Scotland Thousand is winding up the investigation into the disappearance of Madeleine McCann 15 years after she went missing, despite there being a prime suspect.

Maddie went missing from a holiday apartment, aged just three, in Praia da Luz in Portugal when mum and dad Kate and Gerry were at a tapas bar a short distance abroad.

Operation Grange was launched four years subsequently her disappearance and there has been an extensive search into her whereabouts always since, but zip concrete has been found.

The search for Madeleine has been conducted by the Metropolitan Police, who had to get special funding from the Home Role for the investigation due to it being beyond their jurisdiction.

The case leaves several questions unanswered. Who is currently the pb suspect in the case and why has the investigation taken such a long time?

Why is the Madeleine McCann investigation existence closed?

Operation Grange, the investigation into the disappearance of Madeleine McCann, looks fix to exist wound downwardly this autumn (

Image:

PA)

The investigation into the disappearance of Madeleine McCann is stopping due to funding running out.

The search for Maddie has cost over £12.5 meg so far and it is now reported that there are "no plans" to take it any farther than the autumn of this year.

If in that location is a breakthrough in the case in the future, then investigation will exist reactivated. The stop of Operation Grange ways that at that place will no longer exist a Met Office squad actively looking at the case.

Kate and Gerry McCann may cull to apply their Madeleine's Fund: Leave No Stone Unturned money to continue the search. The fund currently has around £900,000 available.

Who is the lead suspect in the Madeleine McCann case?

Christian Brueckner, 45, is a convicted German paedophile and believed to be the prime suspect past German prosecutors (

Image:

REX/Shutterstock)

The prime number doubtable in the Madeleine McCann case is Christian Brueckner, according to German prosecutors.

Brueckner is currently serving time inside for the rape of a 72-yr-sometime widow in Praia da Luz in 2005.

German prosecutors take previously said they have 'concrete' evidence confronting the 45-twelvemonth-old German and they too believe him to have committed at to the lowest degree v other sex crimes.

In 2013, an undertaker was interviewed by special investigators about his text messages with Brueckner, in which the two swapped child corruption images and depraved online letters.

The undertaker is besides said to take spoken to the makers of a new documentary.

It has been reported he has a "number of alibis" for the night of Madeleine's disappearance. The convicted paedophile himself claims that as he was working as a drug dealer at the time, he would not have committed any crimes for fear of his other occupation beingness discovered.

He has accused prosecutors of making "scandalous" claims.

What is the latest in the example?

Kate and Gerry McCann will continue to search for their missing daughter

The latest in the case of Madeleine McCann is that phone records allegedly identify suspect Christian Brueckner in the Praia da Luz resort on the night Maddie disappeared on May 3, 2007.

The team behind a new documentary say that he would have been "no more five minutes away" from where the McCanns were staying.

The documentary claims the suspect 'repeatedly worked' at the holiday apartments in which the McCanns had chosen to stay and a 'reliable witness' claims that he would have been familiar with the area.

A spokesperson for documentary team SAT.ane said: "A reconstruction of the evening of the crime and all-encompassing inquiry in Portugal and Germany found that Christian B was very familiar with the Ocean Club area in Praia da Luz.

"Prior to Maddie'due south disappearance, he repeatedly carried out repair piece of work at the identify where the three-year-old disappeared in 2007."

Why has the case been investigated for so long?

There was a huge amount of media coverage into Madeleine's disappearance at the fourth dimension (

Image:

METROPOLITAN Police force/AFP via Gett)

The scale of the coverage of Madeleine McCann's disappearance was such that then Home Secretary Theresa May immune for the setup of Operation Grange in 2011.

It is a case that has fascinated people around the world and has become the source of documentaries and books.

Last year now outgoing Met commissioner Dame Cressida Dick said Performance Grange would proceed until in that location was nil left to probe.

The case is also not considered a murder case, but i of a missing person as there is no "definitive prove whether Madeleine is live or dead".

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