New image of "very ugly" man published in search for Madeleine

May 7, 2009, 9:49 GMT

London - The parents of missing British girl Madeleine McCann Thursday released a new image of a 'very ugly' man they believe could have been involved in her disappearance from a holiday apartment in Portugal two years ago.

The artist's impression of a man with 'pitted skin and a large nose' is based on the account of a British woman who stayed in the resort of Praia da Luz on the Algarve during the period in question.

Madeleine, who would be six years old next Tuesday, vanished from the apartment on May 3, 2007, while her parents were having dinner with friends nearby.

To mark the anniversary last Saturday, Kate and Gerry McCann published an age progression image to show what Madeleine might look like now.

The witness has told investigators she saw the man twice in the days before Madeleine's disappearance, watching the apartment and 'acting suspiciously' in the street.

The new image is different from a description provided by one of the McCanns' friends earlier in the investigations which showed a man carrying a young girl in her pyjamas away from the apartment.

However, two other new British witnesses had so far not been able to confirm whether the person they saw was the same one shown in the new artist's impression, reports said Thursday.

In a TV documentary on the Madeleine case to be broadcast in Britain Thursday, two retired British detectives hired by the McCanns report that five separate sightings of a suspicious man could hold the key to solving the mystery of Madeleine's fate.

'I don't know what the Portuguese authorities have done to eliminate these people from the inquiry. So we've got to presume that they haven't done it and go with that,' former detective inspector Dave Edgar told the programme.