New lead in search for Madeleine gives hope to family

Published on Sunday 9 August 2009 21:59

A NEW lead in the search for Madeleine McCann has given her family new hope, her grandmother said today.

Investigators last week issued an e-fit of a woman described as an Australian Victoria Beckham lookalike, who reportedly asked a witness if he was there to deliver her "new daughter" just days after the little girl's disappearance.

The detectives are said to have received hundreds of calls from the public and been given dozens of possible names since then.

Madeleine's grandmother Susan Healey told Hello! magazine: "Kate and Gerry (Madeleine's parents] are usually very measured about new 'evidence', but this has given us all renewed hope.

"Sometimes it feels almost unbearable. Then there's a new lead or clue, or you hear about another child that went missing who's been found alive and it gives you a lift.

"We just have to keep hoping like hell. There's no alternative," she said.

Madeleine was nearly four years old when she went missing from her family's holiday apartment in Praia da Luz in the Algarve on 3 May, 200,7 while her parents dined with friends nearby.

Just over 72 hours later, in the early hours of 7 May, two British men saw the Victoria Beckham lookalike while on a night out in the popular Port Olimpic Marina in Barcelona.

After speaking to one of the witnesses, the woman went into a bar next door, where she had a heated conversation with a local in what seemed to be fluent Spanish.

The search for Madeleine was focused on Australia yesterday after a Sydney woman provided a formal statement to detectives at a Sydney police station.

New South Wales Police Force said that she had claimed to know the identity of the woman being sought.