McCann: Local authorities search Vila do Bispo wells for body

Local police authorities have searched wells as part of their investigation into the disappearance of Madeleine McCann, according to reports. British newspaper The Mirror reported that police and divers in the Algarve examined three disused wells in Vila do Bispo for eight hours last week.

The area is about 16km (10 miles) from the Praia da Luz resort, where Madeleine disappeared on 3 May 2007.

Multiple investigators were at the scene with specialist diving equipment to examine the wells. The largest is thought to be more than 13 metres deep. Madeleine’s parents, Kate and Gerry McCann, have not been told on what grounds authorities searched the wells, the paper said.

It also reported the search sites are near a beach where suspect Christian Brueckner’s camper van was photographed in 2007.

The investigation into Madeleine’s disappearance was renewed in June after German authorities announced they were investigating Brueckner, a convicted German child sex offender.

He is known to have lived on the Algarve coast and his Portuguese mobile phone received a 30-minute phone call in Praia da Luz about an hour before Madeleine went missing.

He is in jail in Germany for drug dealing, and is appealing against a conviction for the 2005 rape of a 72-year-old woman, also at Praia da Luz.

He has not yet spoken to investigators who have said they were convinced he had committed other sex attacks.

Kate and Gerry McCann have denied receiving a letter from German investigators that said “there is evidence or proof” Madeleine was dead. The pair denied the claims on the Find Madeleine website last month and said the news caused “unnecessary anxiety to friends and family and once again disrupted our lives”.

German prosecutor Hans Christian Wolters, who is leading the investigation into Brueckner, said a letter had been written to the couple, but would not reveal what it said.

He said prosecutors had “concrete evidence” but not “forensic evidence” that Madeleine was killed by the suspect and may “know more” than Scotland Yard, which is still treating the case as a missing person investigation.

The metropolitan police maintain their active investigation into Madeleine’s disappearance, Operation Grange, is a missing person inquiry as there is no “definitive evidence whether Madeleine is alive or dead”.