Missing Madeleine

Portuguese authorities swarmed a private villa just blocks from the resort where Madeleine McCann had gone missing 11 days before.

Crime-scene technicians and dogs worked over the home belonging to the mother of a local man named Robert Murat.

Reporter: He has worked in many different jobs in Portugal, most recently in real estate and is described by various people as an affable chap.

But also, perhaps, too friendly. Fluent in English and Portuguese, he had volunteered to translate for the police the day after Madeleine disappeared.

Gaisford: He would appear for the first few days to have been going in and out of the apartment ducking under the police tape, being helpful to the police, to the family, acting as some sort of translator but also being incredibly helpful to the press.

Finally, a reporter for one of the British tabloids thought his interest was so off-the-charts that she brought her suspicions to the police.

Lori Campbell, reporter for Sunday Mirror: Well, it was just his over-eagerness to help, really, his constant being at the scene and speaking to the media.

The police named the 33-year-old half-English, half-Portuguese man as a formal suspect in the child's disappearance.

During this search, several items belonging to the house owner were seized and they are now being examined...

Olegario de Sousa, police inspector: During this search several items belonging to the house owner were seized and they are now being examined...

But it would appear that nothing of forensic value was found in his home.

Murat's aunt, sally Eveleigh, jumped to his defense.

Sally Eveleigh: They have no evidence against him. Absolutely nothing. They have nothing at all. It's all speculation. All we know about the investigation is what has been written.

And the case against him -- the neighborhood man who lived with his mother -- was dissolving even though the Portuguese would not officially dismiss him as a suspect.

Murat: I’ve got no comment.

Reporter: Suddenly it all goes quiet, Robert Murat isn't mentioned. He keeps his official status, and yet no-one's talking about him anymore.

The authorities were now more than two weeks into the investigation and they still had little more than a missing child flyer for Madeleine McCann.

Gerry and Kate McCann, meanwhile, were stepping up their campaign for the cameras.

Three weeks after her daughter's disappearance, Kate, who's described as shy, spoke about that evening and its aftermath.

Kate McCann (May 25): We are doing OK. The first 48, 72-hours in particular were, as you can imagine, very difficult. Quite dark and it was quite difficult to function.

The mother explained the seemingly unexplainable: why she had felt comfortable leaving three children under four-years-old, not with the resort baby-sitting service, but home alone with the door unlocked.

Kate McCann: I think that the diagrams that were shown at the beginning of all this don't really portray how really close it actually is. And we have said before it was a little bit I think it's quite similar to on a summer's evening at home eating in your garden while your children are in your bed. You know it's that close.

Dateline made the walk between the tapas bar and the apartment --it took 52 seconds. We also sat down at the restaurant to check out the view and had trouble seeing into the McCann’s ground-level unit.

Still, Madeleine’s parents say they felt a sense of security on the night of May 3.

Gerry McCann: But it will not take away the feeling of guilt that we will have with us forever that at the moment Madeleine was abducted, we were not there.

Even though the McCanns were taking some hits for what they did -- or didn't do -- that night, support for them remained strong.

The Find Madeline Web page was getting millions of hits. Gerry McCann’s blog became one of the most widely read on the Web.

Money was pouring into the family's fund -- $2 million by summer's end.

And a who's who of Britain had lined up behind the McCanns: Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling, tycoon Richard Branson, and football idol David Beckham:

Beckham: Please could you go to your local authorities or police and give any information that you have...

The Catholic McCanns were even flown to Rome on a private jet for an audience with the Pope, who blessed a picture of the little girl.

John McCann is Madeleine’s uncle.

John McCann: Every single action, from-- you know, from celebrities, from ordinary people, it does-- it keeps your morale up to some extent.

The goal was to get Madeleine back or get information about her fate.

Gerry McCann: We've come here to ask the German public for help.

The McCanns made personal appeals in Berlin and in Amsterdam, both tourist markets for the Algarve.

Had anyone seen anything? Was there a vacation snapshot perhaps with a clue in the background?

As the child's story went global, tips came pouring in.

Was she seen at a restaurant in Belgium, or had she been put on a ferry to morocco?

The Madeleine sightings stretched across Europe and north Africa.

So it went for the rest of the summer: leads that went nowhere.

A letter sent to a Dutch newspaper claimed that Madeleine’s body would be found in a shallow grave near the resort. It wasn't.

Psychics had visions, but Madeleine remained gone.

John McCann: We always knew that there would be bogus reports amongst them. But of course there's a bit of you that every time something is focused on, that may be a sighting or a lead, that your heart does flutter.

The find-Madeleine McCann machine was in full throttle: a well-oiled, well-funded operation complete with its own pop anthem: "Don't you forget about me."

Gaisford: They released new pictures of Madeleine; they released little video clips; new posters; new ideas.

It was a very good campaign in terms of keeping the story alive.

Yet the parents with their posters and media entourage were also becoming a major thorn in the side of the Portuguese police, keeping the pressure on, silently implying the back-home belief that the Portuguese weren't up to the job.

Case in point: news that one of the McCann’s holiday companions had seen a man near the apartment the night Madeleine disappeared. In his arms, wrapped in a blanket, he carried a child wearing pink pajamas, like the ones Madeleine had been wearing.

Why hadn't police immediately released a description?

Gaisford: The story of the girl being carried away in pink pajamas makes more sense than any other story we've heard, and yet it's perhaps the one line that we know so little about in terms of the way that police have pursued it.

A bias about the Portuguese, southerners in general, raised its ugly head. And back in England the tabloids, the blogs, ate it up: the cops down there were hopelessly inept. What they needed was Scotland Yard -- London’s metropolitan police -- to come in and sort things out.

Gaisford: It became a media battle in a way between the Portuguese press and the British press. The British press were very critical of the Portuguese police system, the way the case was being investigated.

By the early August, it seemed that Kate and Gerry McCann --- who'd vowed not to leave without their daughter --- had become the guests that had overstayed their welcome in Portugal.

Reporter: There was an element that they wanted them to go home so life could get back to normal.

But the McCanns seemed oblivious to the slights, and showed a brave face, even when grim news was leaked to the media: that police had found traces of blood in their resort apartment.

Gerry McCann: Kate and I strongly believe that Madeleine was alive when she was taken from the apartment. Obviously what we don't know is what happened to her afterwards, who has taken her and what their motive is. And we are desperate to find that out.

Kate McCann: And as Gerry’s just said there, even last week when we met with the police they said, we are looking for a living child.

But that's not what the Portuguese police were leaking to favorite local reporters by mid-August, three months into the investigation.

According to those reports, the Madeleine McCann investigation hadn't stalled at all. The police it seemed had mounds of new evidence and a bombshell new theory of the case -- one that didn't involve a mysterious abductor.

The McCanns were now the target of the police investigation.

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