Vanished: The Truth About the Disappearance of Madeline McCann

by Danny Collins

On the evening of May 3, 2007, Gerry and Kate McCann returned to their resort apartment in Portugal's Algarve to every parents' worst nightmare—their daughter, three-year-old Madeleine Beth McCann had vanished from her room.

Her disappearance sparked a worldwide manhunt. Poster campaigns, distraught pleas from the parents, and frenzied media coverage all ensued—but still Madeleine's whereabouts remain a mystery.

Portuguese police initially commenced a search for Madeleine's abductor, but as the case dragged on the waters became muddied and controversy dogged the investigation—British police were called in, suspects entered and departed the frame, sightings of Madeleine were reported from around the world, accusations about the thoroughness and competency of the Portuguese police were made, and the McCanns were scrutinized in the full glare of the media spotlight—with the Portuguese police even declaring Gerry and Kate suspects.

A year after Madeleine disappeared, Spanish-based veteran investigative journalist Danny Collins looks at the clues and false leads gathered over 12 months of meticulous in-depth investigation in an attempt to piece together just what happened on that fateful night.

Genres: True Crime, Nonfiction, Crime, Biography

240 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2008

Reviews

[Diane in Australia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Madeleine has been missing since 2007. If still alive, she is now 16 years old. Danny Collins is an investigative journalist, and he has tried to piece together what may have happened on that awful night in 2007.

3 Stars = I liked the book. I'm glad I read it.

These missing children just rip my heart out. I look at this photo ... those little hands ...

[Jenni · Rating 1 out of 5]

The case of Madeleine McCann gripped Europe during 2007, when the three year old went missing from her holiday villa never to be seen again. Her mother, Kate McCann has recently released a book telling the family's version of her disappearance and I thought it was an opportune time to read the earlier published account of the disappearance by investigative journalist Danny Collins.

Whilst at first glance the book seems to be an impartial account of the case, it soon becomes apparent that it is really written from the position that the McCann's were completely innocent of any wrongdoing, even in leaving their children unattended, and focuses on discrediting the police investigation and criticizing the media; slightly hypocritical of a investigative journalist. At points the writer goes off on a tangent, telling tantalising stories about other missing children, even those who have been missing for decades and bear no relevance to the McCann case, abuse in children's homes or accusing all gypsies of being child abductors who frequently traffic children across Europe to use in begging operations.

Overall the book could have really been half the length, detailing the facts of the case, and many of the chapters seem out-of-sequence and almost cut and paste from random articles on child abduction, rather than being an analysis of the investigation. As it was published in 2008 it is also woefully out of date, although progress in the case has been slow, and Madeleine has still not been found. It's only redeeming features are is it's ease to read and that it supports the less sensational theory that Madeleine wandered off from an unlocked and unsupervised villa rather than being abducted from her bed. It's rating is given as I did manage to finish it, albeit skipping paragraphs near the end, but other than that was not a joy to read, and a waste of ��4 considering all the information could readily be found online.

[Cross-posted from tomesofthesoul.blogspot.com - Rating at TotS - 1.5 stars]

[Hayleigh · Rating 3 out of 5]

I did enjoy this book, however first and foremost the title "The truth about the disappearance..." - For a missing persons case that to this day is unsolved, I find this title extremely misleading and a little disrespectful.
This book wasn't a hard read due to the fact it is based on theories and possible circumstances and outcomes of the case.
I did however feel the writer was at many a time biased towards certain possible events and or people involved with the case. His view was supposedly going to be just from a journalists neutral perspective and I found it extremely one sided at times.
I would recommend this book to anyone interested in the case of Madeleine McCann and to anyone generally interested in Missing Persons cases as other cases pre 2007 are mentioned often and to detail.

[Ryan · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's probably tricky to get a whole book out of an unsolved case in which there is no body, no witnesses, no evidence and a gagging order placed on everyone involved with the case but even with these restrictions this is very poor. It's full of padding, a lot of irrelevant information, bits are repeated again and again, the timeline is muddled and the conclusions muddy at best. Contains very little useful information. A poor effort.

