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Kate McCann, the mother of missing British girl
Madeleine McCann, speaks
during a news conference Wednesday, Sept. 23 2009, at a hotel in Lisbon.
LISBON, Portugal (AP) — The mother of missing British girl Madeleine
McCann said Wednesday she has gained fresh hope for her daughter from
the discovery of American
Jaycee Dugard, who was found in California 18
years after being kidnapped.
Kate McCann said she and her husband won’t give up the search for
Madeleine, who vanished in May 2007 during a family vacation on
Portugal’s southern Algarve coast.
“I just think that it’s so vital and so fair for Madeleine that we don’t
give up on her, that we look for her,” Kate McCann told a news
conference during a daylong visit to Lisbon, Portugal. “We’re not going
to stop.”
Dugard, now 29, was reunited with her family last month after being
snatched outside her South Lake Tahoe home when she was 11. She
allegedly was kidnapped and held captive.
Kate, accompanied by her husband
Gerry, was in Portugal for the first
time since Madeleine disappeared a few days before her
fourth birthday.
Gerry had twice previously returned to Portugal to check on the
investigation. The couple said they met with their Portuguese lawyers
and advisers in the Portuguese capital to explore ways of moving the
search forward.
Earlier this month a Lisbon judge banned the sale of a book by a
Portuguese detective who had worked on the case and claimed Madeleine
was dead. The ruling came after the McCanns took legal action to halt
the book’s distribution.
“Our main worry, obviously, was people believing that Madeleine was
dead,” Kate McCann said of the injunction. “Obviously, if people believe
that she is not alive then people will stop looking for her.”
Gerry McCann said there was no evidence his daughter is dead. He said a
team of private investigators is still working on the case and is going
through “hundreds of thousands” of pieces of information.
The search is being financed by family, friends and other private
donations, he said.
In August 2008, Portugal’s attorney general ordered police to halt their
investigation because detectives had uncovered no evidence of a crime.
The case will remain closed unless new evidence emerges.
The McCanns have waged a far-reaching international campaign to find
their daughter, but there has been no reliable indication of what might
have happened to her, despite numerous reported sightings from around
the world. |
