The parents of missing four-year-old Madeleine McCann said they are not going to abandon the search and will launch an advertising campaign that would put the toddler’s disappearance in the spotlight one more time.
Numerous donations were made to the Madeleine Fund and up to 80,000 pounds will be spent on television, newspaper and billboards adverts.
The campaign will be launched in two weeks and will focus on Portugal, Spain and other countries in Europe. Both Kate and Gerry McCann said they will not give up and continue to search for their daughter, who went missing on May 3.
Since then, numerous requests for the girl’s release have been made by her parents, politicians, showbiz personalities and even sports stars, but the strenuous searches and campaigns failed to provide a conclusive answer regarding Madeleine’s whereabouts or fate.
The fund director and Gerry’s brother, John McCann thanked the people for their support and generosity.
“The main objective of the Madeleine fund is to leave no stone unturned in the search for Madeleine,” he said.
“To that end, I would like to announce that the fund will finance a broad range of initiatives in advertising to remind everyone that Madeleine is still missing.”
This new campaign comes after both Kate and Gerry were declared formal suspects in the girl's disappearance by the Portuguese investigators. They had to face some touchy questions at the police headquarters in Portimao, Algarve region and many began to condemn them.
A new hypothesis emerged after last week’s questionings, media speculating that Madeleine may have been “accidentally killed” by her parents, who allegedly gave her “a significant quantity” of sleeping pills.
But the parents rejected the allegations, saying they are mere speculations and “there is no evidence to suggest that Madeleine is dead.”
“We are 100 per cent together on this, not one grain of suspicion about each other,” Gerry McCann said. “There are large craters in every one of these theories, in these just ludicrous accusations.”