[Afsana · Rating 2 out of 5]

I normally don't write long detailed reviews but feel that I need to to enable me to express some issues after reading this book

I first one to state a rough blurb to anyone who has not heard about the event the book is based on and then what I say will be easier to understand

Madeleine was a 3 yr old british girl who disappeared (and has yet to be found) whilst on holiday with her family in portugal. what made it big was the fact that not only are they unsure what happened to her and her parents courted the press a lot but what led up to her disappearance/ I.e. she had her twin siblings were left in bed alone whilst the parents were out drinking in a tapas bar over 120 meters away and the patio door was left open to enable easy entering when the adults came to check .

The first main issue I had was the fact that this was meant to be an investigative journalist who wrote the book and thus from my understanding is meant to look at all the evidence, state it in neutral way and then confirm what it may suggest then state their conclusions from what they found out . However the writer started the book (from the forward with an obvious bias in favour of the parents being niave and just unthinking who child disappeared and the police being silly.

"there are mum and dad, the strong and silent heartthrob consultant Gerry and the cool and lissom Kate beautiful in her grief..." and in the next sentence

"its the stuff of fantasy, with the frail mother victimised by the cruel and arrogant chief inspector of police with a reputation of long lunches and throwing female suspects down the stairs- or at least looking the other way when its done by his underlings"


Or when retelling evidence he states it points to his biased opinion then other scenarios'. For example:-

madeline had a cuddle cat that she needed when she goes to sleep. After she was taken it was found on a high shelf near the bed (too high for madeline to place it). in the book collins states the following:-

"It would seem unlikely the toy had landed there in a kind of Magic Bullet trajectory on being thrown by madeleine herself, although surprisingly this was one police theory. could it be more likely that an intruder carefully placed it out of the way so as not to waken the sleeping child before lifting her from the bed?"

I have 3 points re this 1) He never suggested the third alternative that it was on the shelf as it was never taken down to give to madeline at bedtime because she was dead? 2) if I was a stranger kidnapping a child and decided to move the toy I would just drop it on the floor and pick p the toy not carefully put it on the shelf 3) The writer concludes that the most likely to his mind is that madeline wondered out of the apartment in search of parents and was taken by someone who happened to see her and thus if that is the case then how would he explain the cuddle cat's presence on the shelf?

The other issue I have with this book and its writer he seemed to fill it with a lot of unnecessary historic events that do not relate to the story or enhance it but seems to be a page filler to bump up the total.
Also this book was published just under a year after madeline was taken (taken in 2007) and thus when he started and finished there hadn't been much time or new information to report and she is still missing. Also with so little known and confirmed how can you call t the truth about the disappearance of Madeleine McCann?

I am unsure what happened and can not imagine how they would have managed to carry off the murder/accident and hidden her body in such a busy place pre report and once the chaos started

What I can say is how irresponsible can you get leaving such small children on their own and how reckless considering there was free childminding and also babysitting within your apartment for a nominal charge. Also the laziness of leaving the patio door open so they can have easier (i would say quicker so can return to their drinking)access.

Also I can not imagine why they would lie to the police when this could slow down or hinder the police application even if it made you look irresponsible.

Actually this brings me to the another point highlighting the writers bias he saw it as "naive digressions from the actual events...seemly told for the most innocent reasons" He don't consider or so it seems that they may have lied as they were guilty.

and the last food for thought Gerry McCann once on their blog stated

"Anyone who knows anything about the 3rd May knows that Kate is completely innocent" (they were both suspects at the time)

question is is he subconsciously not wanting to lie and in his way telling us he did it or just a husband rushing to wife's defence with no thought to himself?

