Missing Madeleine

So few certainties.

A little girl caught in a picture on a day in May -- and then vanished. All we really know.

All of us like to have stories with beginnings, middles and ends. But in this story there is no conclusion and there is no one conclusion in sight.

John McCann: There's no evidence that she's dead. And that's what gives us hope.

Hope kept alive by not forgetting. At six months missing, a mass in Madeleine’s honor was said in the Portuguese church where the McCanns had looked for solace months before.

Home in England, the couple went to church to mark the sad occasion.

At Christmas, the child not at the hearth was the subject of a McCann family appeal.

Video   A stranger in the night The McCann family wants to know more about a man who was seen with a child the night Madeleine disappeared. Dateline NBC

Through the early fall, meanwhile, the Portuguese authorities had continued to leak theories about how Madeleine McCann had died. Now it wasn't a sleeping pill overdose. It was a tumble down the stairs leading from the couple's apartment that had killed the child.

The cops were looking desperate.

Clint Van Zandt: What they don't want to do is say we don't know where to look. Anybody else got any ideas? They have they have to solve this and some would say they have to pin this on somebody.

On October second, the chief detective of the Madeleine McCann search was removed from the investigation and reassigned to another district. He had reportedly been the driving force behind the case against the McCanns.

The Portuguese investigation appeared to be back where it started-- with the new chief detective going back to the resort complex, re-interviewing old witnesses and searching again for lost clues.

Some would say it's been a total bust: from the botched crime-scene investigation, to the resources spent in pursuit of the helpful translator who lived a few blocks away, to the squeeze put on the McCanns themselves that fizzled when a Portuguese judge looked at the hundreds of hours of police work and mountains of documents and said, in effect, you have nothing.

Madeleine: dead or alive?

No one could say.

Kate McCann: I feel-- I feel sad. And I feel lonely. And-- and life obviously not as happy without Madeleine.

Speaking to a Spanish television network last fall, the normally cool and controlled Kate appeared fragile, on the verge of tears.

And Gerry, always the diplomat, betrayed his mounting frustration when asked about speculation that Madeleine had been drugged.

Gerry McCann: I mean it's ludicrous. These sort of questions and the publishing of them are nonsense. And we shouldn't be giving them the time of day. There is absolutely no suggestion-- that Madeleine, or the children were drugged. And it's outrageous.

Kate McCann: All I’m going to say is I’m Madeleine’s mommy. I know she was taken from that apartment and she's out there. And I want her back. I mean, that-- that is all. I mean, everything else, I’m sorry, I-- is rubbish.

With money from the find Madeleine fund, the McCanns have hired a private detective agency to aggressively chase down leads around the globe.

In January, they released their investigators' sketch of a man in a droopy moustache seen in Praia de Luz at the time Madeleine disappeared.

A tourist remembered him acting in a suspicious manner and belatedly came forward with his description.

Clarence Mitchell, McCann family spokesperson: We want to know who he is and we want to know where he is, and we want to know that as soon as we can.

FindMadeleine.com Could this be Madeleine's abductor? This is an investigators' sketch of a man in a droopy moustache seen in Praia de Luz at the time Madeleine disappeared.

Just two weeks ago, there were reports that Madeleine had been spotted with a man who looked not unlike the person in that sketch at a restaurant in southern France.

But the glimmer of hope was quickly extinguished when -- once again -- it wasn't her.

Also in February, the Portuguese authorities quietly amended their theory of the case, admitting the police had been "hasty" in making the McCanns that word--"arguidos," suspects.

It's back to abduction by person or persons unknown.

Kate McCann: Madeleine, it seems unlikely you will hear this…

Kate McCann spoke directly to her daughter in her Christmas message.

Kate McCann: It's mummy and daddy here. Just know how much we love you, Madeleine. We all miss you so much. We're doing everything we can, Madeleine, to find you and there are so many good and very kind people helping us. Be brave sweetheart...

The rainy season has settled into the sunny Algarve.

The child missing in the spring is still missing in the dead of winter.

Kate and Gerry McCann are still officially listed as suspects in the case. They have asked a judge to change that status.

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