(NewsNation) – Portuguese authorities confirmed on Thursday that the search into the case of missing British girl Madeleine McCann has been completed.
The latest efforts in the hunt for the 16-year-old ended on Thursday after police collected unspecified samples from the Arada Dam reservoir and surrounding areas in Portugal.
Police did not say whether any useful clues were found during the three-day search that involved sniffer dogs, the use of a tractor-mounted tree cutter and investigators combing cleared ground in a few small areas.
Officials said the search “resulted in the collection of certain documents”, which will be analyzed. However, there was no indication that anything conclusive had been found. The search was requested by the German authorities.
McCann was 3 when she disappeared in 2007 from her family’s holiday apartment in Portugal’s Algarve seaside region. She and her siblings, 2-year-old twins, fell asleep in the family flat while their parents, Gerry and Kate McCann, ate with friends at a nearby restaurant.
In 2022, German prosecutors named Christian Brueckner an official suspect in McCann’s disappearance. The convicted child molester and drug trafficker is behind bars in Germany for raping a 72-year-old woman in the same part of the Algarve.
Brueckner denied any involvement in the disappearance. No body was found.