It makes me sad thinking about madeline , furious with the parents and annoyed with the writer. the first 2 weren't due to how there writer wrote the book more the fact it just reminds me how I felt at the time of it occurring

[Nickee · Rating 1 out of 5]

definitely not what I was expecting to read about. I found the book hard to follow at times, quite repetitive and some inconsistencies such as the wrong year being listed i.e. 2006 on page 78 and 79.

[Koko · Rating 1 out of 5]

Gee, talk about a pointless book that doesn't tell us what we already know. It just seemed like what could have been fitted on an A4 page was drawn out into a 250+ page book. Boring!

[Julieanne Thompson · Rating 1 out of 5]

dull and repetitious

[Anne · Rating 2 out of 5]

Everyone knows something about Madeleine McCann or has at least heard the name, how could you not its been saturated in the media since May 2007.

The is the story of a young family who went on holidays to Praia da Luz in Portugal, a mother, father and 3 young children, only 4 of them would return home.

Theories abound on what happened to this little girl, was she taken from the room by persons unknown? did she wander off looking for her parents? Was she killed in some kind of accident and it covered up.

We look deeply and I mean deeply into the handling by the police of this case, from the moment she was found missing nothing went right, crime scene’s were ruined, information withheld, police with their own theories, public opinion would sway in the breeze as much as the facts in this case do.

Brutally honest, well sourced and researched, if you ever wanted to know everything about the family and that first year then this is the book for you to read.

If you do not enjoy lengthy legal opinions, debate of how things were handled and an overabundance of information then this book will leave you struggling with the sheer amount of information that is not directly related to the case. That was my only criticism of the book, it at times became quite dry while discussing all these distantly related facts.

[Annie Booker · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have to say this writer's probable scenario about what happened to Madeleine McCann make more sense than most of the others put forward.

[Amanda · Rating 1 out of 5]

this book I gave up reading due to all the politics in which I don't understand. I found it hard to read.

[Clare · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good but at times quite dense and goes into unnecessary detail (in my opinion).

[Linda L McGoey · Rating 2 out of 5]

Madeleine McCann 's Disappearance

After viewing a documentary on this case, I was interested in learning more. I read a sample of the book before I purchased it. In the beginning the author did what I thought was an excellent job in providing the facts of the case and put it in chronological order. Then all of a sudden I was reading duplicate information. I checked and double-checked to see if I mistakenly went back to an earlier part of the book. I hadn't. This did not happen once but several times. Then at the end there was a timeline. So get again there was a repeat of information. The book was not expensive, but I was still was disappointed to have to continue to skip over repeated parts.

[Ann · Rating 3 out of 5]

Out of date now really but I really don't know whether anything further has been discovered since the book was written. So sad that so many lies were told on the night of her disappearance and heartbreaking that three tots was left alone in a unlocked appartement and only checked on every half hour.

[Suzanne Eyre · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting read and presents a range of theories surrounding the disappearance of Madeleine.

[Lisa Williams · Rating 1 out of 5]

Rather repetitive book telling an appalling story I'm sure we all know.

[Noah McCarthy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Best book ever doesn't tell you where she went, and makes me love Kate with all my heart exceptional characters. A moving tale. Harrowing.

[Carmen Tudor · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a very well researched and written account of a prominent disappearance of a child. It must be difficult to balance the aversion and horror of such things with the need to write to a publisher's standard, but Collins does this skilfully. By threading in details of other missing children from Portugal, the reader is reminded that as important as Madeleine is, she is by no means the only child we should be thinking about. Far too many children (and few, perhaps, as blonde and photogenic as Maddie) from seemingly unimportant families are still unaccounted for.

Where Collins really succeeds is in describing the different policing and justice practices faced in this case, and the limited resources given to seeking a stranger-abductor. Instead, we learn that very early in the case the parents became the focus, including the attention paid to a rental car that was not even acquired by the McCanns until about three weeks after the disappearance. While the author might have been slightly more diplomatic in his feelings regarding outright incompetence of DCI Gonçalo Amaral and the local authorities, it is obvious that this is marketed to an English-speaking audience -- no doubt a UK-based one who will be sympathetic to the child's family. There is some effort to temper the lampooning of local corruption and ineptitude by highlighting the consideration paid by Inspector Olegario de Sousa.

