German prosecutors believe Madeleine McCann is dead

German prosecutors believe Madeleine McCann is dead and are investigating a child sex predator on suspicion of her murder.

The suspect – a 43-year-old German national partially identified as Christian B by local media – is reportedly serving a seven-year prison sentence for the rape of a 72-year-old American woman in Portugal in 2005.

He is known to have lived on the Algarve coast between 1995 and 2007 and his Portuguese mobile phone received a half-hour phone call in Praia da Luz around an hour before Madeleine, three, went missing.