Met Police Madeleine McCann inquiry expected to end after 11 years

After 11 years, the Met Police inquiry into the disappearance of Madeleine McCann is expected to be wound up

The 11-year investigation by Scotland Yard into the disappearance of Madeleine McCann will reportedly come to an end this year. In May 2011, four years after she vanished, the Operation Grange inquiry was launched, but its current funding is due to run out on March 31.

“There are currently no plans to take the inquiry any further”, a source told The Sun. Adding, “The end of the road for Operation Grange is now in sight. The team’s work is expected to be completed by autumn”. This could all change though, and the file could be re-opened if significant new evidence was to come to light, explained the source.

A request was submitted recently to the Home Office by the Metropolitan Police, asking for a final grant. If approved, that would carry the inquiry on to the end of September, and bring the total expenditure on the investigation to approximately £13 million.

This May 3rd will be the 15th anniversary of Madeleine vanishing in 2007 from a holiday apartment in Praia da Luz, on Portugal’s Algarve. She was just three years old at the time.

In 2020, German prosecutor Hans-Christian Wolters identified Christian Brueckner as the chief suspect in the disappearance. He is a convicted paedophile, now aged 45, who is serving a seven-year prison sentence in Germany, on unrelated charges. He was convicted of raping a 72-year-old woman in Portugal.

Wolters claimed that his team of investigators had  “concrete evidence” that Madeleine was dead, and that Brueckner was responsible. The Portuguese and German authorities have recently continued the main investigations, while the Met took more of a background role.

Det Chief Inspector Mark Cranwell now heads the Operation Grange team for the Met Police, which has been cut from 40 officers down to just four detectives. Despite the claim by German cops that Madeleine is presumed dead after being murdered, the Met is still treating the case as a missing persons inquiry.

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