This episode first aired on Today in Focus, the Guardian’s global daily news podcast made by the Guardian team in London. Last week, prosecutors in Germany held a press conference to update the media on a story that has gripped the world for over a decade. There was a new lead in the search for the missing British girl Madeleine McCann, who disappeared at the age of three in the Portuguese resort of Praia da Luz. Guardian reporters Esther Addley and Sandra Laville have covered the story for 13 years, through the false leads, wrongly named suspects and a maelstrom of wild rumours, many focused on the girl’s devastated parents. They tell Rachel Humphreys what it was about this case that made it a national obsession – and what a resolution would mean.