As good as the book is, I'd like to add that by insisting throughout that the most likely scenario of Madeleine's disappearance involved her walking out of the apartment and subsequently being taken by an opportune perpetrator, Collins strays from the facts. By his own assertions, the McCanns and others with them consistently left their children in unlocked apartments at night; they followed a pattern, for about a week, of taking turns to half-heartedly check on the children; and they were drinking far too much to be aware of just how unsafe and insanely obvious to the wrong kind of person that this all was. If anything is 'most likely', it is that some despicable scum took advantage of such tragic neglect. Why a little girl not yet four years old would wander outside in the dark and in a strange place does not feel like a compelling enough argument for me, even though it is indeed a possibility.

[Gayle (OutsmartYourShelf) · Rating 3 out of 5]

Most British people over the age of 25 have probably heard about this case - the disappearance of Madeleine McCann, a 3-year-old girl, from a holiday apartment in Praia da Luz in Portugal in May 2007. Left sleeping in the apartment alongside her two younger siblings, a group of parents decided to take it in turns in checking on their children throughout the evening rather than hire babysitters. For several nights this had been without incident but on that night, Madeleine would be gone - never to be seen again (so far).

This is a book about the incident but also the subsequent investigations by both the Portuguese & British police. It is very much from the position that the McCanns were not involved in their daughter's disappearance & several alternatives are given including that Madeleine may have woken up & left the apartment in search of her parents & been unfortunate enough to encounter her kidnapper. It's as possible as other theories.

It's now been 17 years (this book was released in 2017) & the case is no further on & Madeleine has never been found. Something has never sat right about this case for me &, after reading this, I still feel the same.

[Noel · Rating 3 out of 5]

well i still think her parents have got a lot to answer for no babysitter and both got very good jobs.leaving 3 children in an unlocked apartment and it opens out onto a street why have these people not been investigated by social services and been looked into by british police if they were working class there would of been an uproar but two doctors very poor behaviour enjoyed the book though well written and just gives possible explanations must read what the mccanns have to say about madeleine s disapperance .i dont have children but wouldnt leave them unsupervised in an unlocked room in a foreign country or at home either questions still need to be addressed

[Jessica Martin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rated the book 3 stars mainly on the account that I found the book interesting, rather than well written. Although the information was precise and accurate a lot of it was repeated throughout the book, as the book was not in chronological order but instead chartered looking at different aspects. Therefore a lot of the key information was given very early on in the book and some of the chapters seemed quite random, such as the chapter on missing children in general.

[Lisa Baillie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’d been recommended this book by a friend. But have to say I was very disappointed. There was a lot of information not relevant to the Maddie case do that was uninteresting to me. The parts about her were all known to us. Didn’t learn anything new from the book. So lost interest half way through and had to leave it and go back to it. I wouldn’t recommend this book to anyone sadly.

[Kay Cugini · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very good read for anyone interested in the case. The writer is thoughtful, considered and thorough, there are several possible theories put forward based on the evidence, I found it thought provoking and interesting.

[Lee · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fascinating read but it's a shame it's all based on hearsay and contains a few inconsistencies and contradictions.

[Teresa · Rating 1 out of 5]

The "truth" (NOT!) based completely on speculation and from the per-determined stance that the McCann's are innocent even though their stories changed and never made sense.

[TheBookWorm]

Biggest load of fiction since Lord Of The Rings

[Meghan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Read due to extremely intrigued about the story of madeleine however didn’t like the way the author portrayed the book

[Rachel · Rating 2 out of 5]

DNF.
Too much information on anything else but the case.

[Lexie · Rating 2 out of 5]

*2.5

[kiara · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some parts at the end were repetitive.