Police probing Madeleine McCann mystery are combing Bulgaria for links to ‘woman in purple’

BRITISH police are combing Bulgaria for links to a mystery ‘woman in purple’ who they believe could help them find Madeleine McCann.

POLICE investigating the disappearance of Madeleine McCann are reportedly searching Bulgaria for a waitress they believe could lead them to the “woman in purple”.

The Sun reports it is thought the woman seen close to the apartment from where Madeleine vanished in May 2007 could be a potential witness.

The waitress police are looking for is believed to have worked at the Tapas bar where Madeleine’s parents dined with friends before returning to find their daughter had vanished from the apartment in Portugal’s Algarve.

Madeleine McCann went missing in 2007. Picture: AFP

Spanish criminologist Heriberto Janosch Gonzalez told The Express: “I have been combing through all the police files trying to identify who the woman in purple could be.

“It has been widely reported that Yard officers are in Bulgaria.”

A British grandmother told how she remembered seeing a female loitering outside the apartment from which Madeleine vanished.

Jenny Murat, who lives just 100 yards (90 metres) away from the now infamous apartment 5a of the Ocean Club complex saw the stranger.

She said: “I don’t know who she was but she caught my eye because she was dressed in purple-plum clothes.”

“It struck me as strange because it’s so unusual for anyone, particularly a woman, to be standing alone on the street in our resort.”

At the end of September it was announced that Operation Grange — the Met Police inquiry into Madeleine’s disappearance — would get a AU$204,000 funding boost.

More than £11 million (AU$19 million) has been spent on the search for the youngster, who vanished when she was just three years old.

Mum and dad Kate and Gerry, both 49, from Rothley, Leicestershire, have vowed to never give up hope of finding their daughter.

Kate and Gerry McCann. Picture: AFP

WHO IS THE ‘WOMAN IN PURPLE?’

Earlier this month it was reported detectives hunting for Madeleine McCann travelled to Bulgaria to pursue a new lead, in an attempt to track “the woman in purple”.

The Sun has revealed that the woman’s husband, now dead, is a convicted paedophile.

The couple were working as domestic helpers near the Algarve holiday apartment where Madeleine vanished.

Locals reported them to police in the days following the disappearance but nothing was followed up until Scotland Yard officers re-examined statements recently.

Witnesses said the woman was seen close to the Ocean Club complex in Praia da Luz where the McCanns were staying.

She and her husband vanished after Madeleine went missing. Cops have been unable to locate the wife despite extensive searches.

It comes after the revelation last month that police had identified a key “person of significance” in a shock new development.

A source close to Scotland Yard’s search Operation Grange said the person is now a “critical line of inquiry” in the investigation, according to The Times.

Parents Kate and Gerry, both 49, were dining near their holiday apartment on the evening of May 3, 2007 when Madeleine was taken but her younger twin siblings were left.

When Kate returned to check on the kids at around 10pm that evening, she discovered that Maddie was not in her bed and was missing.

It remains one of the most high-profile missing person cases in modern history.

In 2010, Maddie’s distraught parents met with then-home secretary Theresa May to talk about the hunt for their daughter.

The following year, Scotland Yard launched its own review, named Operation Grange, into the case at the behest of the future PM.

The apartments in Paia da Luz in Portugal where Madeleine McCann was abducted. Picture: AFP

Two years later Scotland Yard said it had uncovered new leads while Portuguese police reopened their case.

In October 2015, Operation Grange was scaled down from 29 detectives to just four.

Last December, the government injected extra funding into the operation as cops investigated a new theory that Maddie was snatched by a human trafficking ring.

And a former Met police chief has called for fresh interview of Maddie’s parents and the Tapas Seven — the name given by UK press to the dinner companions that evening — who have never been quizzed by British cops.

Maddie would have turned 14 on May 12 this year.

A number of potential leads have emerged since the little girl vanished, but none have amounted to anything and no arrests have ever been made.

This article first appeared in The Sun and is republished here with permission.