A plot to kidnap a child was being hatched in a Portuguese holiday resort a week before Madeleine McCann vanished there, Sky News has been told.
Expat Ken Ralphs said that Christian B, the German drifter suspected of abducting Madeleine, tried to recruit a mutual friend to help find a youngster to sell to a childless couple.
Mr Ralphs, a former UK political campaigner, said Christian B made the offer to the man who was penniless and living in a tent in a remote part of the Algarve coast.
Mr Ralphs, 59, said: “We were sitting around the fire one night after a meal, we had a few beers and during the early hours of the morning my friend began to cry.
“I asked him what the matter was and, eventually, he confessed to me he was getting involved with Christian to steal a child from Praia da Luz from a rich family.”
Mr Ralphs, Christian and their mutual friend, a foreigner who cannot be named for legal reasons, were all part of a nomadic, bohemian community living – for different reasons – off-grid in isolated spots in southwest Portugal.
After a short drive off-road, Mr Ralphs took me along a track to a clearing in the woods about 20 miles from Praia da Luz, the beachside village from where Madeleine disappeared in May 2007.
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“It’s fenced off now, probably privately owned,” explained Mr Ralphs, as we stood in the shadow of several towering eucalyptus trees.
“But 17 years ago my friend and his family were living in a teepee here and me and my wife used to bring them food.
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“Christian knew the guy was vulnerable and wanted to travel abroad, but he couldn’t leave because he couldn’t afford the air tickets.”
Mr Ralphs said he told his friend not to get involved in the plot and offered to help him financially when he returned from a trip he was about to make to the UK.
“I said you can’t get involved in kidnapping a person for ransom, that’s ridiculous, then he explained, no, it’s not like that. Christian had a customer, a buyer lined up, a German couple who couldn’t have children.”
Image: Christian Brueckner
A week later, Mr Ralphs was back in the UK when he heard the news that Madeleine, aged three, had vanished without trace from the family’s rented holiday apartment.
He told me that within three hours he had driven from his father’s home to a police station in Workington, Cumbria, and reported what he knew.
“I said to the police, here’s the secret map of how you get to this point in the woods here. I said that must be sent immediately to the Portuguese police.”
On his return to the Algarve he went to his local police station and repeated his story, but said he was told Portuguese detectives knew nothing about it.
He found his friend had disappeared, his teepee tent burned, and there was no sign of Christian B. He never saw either of them again.
“The GNR [local police] asked me, have you made your statement to the British police? I said, yeah and they said, well, don’t worry, go home. If they need to contact you, they will. And of course, over the years nobody contacted me.”
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8:44
The hunt for Madeleine McCann
In 2020, when Christian B was publicly identified as the Madeleine suspect, Mr Ralphs recognised him from media photographs and again contacted police.
Mr Ralphs was interviewed by Portuguese detectives, though he still doesn’t know what part his evidence has played in the investigation.
He said: “They told me someone had made contact with my friend abroad and he had denied knowing me, but I have a dozen witnesses who will say that he’s lying. I guess he just didn’t want to be interviewed by police.”
Mr Ralphs has had contact with Scotland Yard detectives and late last year sent a detailed statement to the German prosecutor now leading the Madeleine investigation.
The prosecutor Hans Christian Wolters told Sky News he had passed the statement to German investigators.
Christian B, who cannot be fully identified under German privacy laws, is still the Madeleine suspect but has not been charged. He denies any involvement in Madeleine’s disappearance.
Image: Missing Madeleine McCann
He is currently serving a seven-year sentence in a German prison for the rape of an elderly American woman, a crime he committed in Praia da Luz in 2005.
Mr Ralphs said he knew Christian in the months before Madeleine vanished because they both used to park their camper vans on Barranco beach at the end of a long, rocky track.
Mr Ralphs and his wife had left the UK when police mistakenly exposed him after he had passed on information about a gangland murder.
He successfully sued Greater Manchester Police, pulled out of a witness protection plan and disappeared into an itinerant life in Portugal.
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4:37
Sky News visits the reservoir police searched for Madeleine in May 2023
When German police appealed for information about the then unnamed suspect in 2020 they released a photograph of Christian B’s yellow and white camper van parked on Barranco beach near its eastern cliffs.
“I think Christian took that picture to show his friends back in Germany, a tourist snap,” Mr Ralphs told me as we wandered the beach on a blowy January morning.
“He normally parked away from the sea, in the bushes where he was hidden and could sell drugs which was what he was known for.”
I showed Mr Ralphs pictures of Christian B from those days and more recent police photographs and asked if he was sure it was the same man.
“Of course, it’s definitely him. I remember him clearly, he was good-looking, spoke very good English and was polite, though not particularly friendly. A bit of a loner.”
Mr Ralphs’s evidence of a plan to steal a child is backed up by Michael Tatschl, a good friend of Christian B in those days.
