On the evening of Thursday, 3 May 2007, shortly before her fourth birthday, a British child, Madeleine McCann, went missing from a holiday apartment in Praia da Luz in the Algarve in Portugal, in which she was staying with her parents.

The Portuguese police investigation into her disappearance closed in July 2008. Scotland Yard in May 2011 began a review of the case, Operation Grange, and in April 2012 announced their belief that Madeleine might still be alive.

In the weeks following her disappearance, Madeleine's parents implemented a successful publicity campaign that kept her in the public eye. This resulted in a wide-reaching international response, both in the media and by the public, which led to some criticism that the media attention was excessive. There was also comment that the UK media had unfairly criticised the Portuguese police.

Publicity

By the family

An official website for the search was set up, and the McCann family broadcast two early video appeals. The first was a photograph and video montage set to Simple Minds' song "Don't You (Forget About Me)" and included an animation of the word LOOK in uppercase with a reproduction of her coloboma as a radial line inside the first letter O, which blinks. The second featured a montage of images with a voice-over by actress Zoë Wanamaker mentioning her coloboma, seeking information about her whereabouts, and asking people to download and display a poster of her from the official site.

The family said that part of the money raised from Madeleine's Fund would go towards hiring professional campaigners, with a view to achieving the same saturation level of publicity across Europe as had been attained in the UK and the Algarve. The family based themselves in the same holiday resort from the time of the disappearance and stated then that they would not leave until Madeleine was located. Though as the campaign progressed, they ended up visiting the Vatican City, Spain, Germany, and Morocco for it, and on 5 June, they made an appeal on the British TV programme Crimewatch. However, shortly after being named as arguidos, the McCanns returned to the UK on 9 September.

Madeleine's father had already made a brief trip to the UK, on 20 May 2007, to help finalise the campaign for the search for his daughter. Gerry McCann visited the United States between 22 and 25 July when he met US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and experts from the National and International Centres for Missing and Exploited Children. During interviews on network television programmes Gerry was forced to defend leaving the children alone.

The family announced on 15 September 2007 that, beginning in a fortnight, they would be spending up to £80,000, from Madeleine's Fund, on a new publicity drive, involving newspaper, television, and poster advertising to further publicise Madeleine's disappearance. This will include posters in rural parts of Portugal and Spain and television advertisements, in Arabic, in Morocco. In late October the McCanns set up a hotline + 34 902 300213, operated by private detectives, for people in the Iberian Peninsula and North Africa to phone with information.

Over Christmas 2007, the family made a television appeal. This had produced, by 27 December, 347 phone calls with information, with more subsequently. A further video appeal was made by the parents at Christmas 2008. This included footage of Madeleine taken in December 2006.

The parents launched a fresh appeal for information in March 2009, tightly focused on the area where Madeleine went missing. 10,000 leaflets in Portuguese were distributed in Praia da Luz, Lagos, and Burgau together with billboard advertising. However, many posters were promptly torn down with Correio da Manhã reporting that the local people wanted closure. On 1 May 2009, the McCanns released an age progression image of how Madeleine might appear at age six.

By others

Several unofficial webpages were created following the disappearance, notably on social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace, offering support to the McCanns. An unofficial one minute's silence was held for Madeleine on 21 May 2007, but since it was organised by an anonymous viral email, it was not thought to be widely observed.

Robert Murat, a suspect in the investigation, has tried to generate his own publicity by selling his story. However, publicist Max Clifford indicated that he would only represent Murat if he was cleared of suspicion of kidnapping. Within the virtual world Second Life, a virtual Madeleine's Garden has been created. In early July, Bryan Adams dedicated his concert on Malta to Madeleine.

J. K. Rowling arranged with her publishers for a poster bearing the face of the missing child to be made available to booksellers when the final Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, was published on 21 July. Rowling said that she hoped that the posters would be displayed prominently in shops all over the world.

Political reaction The Portuguese Ambassador in London, António Santana Carlos said on 8 May 2007 that the case was of "great concern" to Portugal and asked people to trust the police, amidst growing criticism of their handling of the case. President Aníbal Cavaco Silva announced on 9 May that he was following the case "with great concern", adding that the police were "doing everything to find the child alive."

On 9 May, Tony Blair's spokesperson said that the then Prime Minister was following the case closely and that "we are helping in whatever way we can". On 16 May, coinciding with the launch of the fighting fund, the then Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown delivered a similar message to relatives of Madeleine. The then Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott also commented on the case, saying at Prime Minister's Question Time "I'm sure that the thoughts of the whole House will be with them at this terrible time."

