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| McCanns' despair at the sightings and CCTV footage police ke - |
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wvgirl
 Posted:
Tue Aug 05, 2008 7:11 pm |
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McCanns' despair at the sightings and CCTV footage police ke
'My name's Maddie. They took me from my holiday':
By MICHAEL SEAMARK
Last updated at 12:00 AM on 06th August 2008
(This is an update/rewrite of the 2:12 PM, 05 August 2008, article with new pictures)
A girl calling herself 'Maddie' and claiming she was taken from her mother while on holiday was seen in Amsterdam after Madeleine McCann vanished, case files show.
The secret documents gathered by police during their investigation into the three-year-old's disappearance reveals possible sightings from around the world.
Revealed to the public for the first time this week, they show how a Dutch woman reported seeing a little girl who asked her: 'Do you know where my Mummy is?'
Another girl bearing a striking resemblance to Madeleine, then three, was caught on CCTV footage taken within hours of her disappearance in Praia da Luz.
The newly-released documents include scores of e-mails from foreign police forces passing on reports that could provide investigators with a key lead but the Amsterdam sighting is one of the most intriguing.
Dutch shop worker Anna Stam, 41, said she spoke to a little girl aged three or four who said her name was 'Maddie' and replied to a question about her mother: 'They took me from my holiday.'
The girl entered her party shop in early May last year with a man and a woman and two other children, according to a witness statement to Dutch police in the police files.
The man - who 'did not look like a nice person' - appeared to be speaking Portuguese but the woman spoke in English and told Ms Stam they had a small circus in France.
Miss Stam was at the back of the shop when the young girl approached her and asked in English without an accent: 'Do you know where my mummy is?'
The shop assistant answered that her mother was a little further back in the store but the child replied: 'She is not my mummy', adding:'She is a stranger, she took me from my mummy.'
When Miss Stam asked the girl where she last saw her mother, she said: 'They took me from my holiday.'
The Dutchwoman went on: 'I asked where that holiday was but the little girl was incapable of telling me.
'I even asked if she was on a camping site or in a hotel but she was unable to say. I told her I thought she was very cute and asked if she wanted a balloon. She didn't.
'I thought it all a little odd and then I heard the woman call the girl. She didn't call her Maddy, but a longer name. She could have said Madeleine but I don't remember that.'
The girl had dark brown hair in a ponytail, 'huge' green-brown eyes and a pale face which showed 'little or no emotion', she said.
Ms Stam said she thought the child looked 'very much like' Madeleine apart from the colour of her hair.
The report was sent to the Portuguese authorities on June 18 last year but it is not clear what action was taken.
Meanwhile, the CCTV picture was taken within hours of her disappearance close to Praia da Luz, where she vanished from her family's holiday apartment.
Its existence was revealed for the first time today among thousands of pages of documents from the police investigation into the then three-year-old's disappearance.
Witnesses were shown the still image after it was taken at a petrol station near the town of Lagos on the Algarve's main Via do Infante highway - but it was never shown to the public.
This grainy CCTV image was among the earliest clues in the search for Madeleine.
It shows a young blonde girl hand in hand with a woman and was taken at 11.10am on May 4 - the morning after the disappearance - at a service station on the A22 just outside Praia da Luz.
Police seized the CCTV footage and showed it to Kate and Gerry McCann later that day. The devastated parents immediately said the girl was not their missing daughter.
A second set of images shows a girl resembling Madeleine inside a Repsol petrol station in Vale Paraiso, Albufeira, later that morning.
She is behind a man in his fifties or sixties and a blue Renault car parked on the forecourt.
The images were not shown to the McCanns, but the owner of the car was traced and no further action taken.
On May 9 in Morocco, Norwegian-born tourist Mari Pollard, 45, said she was '100 per cent certain' she saw Madeleine with a man at a petrol station in Marrakeshand and heard her ask: 'Can I see Mummy soon?'
Detectives travelled to Marrakesh but were told there were no CCTV images of the incident.
They have also investigated ten sightings in the Rif Mountains in the north of country.
Other sightings have been reported in Australia, Chile, Brazil and Canada.
But so far each has led to disappointment for the McCanns, as the girls have been found and proved not to be their missing daughter.
Last edited by wvgirl on Tue Aug 05, 2008 7:15 pm; edited 1 time in total
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Joined: 23 Mar 2006
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Location: Almost Heaven
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| wvgirl
Posted:
Tue Aug 05, 2008 7:14 pm |
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Clues: Another possible sighting contained in the file
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Joined: 23 Mar 2006
Posts: 3680
Location: Almost Heaven
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