A self-styled ‘super recogniser’ has drawn up a sketch of what she believes Madeleine McCann would look like now, aged 18.
Simone Malik believes her portrait is far more accurate than previous computer generated e-fits.
She says her ‘gift’ for recognising people’s faces lets per precisely depict someone’s ageing process.
The ex-NHS worker from Bradford is sharing her image in a bid to track down the girl, who vanished from a Portuguese holiday resort aged three in May 2007.
Simone, 41, believes her sketch is more precise than a 2020 computer-generated E-fit of Madeleine as the software ‘couldn’t recognise’ the child’s true features.
She claims Madeleine would now have a ‘wider forehead’ and has a ‘strong theory’ that she would have the same nose as her aunt Philomena, rather than her mum or dad’s.
Simone’s sketch of a child murderer and rapist Imran Ali led to him being captured by Pakistani police in 2018.
Now she believes her talents could lead to Maddie being found, finally bringing the 14 year search to a close.
She said: ‘I know as a super recogniser that is her face, that’s her nose. I think she’d be quite easy to find if she is alive, which we hope that she is.
‘I think people just need some guidance that this may possibly be her face that we’re looking for.’
After studying the computer-generated image of Madeleine last year, produced by professors at Bradford University, Simone began to doubt its validity.
She said Madeleine has a high and wide forehead, and questioned why it was so narrow on the E-fit.
‘I believe the reason that was the case is because in the original picture, which was used to create this 2020 image, she had a fringe,’ Simone added.
‘So the fringe was obscuring her forehead and her true features, which the computer couldn’t recognise or go beyond.
‘It made her look like she had a bottom-heavy face and a small forehead and a shorter nose, and I didn’t agree with that.’
Another feature that Simone also believes she has accurately captured in her up-to-date drawing of Madeleine is her nose.
She said: ‘Usually, children are like their mother or their father, or a bit of both, but neither does her mother or father have the wide nose and square tip.
‘I decided to do a bit more digging, and as I did some digging, I found a very interesting fact: somebody with exactly that nose in her family.
‘And it’s actually Philomena McCann, who is Gerry McCann’s sister, so it would be Madeleine’s aunty, from her dad’s side.’
Simone identifies as a ‘super recogniser’, someone who has extra-ordinary face recognition capabilities – a skill that its supporters say can’t be taught.
Simone says her strengths lie with matching people features and specifically knowing how someone will look in the future.
She says: ‘I might see an adult with that face, then I might see a child with similar features, and I can think, “I bet when this child grows up, he’ll look like that!”‘
There is even an agency called ‘Super Recogniser International’, which works with people purporting to have this gift.
Its founder, retired Scotland Yard detective Mike Neville, 54, says Simone’s sketch was ‘valuable’ to the ongoing search.
He added: ‘My view is the only way to find Madeleine if she is alive is with images.
‘Simone is a super recogniser, so I recruit people who never forget faces, so they’ve got a real skill for looking at things.
‘What we find with super recognisers is they look at unchanging features, and she’s sort of done that in reverse – she’s looked at what she should look like now.
‘It’s a valuable addition if Madeline McCann is still alive to try and find her. I think it will keep the public interested and obviously give us a different perspective on what she should look like today.’
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