Hope in the Dust – Maddie McCann: Search Team digs at the house

It is Tuesday morning 3 June 2025, when heavy emergency vehicles roll through the dusty landscape near Praia da Luz. Researchers build blue tents, block and put heavy equipment in position. The place: Atalaia, a few kilometers from the resort, where Madeleine McCann 2007 disappeared without trace.

The scene is well -known – but this time the focus is on a certain property: a small house in which Christian B once lived. The German is in custody, not because of Madeleine, but because of the rape of a 72-year-old American. His name, however, has been floating like a dark shade for years.

Maddie McCann disappeared from a holiday apartment on 3 May 2007 during a family vacation in Portugal. She was three years old at the time – today she was 22. Since then there has been no trace of her. The impulse for the renewed search is an order from the public prosecutor of Braunschweig. German researchers want to investigate the building with the latest radar technology – looking for a truth that has been hidden for 18 years.

Researchers comb through ruins and an abandoned farm
About an hour after the start of the campaign, six criminal officials searched a dilapidated building on an overgrown hill near Atalaia. The old farmhouse is remote above the coastal town, walkers travel just a few meters away along the slope.

The researchers wear plastic boxes from the inside – apparently filled with soil and possibly find material. White protective helmets lean on a fragile wall while a man cuts the bushes back with a trimmer. The roof is completely missing, the house looks like abandoned.

There are two tents in the neighborhood – a beige and one blue – they serve as a base camp for equipment and meals. Among other things, ground radar devices are stored here, which are only intended to activate further excavations when the discovery is striking structures underground.

The house of Christian B. – Spray or Sackgasse?
The area that is now combined consists of 21 suddenly. It is about old fountains, water tanks, overgrown ruins – all in the BS former house. The officials can look up to four and a half meters deep with ground radar. When the device strikes, you dug.

A Portuguese police officer who wants to remain anonymous, summarizes it as follows for reporters: “Our expectations are low – but we have our orders.” Internally, the local authorities distribute the hope that everything was “done in one day”.

Already in 2023, divers had searched a reservoir that once called B. his “small paradise” – without results. Previous excavations by the British police also ran in the sand. And so this time a bitter tone winds: the will is there – but the doubts are the same.

Last attempt before the release of Christian BS
According to Portuguese media, two old fountains must also be completely empty. Goal: Discover whether traces or evidence are hidden there. The initiative therefore accepts the German researchers – why is exactly not published.

Christian B. could be released in September 2025 – if there is no stressful new material. To date, he has disputed every participation in the disappearance of Maddie. Nevertheless, he remains the only officially mentioned suspect. The parents of Madeleine, Kate and Gerry McCann have not yet commented on the new campaign.

Residents in Praia da Luz react carefully. Tony Gallagher, who has been living there for 20 years, still remembers the first search campaigns in 2007: “Everyone wants to answer, but so much money has been spent in the last 20 years – without real results.”

Hope in the dust – or the end of a path?
This time the British police are also just a observer. Operation Grange, the Maddie Special Unit of Scotland Yard, continues – but the management is in Portugal and Germany. Officially you still have to search until Friday – maybe longer if something is discovered. The location remains tense. Because if nothing is found this time, the interests of the investigation can finally disappear.