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Metropolitan Police
Metropolitan Police released two computer-generated images of the same man seen in Praia da Luz around the time of Madeleine McCann's disappearance from the village in May 2007. Police created the images using two eye-witness accounts of people who were in the Praia da Luz area that night.
British police released descriptions and electronic images on Monday of a man they seek in connection with the case of Madeleine McCann, who vanished from her parents’ vacation apartment in 2007 when she was 3 years old.
McCann disappeared on May 3, 2007 at the Praia da Luz resort in Algarve, Portugal.
Six years after she went missing during a family vacation, can a new timeline and sketches uncover what happened to Madeleine McCann? NBC's Annabel Roberts reports.
While Portuguese authorities closed their investigation in 2008, Madeleine’s parents and British officials with the Metropolitan Police “continue to believe that there is a possibility that Madeleine is alive,” according to a Metropolitan Police update in July.
At that time, the head of the operation, Detective Chief Inspector Andy Redwood, said that evidence enabled investigators to shift from “review to investigation.”
On Monday, the Metropolitan Police released two computer-generated images created from the descriptions of two eye witnesses who were near Praia da Luz on the night Madeleine went missing.
The investigators used a method called the Electronic Facial Identification Technique (e-fit) to construct the images.
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Teri Blythe / London Metropolita / EPA
A file photograph showing an age progression image released by the London Metropolitan Police showing Madeleine McCann on the approach to her ninth birthday in May, 2012. Madeleine disappeared in May, 2007 while on a family trip to the resort of Praia da Luz, Portugal.
"This man may or may not be the key to unlocking this investigation, tracing and speaking to him is of vital importance to us…,” Redwood said on Monday. “There will be e-fits released of other sightings as well, who we are equally keen to trace. These people were seen on the day of Madeleine's disappearance and the days leading up to it.”
Additional e-fit images and a live interview with Kate and Gerry McCann also will be broadcast on Monday night on BBC’s Crimewatch, according to a news release from the Metropolitan Police, which called the revelations the “investigation's most complex and detailed public appeal yet.”
The program will also feature a 25-minute visual reconstruction highlighting the investigators’ newfound insights about the timeline of the night Madeleine went missing, according to the Metropolitan Police.
"The timeline we have now established has given new significance to sightings and movements of people in and around Praia da Luz at the time of Madeleine's disappearance,” Redwood said.
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Real Madrid Tv / Handout / EPA
An undated picture shows the missing British girl Madeleine McCann, who was allegedly abducted in May 2007 from the resort apartment where she was on vacation with her family in Portugal.
According to the Metropolitan Police, detectives have a better understanding of when precisely Madeleine went missing on that May evening in 2007.
“This in turn has made the statements from the two witnesses far more significant,” to the importance of finding the man depicted in the e-fit images released on Monday, police said.
Last week, officials said they were examining every cell phone number used in the area at the time of the girl’s disappearance.
The aired reconstruction will show Madeleine’s parents meeting friends for dinner down the street from where their daughter was sleeping in their resort apartment and revise the “accepted version of events that has been in the public domain to date,” according to the Metropolitan Police.
In a video released in advance of the program, Kate McCann, Madeleine's mother, provides an apparent response to some who have accused her and her husband for having a role in their daughter's disappearance.
“We’re not the ones that has done something wrong here, it’s the person who’s gone into that apartment and taken a little girl away from her family,” Kate McCann told the BBC.
Kate McCann said on TODAY in 2012 she was hopeful Madeleine would be found alive.
“We know there’s a very good chance that she could be alive, there’s no evidence to the contrary,” she said.
In 2012, the Metropolitan Police released a picture of what Madeleine would look like at 9 years old in May of that year.
Related:
New timeline in Madeleine McCann abduction case to be released
Investigators find 'fresh, substantive' leads in Madeleine McCann case