he was linked to Madeleine’s disappearance in 2020. However, Brueckner has not been charged in his case.

He spent many years in Portugal, including in the resort of Praia da Luz, at the time when Madeleine, then aged three, disappeared from her bedroom during a family holiday there in 2007. He has denied any involvement in her disappearance.

He is currently serving a seven-year prison sentence in Germany for a rape committed in Portugal in 2005.