Madeleine police to follow up 1,000 calls and emails

More than 730 calls and 212 emails were made as a result of “specific lines of inquiry” raised in the BBC Crimewatch programme about the events leading up to and surrounding Madeleine’s abduction at the resort in Portugal on May 3, 2007, Scotland Yard said.

Senior investigating officer DCI Andy Redwood said: “We have now had over 730 calls and 212 emails as a direct result of the specific lines of inquiry we issued yesterday concerning events in the lead-up to, and on the night of Thursday May 3 2007 when Madeleine was abducted – 330 calls into the Operation Grange incident room, 400 to BBC1 Crimewatch. Detectives are now trawling through and prioritising that material. This will take time.”

Mr Redwood, who is travelling to Holland and Germany to continue the appeal, said a reward of up to £20,000 is being offered for information leading to the identification, arrest and prosecution of those responsible for Madeleine’s abduction, with 40 people waiting to answer calls at any time.

Crimewatch editor Joe Mather said the response to the programme was “truly unprecedented”. Some callers had given the same name for a man seen by two separate witnesses carrying a child at the time Madeleine is now thought to have disappeared.

He said there were lots of calls from British people in the town around the time of Madeleine’s disappearance who had never previously spoken to police, telling BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “They received several names for the key 10pm sighting, the sighting of a man carrying a child towards the beach. Several different names but also several callers mentioned the same name for that man.”

During the show, two new e-fits of a dark-haired man were broadcast, after police revealed they had effectively ruled out a previous key sighting of a different man carrying a little girl earlier in the evening.

Mr Redwood said two independent callers had put forward the same name for the man and another caller gave a name of a man who was known to be in Portugal at the time of Madeleine’s disappearance.