Madeleine’s mother, Kate McCann, is certain she knows what caused her daughter to vanish…
When Madeleine disappeared in 2007 while on vacation in Portugal with her family, she was just three years old.
Her parents, Kate and Gerry, who are now 54 years old, are firmly certain that their daughter is still alive and have spearheaded one of the biggest global searches and cases of missing children.
They each have their own beliefs about why Madeleine hasn’t been located; one of them is particularly shocking.
The Ocean Club reservation book
While Madeleine’s parents and their friends were dining at the Ocean Club restaurant in the same hotel, Madeleine vanished from their vacation rental.
In 2019, a decade and a half later, Netflix released the documentary series The Disappearance of Madeleine McCann.
A minor but crucial piece of information about the case is disclosed near the end of the series.
Author Robbyn Swan, who co-wrote the 2014 documentary Looking for Madeleine, claims that Kate will never get over what she witnessed in the restaurant’s reservation book. Swan offers her observations throughout the film.
Swan referred to the McCanns’ situation as “the stuff of nightmares.”
Kate describes the incident and its significance for her in her 2011 book, Madeleine: Our Daughter’s Disappearance and the Continuing Search for Her.
She explained that because the holidaying group’s children would all be asleep in their hotel apartments at dinner time, they requested that the group reserve the same table every night—the one with the best view of the apartments.
However, Kate didn’t find out what the reservation taker had written in the open reservation book at the restaurant’s entryway until Madeleine disappeared.
She came to the realization that the children would have been left unattended in their rooms, something that would have been obvious to any nosy bystander or employee of the restaurant.
The devastated mother wrote: “To my horror, I saw that, no doubt in all innocence and simply to explain why she was bending the rules a bit, the receptionist had added the reason for our request: we wanted to eat close to our apartments as we were leaving our young children alone there and checking on them intermittently.”
“We will continue to regret it deeply till the end of our days.”
“Detrimentally impacted the search”
The McCanns have been open about their view that Madeleine hasn’t been found yet because of the early stages of the police search. This is their second theory.
The pair last posted on their website in September 2022, expressing their profound disappointment at going down in their fight against Portuguese policeman Goncalo Amaral, whom they feel had a negative influence on the Madeleine search.