How Madeleine McCann would look today aged 18, according to 'recogniser'

How Madeleine McCann would look today aged 18, according to 'recogniser'

ByNeil Shaw
10:53, 3 DEC 2021 UPDATED10:58, 3 DEC 2021



A woman who calls herself a 'super recogniser' has created what she says is the most accurate image ever of missing Madeleine McCann as she would look now aged 18.

Simone Malik - who says she has a 'gift' for recognising people's faces - believes her portrait is far more accurate than previous computer generated e-fits.

The 41-year-old is sharing her image in a bid to help track down Madeleine who vanished from a Portugese holiday resort aged three in May 2007.

Ms Malik believes her sketch is more precise than a 2020 computer-generated E-fit of Madeleine as the software “couldn’t recognise” the missing child's true features.

She says her gifts as a “super recogniser” let her precisely depict someone’s ageing process and claims the missing child, now 18, would have a “wider forehead”.

The ex-NHS worker from Bradford also says she has a “strong theory” that Madeleine would have the same nose profile as her aunt, Philomena, rather than one matching her mum or dad.

Ms Malik, whose sketch of a child murderer and rapist in Pakistan successfully led to his capture, believes her new image could result in Madeleine being found.

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.”

Ms Malik said after studying the computer-generated image of Madeleine last year, which was produced by professors at Bradford University, she began to doubt its validity.

She said: “Madeleine’s got a high forehead and she’s got a wide forehead, that’s clear for me to see – I think people looking at her image as a child would agree with it.

“[But] on this computerised image, it was a narrow forehead.

“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.

“So the fringe was obscuring her forehead and her true features, which the computer couldn’t recognise or go beyond.”

She added: “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 Ms Malik 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.”

Ms Malik identifies as a “super recogniser”, someone who has extra-ordinary face recognition capabilities, which is a skill that its supporters say can’t be taught.

Agency "Super Recogniser International", which works with people purporting to have this gift, explains: “The average person can only remember a very limited amount of faces they have seen, but Super Recognisers can successfully identify significantly more.”

Mike Neville, 54 a Retired Scotland Yard detective and founder of agency Super Recognisers International, said Ms Malik’s sketch was “valuable” to the ongoing search.

“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.

Ms Malik says her strengths as a super recogniser 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!’

Ms Malik says she used her abilities first in 2018 when she created a sketch of rapist and murder Imran Ali, who was on the loose in Pakistan.

Police in Pakistan later released an E-fit of the key suspect in the case, who had allegedly killed six other girls, but Ms Malik felt the picture was misleading.

She said: “I looked at the image and I looked at the CCTV, and I thought “No, this is not the person. This is misleading.”

“I quickly did a sketch. I did it at about 2 in the morning because I couldn’t sleep. There was an image in my mind, and I thought: “This is the person.”

Once she put the picture out on social media, Ms Malik said it went viral, and within days, the local police had used it to track down their lead suspected.

“The next thing I know is that Punjab police were in touch with me, and within the week, they’d got this suspect who matched the image on my sketch.

“His DNA matched with eight victims, including the girl that had died, and then within the year, he was hung."

Now Ms Malik, who won the Asian women of achievement award in 2018 for her work with vulnerable children, believes she can use her gifts to locate missing Madeleine McCann.

She said: “I feel like I was on a path to help or to do good, really, or to give back to society.

“Madeline McCann is a big case, and I want to have my input.”

Madeleine McCann went missing when she was three years old, on May 3, 2007, while she was on holiday with her parents in Portugal.

When asked for comment, a Met police spokesperson said: "The investigation into the disappearance of Madeleine McCann remains a missing person enquiry."

https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/uk-news/how-madeleine-mccann-would-look-22354144

I don't think Madeleine's left eye was higher than the right eye.

What a load of crap, on par if not worse than the psychic rubbish. 

And no doubt soon to appear in the Sun, Mirror, Mail, Star etc.

And what's that 'thing' in her right eye? The 'thing' she didn't have or was it merely a fleck?

What exactly is a super recogniser - a selfie perfectionist?

I think so..

'Super recogniser' creates image of what Madeleine McCann 'looks like now' at 18

Simone Malik used genetics and natural facial recognition to produce pictures of what Madeleine McCann should look like now that she is 18 years old as the mystery continues over her disappearance.

ByJerry Lawton

21:57, 3 DEC 2021

[Mark Saunokonoko podcast]

This is what Madeleine McCann looks like now, according to an image created by a “super recogniser”.

