Hi, Crime Junkeys. I'm your host Ashley Flowers, and I'm Britt. And the story I have for you today is one a lot of you might know, or at least think you know, because when we pulled our highest level fan club members and asked them if they wanted to hear us talk about the murder of Madeline McCann, many of them had like,

oh, wait, what moment? And they're like, what do you mean murder? It's a missing person case, which makes me think that you haven't heard the whole story.

The story of a three year old girl who disappeared from her bed during a beach holiday with her parents. And with the whole world watching investigators spent years interviewing witnesses chasing leads and identifying suspects, but they could never find a trace of the little girl.

For more than a decade, the story ended right there. And that's what's been told and retold so many times until the summer of 2020 when a surprise announcement shocked the world.

This is the story of Madeline McCann.

It's 8.35pm on the night of May 3rd, 2007, and Kate and Jerry McCann are just sitting down to dinner at their beach side resort in Priya DeLos, Portugal.

Now, they've been eating at this exact same restaurant every single night of their holiday, and this is night 6. And they do this mostly because it was the closest restaurant to their apartment.

And they have this little routine. Basically, every night, they feed their kids around 5. And that's three year old Madeline McCann and her two-year-old twin siblings.

Now, they hang out with them for a little bit after they eat, get them ready for bed, tuck them in, and then maybe share a bottle of wine or just relax while the kids fall asleep.

And then a little later on around 8.30pm or 9. Kate and Jerry would leave the kids asleep in the room and then head to the restaurant to meet their friends.

Right, because this is like a friend case in almost. It's a pretty big group of people.

Yeah, according to notes from a police interview with Jerry, there were 9 adults and 8 children including the McCann family.

So, this restaurant that they're at is like a little top-of-the-restriant, was like a 2-minute walk from the McCann's apartment.

And what they would do is basically take turns leaving the table every 15 minutes or so to check on the kids. And usually they would like peek into the rooms, do like a visual check.

But sometimes they just like listened outside the window to make sure that no one was awake or upset or crying or anything.

And like I said, this was their usual routine. They've been doing this every single night of their vacation.

So they had this routine down pat and it was working for them.

Or the other parents doing the same thing with their kids too?

Oh, absolutely. And I mean, one of the couples even had a baby monitor which meant that they had ears on their kids the whole time.

So they didn't necessarily do like the up and down routine. They only left if they heard their kids awake or crying or whatever.

But there was like a constant check in with everybody's kids.

Yeah, and again, this is the reason they picked this restaurant. And this is why they ate their every single night because it was the closest to their rooms which made it the easiest to do these regular checks.

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