KATE McCann has admitted that after daughter Maddie disappeared there were times she wished she and her family were dead.

Speaking just two days before the third anniversary of Maddie's abduction on May 3 2007 Kate revealed her agony was so great that she used to hope that her, husband Gerry and their twins Sean and Amelie would die in an accident.

She said: "I used to have thoughts like we'll get wiped out in the car on the motorway. So it would just happen, we'd all be gone, and the pain would be away."

She says those thoughts eventually went away saying: "What I do know now for sure is that I don't want that. Things have changed. I am desperate to be here with Sean and Amelie and to help find Madeleine."

Maddie was snatched from a holiday apartment in
Praia da Luz, Portugal.

Today an angry Kate, 41, branded the
Portuguese investigation into her daughter's disappearance a "farce".

She hit out at the fact that Portuguese cops are no longer looking for Maddie and that any new leads are ignored by them.

Kate said: "If this was a murder inquiry there'd be an active investigation because they'd want to find the perpetrator, but as it stands we have a perpetrator who's
still at large and therefore puts, potentially puts, other children at risk, and we have a missing child. So why is there no active investigation?

"I think it's a farce."

Husband Gerry is equally as angry that the search for Maddie has ended, saying: "Officially for eighteen months and longer, law enforcement are not pro-actively doing anything to find Madeleine, and who took her, and I just think that is fundamentally unacceptable.

"Now we've been assured that if new information comes in it will be followed up.

"In fact the information that's come to light during the recent court cases have shown that almost every single piece of information that's gone to Portimao, the police station in the Algarve where the investigation is based, has been treated in exactly the same manner, which is being declared as not relevant."

In the past Kate and Gerry, from Rothley, Leicestershire, have avoided criticising the Portuguese police investigation into Maddie's disappearance.

But as the agonising third anniversary of her abduction looms the McCanns have made it clear how hopeless they think the efforts of some of the Portuguese cops have been.

Heart specialist Gerry, 41, said: "There have been very poor elements of the Portuguese investigation, and at the same time it's probably been one of the biggest investigations ever in Portugal.

"So we aren't tarring everyone, there have been individuals who, for whatever reason, have seemingly not wanted to find Madeleine. That's how it appears to us.

"So there are people who are clearly making it more difficult and there are others that in this country, for whatever motives, want to make it more difficult. There are many people who've tried to derail what we're doing along the way."

Kate says she fears that there may be other motives which have hindered the search for her daughter.

She admitted: "I also think there'll be some people who would be greatly embarrassed if Madeleine was found and that scares me. That scares me. That might affect their want, or not, for Madeleine to be found."

The McCanns are planning to spend this weekend quietly at home with Maddie's twin brother and sister Sean and Amelie who are now five.

The family will attend their local catholic church on Sunday, the day before the anniversary, to say prayers for Maddie.

Talking about the twins Gerry said: "Their recognition that what's happened is morally very very wrong and that their sister should be at home with them.

"Needless to say Sean in particular talks about having an aeroplane and flying all over the world looking for 'that man who's taken Madeleine', and when he gets him he's going to rescue her and take his sword out."

Kate says she prays that whoever has her daughter is taking care of her saying: "You just hope that somebody who is looking after Madeleine, that she is now not at harm and she's getting love and happiness. That's all I can hope for."

She says she will never give up searching for Maddie saying: "You know in my heart I feel she's out there. I really do.

"And that, together with the feeling that I have of this not being over, of her still being there. The hardest thing obviously is how do we find her?"

Gerry admits that in the days after Maddie disappeared he thought the worse saying: "Early on we couldn't think of anything else but the worst case, that she's been taken, abused and killed and dumped, or maybe left seriously injured and dumped out in the freezing cold."

Despite the fact that they regularly attend the Catholic church near their home Gerry admitted that Maddie's abduction has made him question his faith.

He said: "If anything when this first happened it strengthened my faith. I felt that there was such support and I really felt that may have been God's work, that something good was going to come out of this. I had a lot more hope that this would lead to a relatively quick outcome."

But he admitted that as time has gone on his belief in God has faltered saying: "I'm struggling much more now, without a doubt, I think that for one child to have been the recipient of so many millions of prayers, you think well I do have my doubt.

"You think, well if those prayers were going to work, they should have worked a long time ago."