A new TV drama in the UK revisits the ‘horrific’ police questioning faced by Madeleine McCann’s mother, Kate, three months after the three-year-old vanished in Praia da Luz, Portugal.
Madeleine McCann disappeared in May 2007, a case that quickly drew worldwide attention. Yet, after three months of inquiries, Portuguese investigators still had no clear evidence, breakthrough leads, or arrests.
In that context, Kate McCann was brought in for an intense 11-hour interview — an interrogation recreated in Channel 5’s Under Suspicion: Kate McCann.
The film depicts officers pressing the mother of three on the events of May 3, including why the children were not left overnight at the Ocean Club nursery while the adults dined with friends at the Tapas Bar nearby.
At the outset, Kate was told she was being treated as a witness rather than an ‘arguido’ — the Portuguese term for someone formally named as a suspect. However, the next day she was called back and designated a suspect. Gerry McCann was given the same status around 12 hours after Kate, according to the programme.
Kate was also presented with what was described as a deal: investigators allegedly suggested she could receive a reduced sentence if she admitted Madeleine died accidentally and claimed she had hidden her body — something Kate denied.
“They tried to get her to confess to having accidentally killed Madeleine by offering her a deal through her lawyer — ‘If you say you killed Madeleine by accident and then hid her and disposed of the body, then we can guarantee you a two-year jail sentence or even less,”‘ Gerry McCann’s sister, Philomena, told ITV news at the time.
Laura Bayston, the actor portraying Kate McCann in the drama, said the scene involving that alleged offer was particularly difficult to film. After refusing, Kate followed her lawyer’s guidance and replied “no comment” to 48 questions.
“It was all emotional, but when Kate is presented with her offer by the police, which is to admit guilt, that was truly horrific and an absolute punch in the guts to film,” she said, as per The Independent.
“It was hard to rein in the emotions for that one – a mix of utter despair to white rage and back again.”
Previous reporting has suggested the questioning covered a wide range of topics, including why she didn’t ask the twins what had happened to their sister, and ‘Is it true sometimes you despair at your children’s behavior and it left you feeling very uneasy?’
She was also asked: “Is it true that in England you even considered handing over Madeleine’s custody to a relative?” — which she again answered with ‘no comment’.
Kate and Gerry McCan were cleared of any suspicion in 2008, and chief investigator Gonçalo Amaral was permanently removed from the case.
Madeleine McCann remains missing. As of now, the leading suspect is German national Christian Brueckner, who was released from prison last year after serving a seven-year sentence for the 2005 rape of a 72-year-old woman in Portugal.