The British couple cited as suspects in the disappearance of their 4-year-old daughter from a Portuguese vacation apartment returned to Britain on Sunday, ending a four-month vigil that transformed this quiet resort into the center of a media storm.
Kate and Gerry McCann maintained their innocence and vowed to keep up the search for their daughter Madeleine, who vanished May 3.
“While it is heartbreaking to return to the U.K. without Madeleine, it does not mean we are giving up the search for her,” Gerry McCann said after the couple landed at an airport near their home in central England, after leaving the Algarve region of Portugal.
In a statement to the news media that was broadcast on television, Gerry McCann said in a wavering voice, “We have played no part in the disappearance of our lovely daughter.”
Gerry McCann said the couple left Portugal with the permission of Portuguese authorities, despite being declared suspects last week after police received the results of new forensic tests.
A spokesman for the Portuguese police, Olegario Sousa, said the McCanns had every legal right to return home because they hadn’t been charged. They are required to notify Portuguese police if they plan to leave home for five days or more, he said.
Gerry McCann said the couple wanted to return their 2-year-old twins “as much as possible to an ordinary life in their home country” and to consider their next move “in relation to the events of the last few days, which have been so deeply disturbing.”
The McCanns say Madeleine was snatched from the apartment where she was sleeping while they ate at a nearby restaurant.
However, family friends and associates said over the weekend that police told the McCanns that new evidence suggested that they might have killed Madeleine by accident and hid her body.
Family friends and associates said the McCanns were told by the police that traces of Madeleine’s DNA were found in a rental car they hired 25 days after she was reported missing. Kate McCann’s sister-in-law, Philomena McCann, said Friday that Kate McCann had been offered a plea bargain, Sky News reported.
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The McCanns’ return to Britain amid swirling suspicion was a bitter close to their highly publicized stay in this Portuguese town, where overwhelming sympathy for their plight gradually faded as some residents tired of their presence and Portuguese news reports became increasingly lurid.
Justine McGuinness, a spokeswoman for the McCanns, said they had been planning to leave Portugal even before events took a turn last week. She said they had intended to go Monday, when the lease on their rented villa expired.