A new document released in the trove of Epstein Files references missing British child Madeleine McCann — with a witness alleging they saw her with Ghislaine Maxwell after she was kidnapped.
According to a witness statement, someone whose name is redacted reached out to the FBI in 2020 claiming that they were walking home from a shop in 2009 when they spotted a woman who fit Maxwell’s description holding hands with a little girl of about 6, which would have been about McCann’s age two years after she vanished from her hotel room in Portugal in 2007.
“There was also a middle aged man with them but he was walking much further ahead. When I got up close to the girl I noticed she looked like Madeline McCann. The woman was trying to hurry her along and seemed agitated that I was there,” the witness’ statement reads.
The witness noted the little girl was covering her right eye the entire time. McCann had a rare condition called coloboma, which made her right pupil distinctive.
The witness statement, which was released by the Department of Justice, is not evidence of any wrongdoing and it’s unclear if the people the witness claims to have seen were actually the former partner of late convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein or the missing girl, whose disappearance continues to make headlines after nearly two decades.
The case has been investigated as a kidnapping but authorities have never been able to find her nor determine exactly what happened and who is responsible.
Maxwell is currently in prison serving a lengthy sentence for sex trafficking minor girls for Epstein and others.