Mother of missing girl Madeleine McCann takes hope from US case of Jaycee Dugard

Madeleine’s mom takes hope from California case

LISBON, Portugal — The mother of missing British girl Madeleine McCann said Wednesday she has gained fresh hope for her daughter from the discovery of American Jaycee Dugard, who was found in California 18 years after being kidnapped.

Kate McCann said she and her husband won’t give up the search for Madeleine, who vanished in May 2007 during a family vacation on Portugal’s southern Algarve coast.

“I just think that it’s so vital and so fair for Madeleine that we don’t give up on her, that we look for her,” Kate McCann told a news conference during a daylong visit to Lisbon, Portugal. “We’re not going to stop.”

Dugard, now 29, was reunited with her family last month after being snatched outside her South Lake Tahoe home when she was 11. She allegedly was kidnapped and held captive.

Kate, accompanied by her husband Gerry, was in Portugal for the first time since Madeleine disappeared a few days before her fourth birthday. Gerry had twice previously returned to Portugal to check on the investigation. The couple said they met with their Portuguese lawyers and advisers in the Portuguese capital to explore ways of moving the search forward.

Earlier this month a Lisbon judge banned the sale of a book by a Portuguese detective who had worked on the case and claimed Madeleine was dead. The ruling came after the McCanns took legal action to halt the book’s distribution.

“Our main worry, obviously, was people believing that Madeleine was dead,” Kate McCann said of the injunction. “Obviously, if people believe that she is not alive then people will stop looking for her.”

Gerry McCann said there was no evidence his daughter is dead. He said a team of private investigators is still working on the case and is going through “hundreds of thousands” of pieces of information.

The search is being financed by family, friends and other private donations, he said.

In August 2008, Portugal’s attorney general ordered police to halt their investigation because detectives had uncovered no evidence of a crime. The case will remain closed unless new evidence emerges.

The McCanns have waged a far-reaching international campaign to find their daughter, but there has been no reliable indication of what might have happened to her, despite numerous reported sightings from around the world.