Daily MirrorGerry McCann makes first trip back to Madeleine McCann flatBy Gerard Couzens in Praia da Luz, Portugal
4/04/2009
Tapas Nine pals join him to relive night she vanished for TV reconstruction
Gerry McCann yesterday made an emotional trip back to the Algarve holiday apartment where daughter Madeleine vanished two years ago.
The father of three looked distraught as he let himself into apartment 5A to help work on a TV reconstruction of her disappearance.
For the first time since she disappeared, Gerry, 40, from Rothley, Leics, spent an hour inside the bedroom where Madeleine had slept with twins Sean and Amelie, now four.
He then retraced the few painful steps between the flat and the tapas bar where he and wife Kate enjoyed a meal with friends on the night Madeleine vanished.
The trip came after Gerry and Kate agreed to let a Channel 4 documentary film crew record a reconstruction of their last night with their daughter in a fresh bid to find her. His return to Praia da Luz was the first since he left Portugal after Madeleine vanished on May 3, 2007 – and only his second visit to the country since he and Kate were cleared of any involve- ment in her disappearance last July.
It is also a year since the McCanns and the “Tapas Nine” group of friends on their holiday declined a request to take part in a Portuguese police reconstruction.
The daughter of a family friend will play Madeleine in the drama-documentary by director Emma Loach – daughter of award-winning director Ken Loach – to be screened on Channel 4 on May 7.
Actors will play the parts of Gerry, his wife and the rest of the Tapas Nine.
Kate decided against returning to Portugal for the reconstruction, but two of the Nine – Jane Tanner and Matthew Oldfield – made the trip to help Gerry.
The McCann’s spokesman Clarence Mitchell said: “There are new elements in it that may generate that important piece of information that
could lead to Madeleine being found. Gerry will stop at nothing to find Madeleine or at least discover what happened to her in that flat, no matter how difficult and painful it is.”
