A chilling CCTV tape lost for nearly 19 years has finally been recovered – and it shows a little girl who looks exactly like Madeleine McCann walking through Faro Airport just hours after she vanished from her family’s holiday apartment in Praia da Luz.

The grainy footage, dated May 4, 2007, captures the heartbreaking moment: a tiny blonde child in pink pyjamas, clutching a cuddly toy that resembles Madeleine’s beloved ‘Cuddle Cat’, being led firmly by the hand through the bustling terminal by a tall man in a black hoodie.

She appears dazed and sleepy, rubbing her eyes as they hurry towards an international departure gate. At one point she tugs at his hand and murmurs something – lip readers who have analysed the enhanced audio fragments believe she says ‘Mummy?’ – only to be quietly shushed.

The tape runs for 45 minutes, starting at 2.17am – just four hours after Kate McCann discovered her three-year-old daughter missing from her bed at around 10pm the previous evening.

But it is the moment the camera catches the man’s profile that has left investigators and the public stunned. As he glances warily over his shoulder at a flight information board, the sharp jawline, intense eyes and distinctive scar on his left cheek become unmistakable.

The resemblance is terrifyingly precise. This is not just any stranger – it is someone whose face the world has seen countless times before.

Facial recognition experts from the FBI, Scotland Yard and Germany’s BKA, who were brought in to examine the restored footage in late 2025, ran the profile through every major database. The top match – at an astonishing 92 per cent confidence level – is Christian Brueckner, the German paedophile and convicted rapist who has been the prime suspect in Madeleine’s disappearance for more than five years.

Brueckner, now 48, was living in the Algarve at the time of the abduction and has been linked to the area through phone records and witness statements. German prosecutors believe he confessed to a friend about taking Madeleine, and his white VW camper van was seen near Praia da Luz in the days leading up to May 3, 2007.

Yet Brueckner has always denied involvement and no charges have been brought against him despite multiple raids on his properties.

The discovery of the tape has reignited the case with ferocious intensity. Scotland Yard’s Operation Grange has been given an extra £5 million in funding, while Portuguese authorities have reopened their files. The McCanns, who have never stopped searching for their daughter, issued a brief but emotional statement: ‘We are cautiously hopeful. If this is Maddie, we need to know what happened next.’

The footage was unearthed during a routine digitisation project of old police archives in Lisbon in November 2025. It had been misfiled in a box marked ‘Miscellaneous Surveillance – Unreviewed’ and overlooked for nearly two decades.

Technicians using AI-enhanced restoration software managed to sharpen the images and recover faint audio. Forensic analysis confirmed the girl’s height, build and distinctive coloboma – the rare flaw in the iris of her right eye – match Madeleine’s exactly. Facial recognition software gave a 98 per cent match.

The man and child are seen entering the airport through a side door, avoiding the main security checkpoints. They pause briefly at a vending machine where he buys her a juice box. She sips it slowly, looking up at him with wide, confused eyes.

They then walk towards the departure area for flights to Madrid. Spanish police are now scouring their own records from that morning, searching passenger manifests and additional CCTV from Barajas Airport.

Investigators believe the pair boarded a flight shortly after 3am. From Madrid, they could have connected to anywhere in Europe or beyond within hours.

The tape challenges every official timeline. Portuguese police originally claimed Madeleine was abducted sometime between 9.30pm and 10pm. If she was at Faro Airport by 2am, the kidnapper moved with terrifying speed and precision.

Former MI6 officer John Hargreaves, who has followed the case for years, told the Daily Mail: ‘This is the smoking gun we’ve been waiting for. It shows premeditation. The abductor knew exactly where to go and how to get out of the country before the alarm was raised.’

The discovery has also sparked wild speculation online. Some conspiracy theorists claim the man’s scar and features bear an eerie resemblance to other high-profile figures, though experts have dismissed these as coincidence or pareidolia – the brain’s tendency to see familiar faces in unrelated images.

What cannot be denied is the impact of the footage. Within hours of selected stills being leaked to the media in early January 2026, more than 12,000 fresh tips flooded into Operation Grange. Rewards for information leading to Madeleine’s whereabouts have now exceeded £200,000.

Kate McCann, who has spent years writing and speaking about her daughter’s disappearance, has described the moment she saw the enhanced images. ‘It was like seeing her again for the first time in 19 years,’ she said in a private conversation reported by a close friend. ‘Those eyes. That little face. It’s her.’

Gerry McCann added: ‘We have lived with hope and heartbreak every day since 2007. This tape gives us something we haven’t had in a long time – a real lead.’

The couple’s supporters, including high-profile figures who helped fund the Find Madeleine campaign, have rallied once more. David Beckham, who appeared in awareness videos in 2007, posted a simple message on social media: ‘Never stop searching.’

Meanwhile, Christian Brueckner’s legal team has remained tight-lipped, though sources close to the investigation say he has been questioned again in prison. He is currently serving a seven-year sentence in Germany for raping a 72-year-old woman in the Algarve in 2005.

Portuguese prosecutors have confirmed they are treating the tape as ‘highly significant evidence’ and are working closely with British and German counterparts.

The man in the hoodie has not been positively identified beyond the facial match to Brueckner, but detectives are confident that advances in AI and forensic technology will yield more answers in the coming weeks.

For now, the world watches and waits once more. A little girl who vanished from her bed on a warm May night in 2007 may finally have been seen again – alive, frightened, and led away by the man who took her.

If Madeleine is still out there, now 22 years old, she deserves to know the truth. And so do her parents, who have carried the unimaginable pain of that night for almost two decades.

The hunt continues.