(NewsNation) — Authorities in Portugal confirmed Thursday that the search for missing British girl Madeleine McCann has ended.
The latest efforts in the 16-year-old hunt were concluded on Thursday after police collected unspecified samples from the Arada Dam reservoir and surrounding areas in Portugal.
Police did not say whether any useful leads were found during the three-day search that involved sniffer dogs, the use of a tractor-based tree cutter and investigators raking the cleared soil in a few small areas.
Officials said the search “resulted in the collection of some material,” which will be analyzed. However, there were no indications that anything conclusive had been found. The house search was requested by the German authorities.
McCann was 3 years old when she disappeared from her family’s holiday apartment in the Portuguese resort of Algarve in 2007. She and her siblings, 2-year-old twins, stayed the night in the family’s apartment while their parents, Gerry and Kate McCann, dined with friends at a nearby restaurant.
In 2022, German prosecutors named Christian Brueckner an official suspect in McCann’s disappearance. The convicted child molester and drug dealer is behind bars in Germany for raping a 72-year-old woman in the same part of the Algarve.
Brueckner has denied any involvement in the disappearance. No body has been found.