Tatschl told author Jon Clarke in his book My Search for Madeleine: “He (Christian B) was always bragging about money and making money, particularly from burglaries. He even talked about selling kids, maybe to Morocco.”
And Scotland Yard detectives have always believed that, whatever her ultimate fate, Madeleine was abducted in a carefully planned operation.
Sky News has approached Christian B’s lawyer and Scotland Yard for comment.
While the politicians talk, so many people come from around the world to try to get across the Channel on small boats. But why?
Why make such a perilous crossing to try to get to a country that seems to be getting increasingly hostile to asylum seekers?
As the British and French leaders meet, with small boats at the forefront of their agenda, we came to northern France to get some answers.
It is not a new question, but it is peppered with fresh relevance.
Over the course of a morning spent around a migrant camp in Dunkirk, we meet migrantsfrom Gaza, Iraq, Eritrea, South Sudan, Sri Lanka and beyond.
Some are fearful, waving us away; some are happy to talk. Very few are comfortable to be filmed.
All but one man – who says he’s come to the wrong place and actually wants to claim asylum in Paris – are intent on reaching Britain.
They see the calm seas, feel the light winds – perfect conditions for small boat crossings.
John has come here from South Sudan. He tells me he’s now 18 years old. He left his war-torn home nation just before his 16th birthday. He feels that reaching Britain is his destiny.
“England is my dream country,” he says. “It has been my dream since I was at school. It’s the country that colonised us and when I get there, I will feel like I am home.
“In England, they can give me an opportunity to succeed or to do whatever I need to do in my life. I feel like I am an English child, who was born in Africa.”
Image: ‘England is my dream country,’ John tells Adam Parsons
He says he would like to make a career in England, either as a journalist or in human resources, and, like many others we meet, is at pains to insist he will work hard.
The boat crossing is waved away as little more than an inconvenience – a trifle compared with the previous hardships of his journey towards Britain.
We meet a group of men who have all travelled from Gaza, intent on starting new lives in Britain and then bringing their families over to join them.
One man, who left Gaza two years ago, tells me that his son has since been shot in the leg “but there is no hospital for him to go to”.
Next to him, a man called Abdullah says he entered Europe through Greece and stayed there for months on end, but was told the Greek authorities would never allow him to bring over his family.
Britain, he thinks, will be more accommodating. “Gaza is being destroyed – we need help,” he says.
Image: Abdullah says ‘Gaza is being destroyed – we need help’
A man from Eritreatells us he is escaping a failing country and has friends in Britain – he plans to become a bicycle courier in either London or Manchester.
He can’t stay in France, he says, because he doesn’t speak French. The English language is presented as a huge draw for many of the people we talk to, just as it had been during similar conversations over the course of many years.
I ask many of these people why they don’t want to stay in France, or another safe European country.
Some repeat that they cannot speak the language and feel ostracised. Another says that he tried, and failed, to get a residency permit in both France and Belgium.
But this is also, clearly, a flawed survey. Last year, five times as many people sought asylum in France as in Britain.
And French critics have long insisted that Britain, a country without a European-style ID card system, makes itself attractive to migrants who can “disappear”.
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1:48
Migrant Channel crossings hit new record
A young man from Iraq, with absolutely perfect English, comes for a chat. He oozes confidence and a certain amount of mischief.
It has taken him only seven days to get from Iraq to Dunkirk; when I ask how he has made the trip so quickly, he shrugs. “Money talks”.
He looks around him. “Let me tell you – all of these people you see around you will be getting to Britain and the first job they get will be in the black market, so they won’t be paying any tax.
“Back in the day in Britain, they used to welcome immigrants very well, but these days I don’t think they want to, because there’s too many of them coming by boat. Every day it’s about seven or 800 people. That’s too many people.”
“But,” I ask, “if those people are a problem – then what makes you different? Aren’t you a problem too?”
He shakes his head emphatically. “I know that I’m a very good guy. And I won’t be a problem. I’ll only stay in Britain for a few years and then I’ll leave again.”
A man from Sri Lanka says he “will feel safe” when he gets to Britain; a tall, smiling man from Ethiopia echoes the sentiment: “We are not safe in our home country so we have come all this way,” he says. “We want to work, to be part of Britain.”
Emmanuel is another from South Sudan – thoughtful and eloquent. He left his country five years ago – “at the start of COVID” – and has not seen his children in all that time. His aim is to start a new life in Britain, and then to bring his family to join him.
He is a trained electrical engineer, but says he could also work as a lorry driver. He is adamant that Britain has a responsibility to the people of its former colony.
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Emmanuel Macron has said the UK and France have a “shared responsibility” to tackle the “burden” of illegal migration, as he urged co-operation between London and Paris ahead of a crunch summit later this week.
Addressing parliament in the Palace of Westminster on Tuesday, the French president said the UK-France summit would bring “cooperation and tangible results” regarding the small boats crisis in the Channel.
