On May 3, 2007, 3-year-old Madeleine McCann vanished from her bed at her family’s vacation apartment in Praia da Luz, Portugal
:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc():focal(999x0:1001x2):format(webp)/kate-gerry-mccann-3-ac47747b658a4e7c9a95942f7717d2d3.jpg "17 Years After Madeleine McCann’s Disappearance, Questions Remain Unanswered: 5 Things to Know")
More than a decade and a half has pᴀssed since the disappearance of Madeleine McCann, and uncertainty still swirls around the missing toddler’s whereabouts.
Marking the 17th anniversary of her disappearance on May 3, Madeleine’s parents, Kate and Gerry McCann, acknowledged on their website that Madeleine’s “absence still aches.”
“It’s 17 years since Madeleine was taken from us,” Kate and Gerry wrote. “It’s hard to even say that number without shaking our heads in disbelief. Whilst we are fortunate in many ways and able to live a relatively normal and enjoyable life now, the ‘living in limbo’ is still very unsettling.”
“Your support continues to encourage us and bolsters our strength to keep going. We know the love and hope for Madeleine and the will to find her, even after so many years, remains, and we are truly thankful for that,” the message continued. “Thank you again for remembering Madeleine and all missing children.”
Here are five things you need to know about the case.
1. Madeleine McCann Vanished on a Family Trip to Portugal
On May 3, 2007, Madeleine — who was 3 years old at the time — vanished from her bed at her family’s vacation apartment in Praia da Luz, Portugal. The McCanns were visiting from the United Kingdom, where they lived.
The little girl, who was just days shy of celebrating her 4th birthday, had been left with her 2-year-old twin siblings in the unlocked rental while Kate and Gerry dined with friends at a restaurant 130 feet away.
The parents took turns checking on their children periodically, but later that night, Kate noticed an open window and Madeleine missing from her bed.
:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc():focal(805x0:807x2):format(webp)/madeleine-mccann-1-1-2000-ed4d07da786d4e3aa98789d2f015524b.jpg)
2. Her Parents Were Initially Named as Suspects
In September 2007, the McCanns themselves were named suspects by Portuguese police.
The focus on the parents came after forensic tests revealed traces of Madeleine’s blood in a car they rented 25 days after Madeleine’s disappearance.
Family spokesperson Justine McGuinness said they feared Kate might be arrested.
“They believe they have evidence to show that in some way she’s involved in the death of her daughter, which of course is completely ludicrous,” McGuinness told reporters in 2007. “Kate is a lovely mother to her children. She’d never hurt them.”
The couple underwent questioning by authorities but continued to profess their innocence throughout the investigation.
In 2008, they were cleared as suspects. “Whoever took Madeleine,” Gerry said at the time, “is still at large.”
:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc():focal(999x0:1001x2):format(webp)/kate-gerry-mccann-3-db96358bae1b46e2b5c451aa080a8d9f.jpg)
3. German Authorities Named a Suspect in 2020, but Never Charged Him
In mid-2020, German authorities identified Christian Brueckner, a man in his 40s, as a suspect in the case. Ultimately, a lack of evidence prevented them from pushing to convict Brueckner, despite prosecutors’ belief that he killed the young girl.
Brueckner received a seven-year sentence in December 2019 for raping a 72-year-old American woman in 2005 in Portugal, according to court documents obtained by PEOPLE. He was in the process of appealing that sentence when he was linked to Madeleine’s case, but at the time was serving a 21-month sentence in Germany for dealing drugs, the Times of London reported.
He still has not been charged in connection with Madeleine’s disappearance.
In an interview with CNN, prosecutor Hans Christian Wolters of the Braunschweig Public Prosecutor’s Office, who was leading the investigation into the suspect, said authorities “actually have findings that suggest that he is Madeleine McCann’s murderer.”
But Wolters added, “At the moment, there is insufficient evidence to convict.”
4. German and Portuguese Authorities Announced in 2022 They Have an Official Suspect
In April 2022, Portuguese prosecutors said there was an official suspect in the case in a statement, according to Reuters.
Authorities did not reveal the name of the alleged individual, but said that he was identified as a suspect after they acted on a request made by German and British police, the ᴀssociated Press reported. It remains unclear if the person they are currently looking into is Christian Brueckner or someone new.
Want to keep up with the latest crime coverage? Sign up for PEOPLE’s free True Crime newsletter for breaking crime news, ongoing trial coverage and details of intriguing unsolved cases.
In an update on their website, Kate and Gerry said they “welcome the news” that a suspect had been named.
“Even though the possibility may be slim, we have not given up hope that Madeleine is still alive and we will be reunited with her,” they wrote.
:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc():focal(999x0:1001x2):format(webp)/kate-gerry-mccann-2-1b9929e0994b4976822332c9c7013a77.jpg)
5. Madeleine McCann’s Parents Still Buy Her Birthday Presents
Despite time pᴀssed, Madeleine’s parents said they still hold out hope they will be reunited with their daughter.
Madeleine is “always still part of our life,” Gerry said in 2017, ahead of her 14th birthday.
“I think every kind of event that we do, whether it be a birthday or a family occasion or even an achievement or something, that is kind of when you really feel her absence,” said Kate, adding that she still buys birthday and Christmas presents for her daughter.
“So, we are marking the anniversary,” said Gerry. “I think it’s been good for the general public to hear police say there’s no evidence that she’s ᴅᴇᴀᴅ, and that there is still an active investigation, and there is still hope. So certainly from my point of view, somebody knows what’s happened.”
💔 STELLA PARTON BREAKS HER SILENCE — What She Said About Dolly’s Health Has Fans Looking Back
Dolly Parton’s Sister Breaks Silence What Really Happened - GMT - G1
Stella Parton was born May 4, 1949, the sixth of twelve children raised by Robert Lee and Avie Lee Parton in Sevierville, Tennessee — a household defined by noise, limited money, and almost no privacy, the kind of environment that produced strong, determined personalities.
Stella was one of them.
By seven, she was appearing alongside her older sister Dolly on a Knoxville television program; by her teens, she was writing her own songs, though marriage and motherhood pulled music to the margins of her life for a stretch.
The dream never fully disappeared.
In 1967, she recorded a gospel album with her mother and sisters, and later worked clubs in Washington, D.C., before founding her own record label in 1975 and releasing “I Want to Hold You in My Dreams Tonight,” which climbed to number nine on the country charts.
Long before any of that commercial success, Stella had already shown a willingness to take positions others avoided.
At 26, amid backlash against Australian singer Olivia Newton-John for winning recognition in country music, Stella recorded “Ode to Olivia” in her defense — a stand that offered her no career benefit and real risk of criticism, but one she took anyway simply because she believed staying silent was the wrong choice.
That instinct defined the rest of her career: hits like “The Danger of a Stranger” and “Steady as the Rain” (written by Dolly) built a genuine, independent following, including in the U.K., while Stella also worked in New York theater and spoke openly, often controversially, about poverty, domestic violence, and the treatment of women in the music industry.
She was named the Christian Country Music Association’s Female Vocalist of the Year in 2004.
Through all of it, she remained defined publicly, more often than not, as simply “Dolly’s little sister” — a label she spent five decades quietly proving didn’t tell the full story.
That same directness is why her comments in the fall of 2025 carried real weight.
Stella had never positioned herself as the family’s image manager or spokesperson; she was, by reputation, someone who believed difficult truths shouldn’t stay hidden indefinitely.
What she described wasn’t dramatic or accusatory — it was a portrait of a woman who had spent years prioritizing everyone else’s needs over her own.
The context mattered.
Carl Dean, Dolly’s husband of nearly sixty years, died in March 2025 at 82, after a long illness during which Dolly had devoted herself almost entirely to his care.
She later acknowledged that in the process, she’d neglected her own health significantly.
The loss reverberated through the whole extended family — the Partons had lost three brothers in the years surrounding this period, compounding grief that, for a family that had once crowded twelve children into a single small home, meant losing pieces of a shared childhood one after another.
Stella herself went seven years without releasing new music during this stretch, later describing the period simply as one shaped by sorrow, while still speaking about the importance of finding moments of laughter within it.
Looking back, one moment reads very differently in hindsight than it did at the time: in late September 2025, Dolly postponed her planned Las Vegas residency, citing health challenges — a rare cancellation for a performer whose six-decade career had included very few of them.
At the time, most fans treated it as a minor, temporary setback.
Stella’s later reflections suggested the signs had actually been building for some time, visible to family in ways the public smile made easy to miss.
That concern crystallized publicly not long after, when Dolly’s younger sister Frieda posted a simple request on Facebook asking fans to pray for Dolly.
What looked at first like an ordinary, well-meaning gesture spread rapidly, sparking widespread speculation about how serious Dolly’s condition actually was.
Dolly herself responded directly within days, appearing in a video from a Grand Ole Opry commercial shoot, insisting with her familiar humor that she wasn’t finished yet — the now widely remembered “I ain’t dead yet” moment that briefly quieted public concern.
In the months that followed, the pattern repeated: reassuring updates about kidney stones, dehydration, and treatment, paired with continued work on new projects, right up until Dolly Parton’s death on August 25, 2026, at 80.
Looking back across that full timeline — the postponed residency, the family’s public worry, Stella’s own account of a sister who consistently deprioritized her own wellbeing — it becomes easier to see what the people closest to Dolly understood well before the rest of the world did: that the warmth and resilience the public saw every time she appeared on camera came at a real, largely invisible cost.
