BigRead: More than 1000 new leads in the Madeleine McCann investigation offer hope of answers A new appeal about the disappearance of Madeleine McCann has triggered an 'unprecedented' public response. IN a small "incident room" in Belgravia near Victoria Station in central London, the calls and emails were coming in quicker than police could log them. It had been hoped a TV special on missing toddler Madeleine McCann, involving actors and a dramatic reconstruction of the night she went missing, could attract some attention and perhaps a caller or two with new information. Within minutes of the program starting, calls began to be received by detectives at the backroom of the police centre in Belgravia and the Metropolitan Police's call centre at Hendon in northwest London. By the time the one-hour program had finished, 500 telephone calls and emails had been received by the officers. By the next morning police had logged more than 730 telephone calls and 300 emails, from the public mostly from Britain but also other parts of the world. The tally continues to grow. "We are overwhelmed by the response," was how Detective Chief Inspector Andy Redwood described the reaction. How is it a little girl lost for six and a half years could attract such a response still now? It hasn't just been the BBC TV's Crimewatch special that aired this week either. This undated shows British girl Madeleine McCann before she went missing from a Portuguese holiday complex on Thursday, May 3, 2007. When her parents Gerry and Kate McCann created a website appealing for help to find her in the days after her May 2007 disappearance, 50 million people worldwide logged on in the first 48 hours. The then pope Benedict has been involved in the hunt for the then three-year-old toddler and personally met with the McCanns as has British Prime Minister David Cameron. The 'Find Madeleine' appeal featured at the 2007 FA Cup Final, talk show queen Oprah Winfrey picked up on the cause and was joined in fund raising by David Beckham, JK Rowling and Richard Branson. Week-on-week Madeleine's name has barely been out of the mainstream press in the UK. It has been a phenomena academics have labelled "Maddification" akin to the "Dianafication" of the British public when the people's princess Lady Diana died and the outpouring was tremendous if not stunning. But like Diana, Maddie's cause is not restricted to the UK. It's a global phenomena. And then this week just when it appeared the campaign couldn't get bigger, police get blown away by more than 1000 new pieces of information. It's not all good information, but more clues in the hunt. The search for Maddie by her parents is a lifetime pursuit but in a fickle public it could have lasted a month, maybe six, maybe even a year but six and a half years later and it has never been stronger. This week's appeal may not lead to her finding or an arrest but it does place on notice the world wants this girl back and will not give up looking. Kate and Gerry McCann during the special BBC Crimewatch on the disappearance of their daughter Madeleine. THE McCanns, Kate and Gerry, Madeleine and twins Sean and Amelie, arrived on holidays at the village of Praia da Luz in the Portuguese Algarve on April 28. They stayed at apartment G5A on the ground floor of the sprawling Ocean Club Resort, a holiday complex popular with British and German tourists in the tiny Algarve village. The kids were put into a kids club at the resort while the parents took tennis lessons or went jogging during the day. The children were put to bed in the apartment when the parents went out to dine with seven adult family friends travelling with five children between them, who had all made the trip to the resort for their holidays. By day five of their break, everyone was very much in a routine and that possibly contributed to the disappearance of Maddie, with one police theory the family was being stalked. On the night she disappeared, the McCann adults put their children to bed and went to a tapas restaurant at the complex at least 50m away from their apartment; their friends had done the same. The apartment hotel building at the holiday resort in Paia da Luz in Portugal where Madeleine McCann went missing. The McCanns, like their friends, every now and then returned to their respective apartments to check on their kids before returning to the meal. It was when Kate McCann checked at 10pm she saw Madeleine missing from her bed, in the same room where the twins were sleeping peacefully, and a nearby window wide open. The nightmare began and would only get worse when the McCann parents were formally declared by Portuguese police as 'aguidos' or suspects. There were claims Maddie's DNA was found in a car the family had hired some weeks after she disappeared, cleaning products including ammonia left in all apartments as standard was missing from theirs and a British press rounded on them to all but declare them guilty, a view at the time strongly supported by Portuguese police. There were rumours, perpetuated by among others the local Portuguese police, that the McCanns had accidentally killed their daughter in an overdose as they attempted to make them all sleep