Simone Malik uses genetics and a natural facial recognition “gift” to produce the pictures.

Simone, 41, 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.” Simone has shared the
image of Madeleine – who vanished on holiday in Portugal in 2007 aged three – in the hope that someone will recognise her.

The former NHS worker from Bradford, West Yorkshire, said she believes Madeleine, who would be 18, would have the same nose as her aunt Philomena rather than her parents Kate and Gerry McCann.

Ex-Scotland Yard detective Mike Neville, 54, who runs the Super Recogniser International agency, said: “It’s a valuable addition if Madeleine McCann is still alive to try and find her.”

Simone first used her extraordinary abilities in 2018 when her sketches helped Indian police catch multiple child rapist and murderer Imran Ali.

Earlier this year, prosecutors probing Madeleine McCann’s disappearance said they were “100% convinced” that German paedo Christian Brueckner kidnapped her.


Simone Malik claims she has a 'gift' for recognising people's faces (Image: Simone Malik / SWNS

Prosecutor Hans Christian Wolters admitted the evidence against Brueckner, 44, is “circumstantial”.

He said they’ve no videos to prove Madeleine, who aged three went missing in Praia da Luz, Portugal, in 2007, is dead.

They also have no idea how she died and no DNA linking the German to the crime. But Mr Wolters is convinced Brueckner, who is in jail in Germany, killed the British youngster.

https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/latest-news/super-recogniser-creates-image-what-25613710
...................

Scrape all that muck off the face of Ms Malik and she wouldn't be able to recognise herself.

Jerry Lawton, another stalwart of the McCann fraternity. 14.7 years down the line and this is the best they can come up with, the thin end of the wedge.

Shame on you!

this malik person is actually a very good artist, at least if she uses pencil, the moment she got her hands to paint it became just rubbish. maybe because she likes to paint to pictures, het paint work miss a third dimension. reality is 3d, making that flat makes it to 2d, but a good artist now how to fool our eyes to let look as 3d. malik is not able to do that in her paintings. 

superegognizing is as it looks like a inborn capacity. but there are differences, there are a lot of people who never would forget a face once seen, but only would recognize it if seen again in the same reality. 

so from pictures to pictures, or from reality to picture, or picture to reality. most stories about superregognizing are about picture to picture. even if the pose is different, still being able to recognize that person. 

we do not know, if malik is a true super recognizer, or just a artist, that is a lifelong trained eye, for details of a human face. because that is what is happening when you paint a portrait. 

other people will very rarely take in all the details, in the same way an experienced portrait artist would do by habit. 

when malik works with paint, she has a problem with noses and eyes. her paintings are easily to find, and the portraits of the people in those paintings also. 

but the reality is, that a picture front and side from a person, as used by police forces, is very seldom lead to the person they searching for. 
most humans do not single out on the face. far more successful are videos of security cameras. how a person moves about and then one or two details of that person, makes it easier to recognize who it is.

those 'maybe' our missing person looks like this pictures are not very realistic. malik's example of madeleine gives us a almost anorectic look. what if madeleine not only got her nose genes from the mccann side, but also her weight. 

even if you except there still could be a live young lady madeleine mccann, how to we know what she or others around her, had filling in het natural appearance, into a nurture appearance. 
it is not rare, that underage girls already have done some cosmetic surgery, or some botox, or silicones. 
also hair color could be very different on even a weekly basis, same with hair styles. 
in males it is a little bit easier, but hair style, how much hair there still is, on the head, but also the rest of their face. 

even eyes are no longer to be the same forever. coloured lenses are cheap and available. also how much people do focus on everyone they met on eye color and eye defects. also because of the coloboma, and we do not know exactly what kind and type madeleine has, het medical information never made it to the investigation, could have made glasses a necessary. and sunglasses would it become unable to see eyecolor at all.  

in missing children, there is also not know, if they always have been fed in a way, their body could develop as their genetic upmake could have been made possible. skin diseases are pretty common. but bone formation and growth are also dependent on nutrition. 

abuse could change the bone structure of a face quite a bit. 

all of these foto fits use average numbers to predict the outcome, but that means that the eccentric 5 on the bottom and top of the collection of numbers are not taken in to the averages. 

the only good reason to make such works of art, by computerhands, or artist are to keep a name out to the public. in this time of makeability the are not good to recognize a missing person, and certainly not after so much years. it is no more than guesswork, with a little speck of scientific sauce.

