Tabloid Fodder

She's so famous that she only needs one name: Maddie  When Kids Go Missing . Her image—those trusting eyes, that innocent grin, the shiny blond hair—haunts Britons, who may think that by now, they've heard everything about Madeleine McCann, the young British girl who vanished from a holiday resort in Portugal's Algarve one year ago Saturday. Her disappearance is probably the most intensely followed mystery in modern British history. Tabloid sales skyrocket with coverage of even the most minor details, which could be why Kelvin MacKenzie, the former editor of The Sun, has called it "the most significant story of my lifetime."

And yet, so much about the case is still misunderstood, starting with her name. In fact, no one in her family ever called her Maddie; the nickname was bestowed by space-conscious headline writers and, as a result, adopted by the public at large. Her parents, Kate and Gerry McCann, are not suspects, despite feverish tabloid speculation last fall when the Portuguese police labeled them "arguidos." The legal term was widely mistranslated: it means that the McCanns were "persons of interest" in a police investigation, not necessarily under suspicion for killing their daughter. (In February, the police belatedly conceded that they have no evidence against the McCanns.) It's not even clear that Madeleine—just shy of her 4th birthday when she disappeared—has been murdered because there's no publicly available proof that she's dead. Her father said last week that he still believes she is alive—somewhere.

What has made this story such a sensation? Partly, the McCanns themselves—with the best of motives. Hoping that intense publicity would help locate their daughter, the couple almost immediately made televised pleas for Madeleine's return. They were young, good-looking and in the midst of every parent's nightmare. That transformed their very real personal tragedy into a compelling narrative played out like an old-fashioned serial on the front pages of the tabloids. Hundreds of cameras recorded each gripping chapter: the tearful audience with the pope; heartfelt appeals from celebrities like David Beckham; the creation of a campaign fund with a sophisticated Web site that reportedly poured more than a million pounds into T shirts, posters and the payroll of a Spanish detective firm. Later, when the case took on darker overtones, the public was fascinated by the possibility of intra-familial crime.

Initially no one doubted their story, although there was criticism of the McCanns in the Portuguese press for having left their daughter alone while they dined with friends at a tapas restaurant less than 60 yards away from their room. The McCanns explained that they or their friends checked on her and her younger brother and sister every half hour between 9 p.m., when they went out, and 11 p.m., when Kate discovered her missing. "It was so close," Gerry McCann said in an interview last week on Britain's ITV. "You could actually see the apartment and it didn't feel that different to dining out [in] the back garden … it was the furthest thing from my mind that something like that [would] happen." The British press was more protective, instead attacking the Portuguese police for not closing borders and launching a search more quickly.

The tone of the coverage changed dramatically after Portuguese papers began publishing leaks from the investigation in August and September, culminating with the shocking announcement that the McCanns were officially being treated as arguidos. Under Portuguese law, no one can be charged until they've been given a series of Miranda-like rights as persons of interest, but those same rights would be given to witnesses, as well. The leaks detailed the purported discovery of microscopic blood samples in the apartment and, later, of DNA in the trunk of the McCann's rental car that allegedly was linked to Madeleine. There were also suggestions that sniffer dogs had found evidence of a corpse (although exactly how dogs could give such definitive evidence has never been explained). Never mind that the car was rented many days after Madeleine's disappearance; the preposterous theory advanced was that the McCanns, both medical doctors, had accidentally killed their daughter, possibly by oversedating her while they went out, then hid her body in the holiday apartment for three weeks, and then spirited it away in the rental car, all while the focus of worldwide media attention. Far more plausible is the possibility that the girl's DNA—if it was hers, and even that isn't clear--was transferred by possessions such as a doll.

Worried about the possibility that an arrest would separate them from their toddler twins, Sean and Amelie, the McCanns returned to the U.K. "The speculation takes you to the worst places," Gerry McCann said in the ITV documentary. "And at that point you know the worst place would have been being charged, potentially being put in jail, certainly being detained to face charges that could have taken I-don't-know years to materialize, being separated from Sean and Amelie."