Madeleine McCann may still be alive, according to the German prosecutor who previously said police were working on the assumption she was dead.
The investigation into Madeleine’s disappearance from Praia da Luz, Portugal, has attracted renewed attention after authorities announced they were investigating a 43-year-old convicted German child sex offender.
The suspect, who is currently serving a prison sentence, has been named in reports as Christian B.
Hans Christian Wolters, a spokesman for the Braunschweig public prosecutor’s office, said on Monday prosecutors had some evidence Madeleine was dead but did not have enough for a trial.
But speaking to the Sunday Mirror, he appeared to row back on this.
“Because there is no forensic evidence there may be a little bit of hope (that she is alive),” he told the paper.
“We don’t want to kill the hope and because there is no forensic evidence it may be theoretically possible.
Separately, speaking to The Sunday Times, Mr Wolters said prosecutors were investigating whether a hotel employee may have helped the suspect target the McCanns’ apartment knowing they were at a nearby restaurant.
Christian B is known to have lived on the Algarve coast and his Portuguese mobile phone received a half-hour phone call in Praia da Luz around an hour before Madeleine, then three, went missing on May 3 2007.
In the days since the renewed appeal, Scotland Yard said it received nearly 400 tips to its Operation Grange team.
Operation Grange refers to the force’s active investigation, which is still classed as a missing person inquiry because there is no “definitive evidence whether Madeleine is alive or dead”, a police spokesman said.
Madeleine vanished soon before her fourth birthday while her parents were eating dinner with friends at a nearby tapas restaurant, and would have turned 17 last month.