On 26 May, a spokesman for the McCann family confirmed that Gordon Brown had telephoned the McCanns. Although the spokesman stated that the details of the conversations would remain private, he did confirm that "During them, Mr Brown offered both Gerry and Kate his full support in their efforts to find Madeleine." In late September Foreign Secretary David Miliband telephoned Gerry.

The German Justice Minister, Brigitte Zypries, said at a meeting of G8 justice ministers in Munich on 3 June, that it should be assumed that Madeleine had been abducted by a gang that passes on children to be abused. But the Portuguese prime minister, José Sócrates, praised investigators in September 2007, following criticism in the British media of the police handling of the case. Sócrates said that he had total confidence in the work carried out by the Portuguese police.

Theories by experts The disappearance provoked differing analyses by experts. Shortly after Madeleine went missing two former Scotland Yard commanders expressed the view that she had been abducted. Roy Ramm considered that it was a carefully planned kidnapping by someone who had been watching the child. John O'Connor was of the view that Madeleine had wandered out of the apartment on her own and was subsequently abducted. O'Connor opined that she was likely to be nearby and recommended a thorough search of surrounding occupied premises. This hypothesis was also supported by criminologist Mark Williams-Thomas who said, in May 2008, that he believed what happened was that Madeleine woke up, walked around the apartment, found the back patio door was insecure and wandered out. It was at this point that she was most likely abducted by an opportunistic predatory paedophile.

However Paulo Sargento, a criminal psychologist at Lusófona University in Lisbon, had produced in October 2007 a 3D reconstruction of events at the Ocean Club on the evening Madeleine disappeared, and his view was that kidnapping would be inconsistent with the evidence. The case was also reviewed by the notable forensic investigator Professor David Barclay of Robert Gordon University. His opinion was that the police were right to consider the McCanns as suspects and that the child is probably dead.

Comparison and possible relations with the murder of Joana Cipriano

Joana Cipriano, an eight-year-old Portuguese girl, disappeared on 12 September 2004 from the village of Figueira, only seven miles from Praia da Luz, where Madeleine McCann disappeared on 3 May 2007. In both cases, the mothers launched campaigns to find their daughters and, in both cases, the local Polícia Judiciária investigated the possibility that the mothers had killed their daughters. (Note: paperback edition).

A child protection specialist, Mark Williams-Thomas, who believes that Joana's and Madeleine's disappearances are related, said that the disappearance of two children unknown to each other, within a period of four years in a seven-mile radius, would be a huge coincidence, especially considering that Portugal is a small country with few abductions. Before Joana's disappearance, the previous first-degree murder of a child in the Algarve region was in November 1990 and involved a British girl, nine-year-old Rachel Charles, who was abducted and murdered in Albufeira. Her body was found three days later; a British mechanic, Michael Cook, a friend of the family, was arrested and convicted.On 19 June 1996 a six-year-old German child, Renè Hasèe, also disappeared, from the Amoreira beach near Aljezur while walking a few metres ahead of his parents; see The Doe Network: Case File 2075DMPRT and "Rene Hasee vermisst seit dem 19.Juni 1996". Leandro Silva, the common-law husband of Leonor Cipriano, said in 2007 that "the only difference between the McCanns and us is that we don't have money."

Several similarities between the cases — both girls vanished without trace within and less than three years of each other, in both cases officers failed to secure the crime scene, both mothers mounted campaigns to find their daughters and both women were accused of involvement—prompted Joana's family to appeal in 2008 for police to investigate whether there was a link between the disappearances.

Fundraising

Madeleine's Fund A fundraising company, known as Madeleine's Fund: Leaving No Stone Unturned, was launched in Leicester on 16 May 2007. The Fund is a limited company, not a registered charity, because its objectives are not wide enough to satisfy Charity Commission criteria for UK charities. The objectives include helping the extended family with their expenses (to prevent abuse, payments can only be authorised by the independent members of the board who are not family members) and continuing the investigation independently should that prove necessary. Any excess funds would be used to help search for other abducted children. The Fund's website reportedly received 58 million hits and 16,000 messages of support by 18 May, only two days after its launch. Over £1,095,000 had been raised by 30 October 2007. Two £2,000 monthly re-payments on the McCanns' mortgage were made from the Fund in July and August.

Legal costs funding The trustees of Madeleine's Fund announced in September that the fund would not be used to pay the McCanns' legal costs. Initially, the McCanns considered setting up a separate appeal fund for legal expenses. However, Richard Branson created a fund for the McCann's legal expenses, including those of their current advisor, Michael Caplan QC, a solicitor and partner in the London firm of Kingsley Napley. Stephen Winyard came out in December as having contributed £100,000 to the McCanns' defence fund, which paid for DNA tests carried out on the Renault Scénic hire car used by the McCanns. He also revealed Brian Kennedy as another donor.

Potential frauds