A British couple claimed they spotted a bizarre "shrine" to missing Madeleine McCann in the reservoir police searched last week - just seven months after the toddler vanished.
The retired couple, who have asked to be named only as Ralf and Ann, took photographs of the memorial and sent them to Portuguese detectives. The couple felt they were of significance, but never heard back.
The makeshift shrine consisted of boulders in the shape of an arrow pointing towards a picnic site, which was dug over by police last week at the Barragem do Arade in Portugal.
The memorial was weighed down by a large rock and had a bouquet of flowers and a photograph of abducted Madeleine on it, they said.
When prime suspect Christian Brueckner, 45, was identified by German police in 2020, Ralf and Ann contacted detectives after seeing an appeal for anyone who was on holiday in the Algarve when Madeleine went missing in May 2007 to get in touch.
German officers from the BKA (criminal investigation unit) responded within hours of Ralf and Ann emailing them on that occasion, and detectives quizzed them on the telephone for several hours before asking them to give a formal statement.
Ralf and Ann frequently stay in their holiday home just minutes from the reservoir in the Algarve.
Ralf, 66, recalled seeing a row of stones stretching out into the water and, on the last one, a bouquet of fresh white lilies. He went out and had a look, and on the stone where the flowers were, there was a photograph of Madeleine.
The retired builder described the scene as "very strange".
Ann, 67, told Mail on Sunday: "Thinking about it now gives me goosebumps because when we saw where the police were searching the past few days you could see that's where the row of stones was pointing to.
"Back then when we found it the whole thing was just so weird. At the time I thought, 'has someone dumped Madeleine in the water and then come back to make a shrine in her memory?' It was so odd."
Fresh information led to German authorities requesting a search of the remote picnic area campsite on the edge of the reservoir near Silves, which Brueckner sinisterly used to call his "little paradise".
Material found during the three-day search will now be analysed by investigators, police say - with a source reporting on Thursday they were looking for a gun and camcorder belonging to the German suspect.
Days after Ralf and Ann contacted Portuguese police about their find in December 2007, the flowers and photograph had vanished.
The Brits, who have frequently stayed at their holiday home since they retired, put the incident to the back of their minds, but dug out the pictures three years ago after seeing news reports naming Brueckner as the prime suspect.
"I immediately contacted the BKA in Germany and told them what we had and I had a reply back within a few hours," dad-to-two Ralf said.
"They wanted to know everything that we had seen and then they asked me to send them the pictures and they sent a map of the reservoir, asking me to point out where the stones were.
"The German police were very interested in what we had."
Ann met officers at the reservoir after the interaction.
The dam was first searched six months after the couple's discovery, but only by lawyer Marcos Aragao Corriea, who funded two searches of the reservoir alongside the Spanish detective agency Metodo 3, which was hired by the McCann family.
Patricia de Sousa Cipriano, head of the Association of Missing Children, said: "If these new searches at the Arade dam confirm flagrant errors in the investigation, then the Portuguese police has to justify itself and ensure it doesn't happen again."
Soil samples taken from the area searched last week have been sent to Germany for analysis, but sources suggest nothing of real significance was found.
