Sky News - Full coverage of the hunt for missing Madeleine McCann

Sky News - Full coverage of the hunt for missing Madeleine McCann


Has McCann maniac struck again?
Ryan Parry in Huelva 16/01/2008
Mari Luz Cortes

The dad of missing Spanish girl Mari Luz Cortes said yesterday the possibility she has been snatched by Madeleine McCann's abductors is too awful to consider.
Tearful Juan Jose, 34, said: "It's possible that the disappearance of my daughter is linked to the Madeleine case.

"But it is not something we want to contemplate right now."

Mari, five, vanished on Sunday in Huelva - 120 miles from the Portuguese resort of Praia da Luz where four-year-old Madeleine disappeared on May 3.

Madeleine's dad Gerry said: "We are extremely concerned another young girl has gone missing in the region. We hope Mari is found quickly, safe and is returned to her family as soon as possible.

"Our thoughts are with her family as the search continues."

Dark-haired Mari vanished at around 5pm after asking her mother Irene for money to buy a bag of crisps at a kiosk 100 yards from their home. The Spanish frontier town of Huelva is just a 90-minute motorway drive from Praia da Luz. It is on the route Gerry and wife Kate fear that Madeleine's kidnappers may have taken as they smuggled her from Portugal into Spain - and then on to a boat to North Africa.

Investigators from Metodo 3, the Barcelona-based private detective agency working for the McCanns, were yesterday heading for Huelva as a huge police search for Mari continued into its third day. They will probe striking similarities between the two cases. Both girls are around the same age, both were left unsupervised by their parents and there are no definitive witnesses to either supposed abduction.

Spanish police are also said to be in contact with Portuguese authorities over the potential links.

Posters featuring photographs of Mari were yesterday being distributed along the Spanish-Portuguese border as 100 officers with sniffer dogs and 500 locals searched for her.

Mari wandered out of her home as mum Irene, 34, lay on the sofa feeling unwell.

She and husband Juan, a builder and former professional footballer, began to worry when she was not back after an hour and called police around 7.30pm on Sunday.

One potential witness claims to have seen a girl matching Mari's description on a bus in Huelva's suburbs with a woman of gipsy appearance who was shouting at her.

Juan last night begged for her return - in a plea that was a poignant reminder of the appeals that Kate and Gerry had made in Praia da Luz.

He said: "Whoever has her, bring her back and everything will be ok.

"If anyone has taken Mari Luz by mistake or if they thought she was lost, please bring her back." The McCanns' spokesman Clarence Mitchell said: "Gerry and Kate of all people know the agony that Mari's family are going through."