through the night so as to not interrupt the tapas night. The claims were never supported by any evidence and the DNA in the boot of their car proved inconclusive. Their status as suspects was only dropped after more than a year when the Portuguese police closed the case with no result. Kate and Gerry McCann talk to the press after attending a church service in Praia da Luz, southern Portugal, on May 06 2007. ONE of the key pieces of evidence in the case had been testimony from one of the McCanns' friends on the holiday Jane Tanner who claimed to have seen a man carrying a sleeping child in pink frilly pyjamas on the street near the McCann's flat at 9.15pm on the May 3 night she disappeared. A sketch artist produced an image from Ms Tanner's recounting of the sighting and police deemed the evidence as crucial since it appeared the timeline of the crime ended at 9.15pm, the moment she was taken. This week police revealed the lead - held strong for six years - was false, the man carrying the child was an innocent British holiday-maker carrying his sleepy child home. That meant another witness statement of having seen another man carrying another half sleeping little girl in his arms near the resort at 10pm, 45 minutes later and going in a different direction, became relevant again. It was possible that man was the abductor. Handout electronic images from the British Metropolitan Police show a man detectives want to contact in connection with the 2007 disappearance of Madeleine McCann in Portugal. Police said the man is of "vital importance" and the two images have been drawn up based on statements and descriptions from two different witnesses who saw the man in the area of Praia da Luz town. That witness, Irish father Martin Smith, was holidaying with his wife Mary and daughter Aoife and son Peter when they saw this second man walking along from the McCann's apartment toward the beach. Working with a sketch artist in 2008 they produced the image of the smirking man. That image and another produced were never made public until this week since they were not deemed relevant at the time, falling outside the police timeline of the crime which ended with that 9.15pm sighting. Just why that 9.15pm sighting was not discounted earlier is not clear. "What I'm not here to do is to try and dissect the decision-making of previous detectives or private detectives, that's not appropriate," Insp Redwood said. But he did describe the finding as a "revelation moment." From 9.15pm we are able to allow the clock to move forward and in doing so, things that have not been quite as significant or have not received quite the same attention are now at the centre of our focus. But there are a lot of variables in the case and a lot of presumptions. For a start there was a night crèche at the resort where eight families had 11 children in the night Maddie was taken. So it is conceivable there were a fair few fathers carrying toddlers home that night. One of them could be the man in the e-fit police now want to ID. Witnesses had been able to give decent enough descriptions of at least two men maybe four for artists to produce e-fits. These men had in the week prior to the abduction been loitering about the area on the pretext of collecting money for a charity linked to orphans. Two of the men were seen on an empty balcony two doors down from the McCanns apartment. Some witnesses suggested they spoke with German or Dutch accents. Some fair-haired men were seen by witnesses as "loitering" about the streets. They could have been unrelated criminals or indeed innocent holidays makers. Another witness said he saw two men arguing in the middle of the street but they moved away and lowered their voices when he came near. It could mean nothing, it could mean something but that is the calibre of leads police have to probe. It's a challenge. Previously released digital images of what Madeleine McCann might look like now. The British Metropolitan police could not intervene in the investigation since the Portuguese had carriage but after 18 months when the latter abandoned the case deeming a result was impossible, British Prime Minister David Cameron ordered Scotland Yard to review the evidence. They did and launched a full inquiry of their own in July. They now have more than 30 detectives and police staff working on the case full time and through re-interviewing witnesses and finding others have amassed 39,000 pieces of evidence, 440 witnesses and 41 "persons of interest," at least one of whom they believe is guilty or at least knows something. Now they have another 1000 pieces of evidence through the call and emails to scrutinise. The McCanns have spent AUD$6.5 million to find their daughter, most of the money coming from donations such as those from Branson, while Scotland Yard has so far spent a further $8.5 million. The British public is unlikely to allow the police to close the case, there would be an outcry. As if sensing the inevitable, Mr McCann publicly reminded police that statistically the younger the child, the greater chance they can be found alive. "These cases can be solved," he said. Sadly there are more precedents of cases not being solved than solved.