Image: King Charles III at the State Banquet for President of France Emmanuel Macron. Pic: PA
Mr Macron – who is the first European leader to make a state visit to the UK since Brexit – told the audience that while migrants’ “hope for a better life elsewhere is legitimate”, “we cannot allow our countries’ rules for taking in people to be flouted and criminal networks to cynically exploit the hopes of so many individuals with so little respect for human life”.
“France and the UK have a shared responsibility to address irregular migration with humanity, solidarity and fairness,” he added.
Looking ahead to the UK-France summit on Thursday, he promised the “best ever cooperation” between France and the UK “to fix today what is a burden for our two countries”.
Sir Keir Starmer will hope to reach a deal with his French counterpart on a “one in, one out” migrant returns deal at the key summit on Thursday.
King Charles also addressed the delegations at a state banquet in Windsor Castle on Tuesday evening, saying the summit would “deepen our alliance and broaden our partnerships still further”.
Image: King Charles speaking at state banquet welcoming Macron.
Sitting next to President Macron, the monarch said: “Our armed forces will cooperate even more closely across the world, including to support Ukraine as we join together in leading a coalition of the willing in defence of liberty and freedom from oppression. In other words, in defence of our shared values.”
In April, British officials confirmed a pilot scheme was being considered to deport migrants who cross the English Channel in exchange for the UK accepting asylum seekers in France with legitimate claims.
The two countries have engaged in talks about a one-for-one swap, enabling undocumented asylum seekers who have reached the UK by small boat to be returned to France.
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Britain would then receive migrants from France who would have a right to be in the UK, like those who already have family settled here.
The small boats crisis is a pressing issue for the prime minister, given that more than 20,000 migrants crossed the English Channel to the UK in the first six months of this year – a rise of almost 50% on the number crossing in 2024.
Image: President Macron greets Commons Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle at his address to parliament in Westminster.
Elsewhere in his speech, the French president addressed Brexit, and said the UK could not “stay on the sidelines” despite its departure from the European Union.
He said European countries had to break away from economic dependence on the US and China.
“Our two countries are among the oldest sovereign nations in Europe, and sovereignty means a lot to both of us, and everything I referred to was about sovereignty, deciding for ourselves, choosing our technologies, our economy, deciding our diplomacy, and deciding the content we want to share and the ideas we want to share, and the controversies we want to share.
“Even though it is not part of the European Union, the United Kingdom cannot stay on the sidelines because defence and security, competitiveness, democracy – the very core of our identity – are connected across Europe as a continent.”
The Princess of Wales and celebrities attended the King’s star-studded state banquet on Tuesday, where Emmanuel Macron paid tribute to the late Queen Elizabeth II.
On the first day of Mr Macron’s state visit, King Charles gave a toast in French and said the three-day trip was another chance to “celebrate a deep and enduring friendship”.
“What’s possibly the most remarkable thing is the way in which the speciality of one country is part of the story of the other,” the monarch said.
“For centuries, our citizens have admired one another. We’ve made each other laugh, and we’ve imitated one another.”
Image: The Prince and Princess of Wales at the State Banquet. Pic: PA
Image: The banquet hall at Windsor Castle. Pic: PA
Image: The King makes a speech at a banquet at Windsor Castle. Pic: PA
Image: King Charles looks at Emmanuel Macron at a state banquet at Windsor Castle. Pic: PA
After the King’s speech, Mr Macron told him France had a “real affection for your mother” Queen Elizabeth II, adding he believed the feeling was “reciprocal”.
“She was your queen,” he said. “To us, she was the Queen.”
He capped off his speech – which repeated his calls for closer relations that he made earlier in the Palace of Westminster – by saying: “In honour of the United Kingdom, of this entente amico that unites our two fraternal peoples in an unwavering alliance.
“Long live the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland! Long live France!”
Image: Emmanuel Macron gives a speech at a state banquet at Windsor Castle. Pic: PA
The Princess of Wales also made her first appearance at a state banquet in almost two years, sitting next to the French president.
Image: Emmanuel Macron and Kate, the Princess of Wales, share a toast. Pic: PA
Also in attendance were Sir Mick Jagger, frontman of The Rolling Stones, who was joined by his fiancee Melanie Hamrick, and Sir Elton John, who was accompanied by his husband David Furnish.
Image: Mick Jagger taking his seat at the state banquet at Windsor Castle. Pic: PA
Image: Elton John and David Furnish at the state banquet at Windsor Castle. Pic: PA
Meanwhile, it was announced that the Bayeux Tapestry, depicting the Norman conquest of England, will return to the UK for the first time in more than 900 years, and will feature in an exhibition from September 2026 to July 2027.
Mr Macron joked ahead of the state banquet that negotiations to bring the 11th-century artwork back to the UK took longer “than all the Brexit tests”. Talks on a loan had started as early as 2018.