Quite a lot of women do these days - celebrities, anyway, tend to look like manequins with those horrible puffed up lips that could sort out a blocked drain.

well, she herself is the best example, why those 'this how our missing person is looking today' do not work. 

if this one was missing from the age of under 4, who would recognize her from a photo fit or paint job, based on her childhood pictures and genetics?

They look like pantomime dames.

tend to look like manequins with those horrible puffed up lips that could sort out a blocked drain.

Max Factor's sludge gulper lip gloss.

This report is a load of old rubbish anyway so it won't be a problem if I go off-piste - or should that be piste-off.

Question: What is a social influencer?

Is it like the Daily Record or the Sun or the Wiggan Bugle?

Jill Havern wrote:Quite a lot of women do these days - celebrities, anyway, tend to look like manequins with those horrible puffed up lips that could sort out a blocked drain.

haha....not laughing at her but the comment was funny

This is a genuine Super-Recogniser.
'Memory Man' PCSO spots 2,000 wanted people - even those wearing face masks - Birmingham Live -

A 'Memory Man' PCSO known for his ability to spot crime suspects has been hailed for his work by the Association of Super Recognisers.
West Midlands Police's Andy Pope has been made an honorary fellow of the association which consists of recognition experts from around the world.

Andy has spotted over 2,000 wanted men and women in just under a decade - which has included some while wearing masks during the Covid-19 pandemic.
READ MORE: Batons 'used to attack cars' after crash in Wednesbury
The 44-year-old has the ability to remember faces after scanning them from CCTV, video stills and police briefings. The officer from the Safer Travel team has even recognised some suspects years after seeing their image.

Now in honour of his skills the association has formally made Andy an honorary fellow for his work in policing. He received an award at a recent presentation event.
Andy - who has also previously been honoured by the police force through a Chief Constable's Award - said: "It's always a proud moment when you're recognised for what you do.

"I just focus on doing everything I can to keep people safe and assist in catching criminals.




Andy Pope (left) receives his award from Lord Lingfield, chairman of the Association of Super Recognisers (Image: West Midlands Police)
"It's impossible to explain how I remember faces, it's just something that happens.

"The most important thing is I've been able to put it to good use over the years."

https://www.birminghammail.co.uk/black-country/memory-man-pcso-spots-2000-22370964?fbclid=IwAR2XWQYwe0DvWyyuAFW7D5QcDvRRueImehIgeUIaD3R1E8H8Vep9B7OGptM

Oh yes, let's bring the super-story closer to home..

The Telegraph and Argus wrote:Mike Neville, retired Detective Chief Inspector with Scotland Yard and current CEO at Super Recognisers International and managing director of Neville Forensic Recognition said the sketch was a remarkable image of what Madeleine is likely to look like now.

"Simone has done a super job. I think the family resemblance is very good.

"Now it's a case of getting the image out there to the public. We have to continue believing that Madeleine is still alive until we learn anything different. We do not know where Madeleine is so have to remain open-minded and hopeful."

4 hrs ago

Bradford artist Simone Malik creates sketch of Madeleine McCann to help in her search

By Viv Mason



TALENTED Bradford artist Simone Malik has produced a sketch of what she believes missing girl Madeleine McCann may look like now as an 18-year-old.

The child went missing while on holiday in the Alagarve with parents Kate and Gerry McCann in 2007.

Her whereabouts remain unknown.

Simone, a 'super-recogniser' meaning she can recall and memorise faces easily, felt she needed to put her artistic talent and ability to study faces to good use and create a sketch which could be used by detectives at home and abroad as well as the Press. Her efforts have drawn praise from a retired detective chief inspector.

Simone said: "My reasons for doing the sketch are to help find Madeleine. Even if there is a tiny chance she could be alive, then I want to grab that chance with both hands and get this image out there to try to locate her. Surely, she deserves that? Surely her parents need that support and effort too?

"I feel that Madeleine would have an overall look of her mother, but she has features which point towards an obvious genetic link with the women on Gerry McCann's side too - such as her aunt Philomena and Madeleine's paternal grandmother. As a super recogniser, I can clearly spot those facial links.

"I believe Madeleine's face would be longer in length and not the shorter, round face images seen out there already as both parents have longer prominent faces.

"Madeleine is likely to have a distinct, chiselled jaw line, which was already evident in her pictures as a child, dimples in both cheeks, a squarish nose with a wide bridge along the length, a high and wide forehead, cool skin tones. She also has a large gap from under the tip of her nose to the top of her lip - similar to what her mother is like."

Mike Neville, retired Detective Chief Inspector with Scotland Yard and current CEO at Super Recognisers International and managing director of Neville Forensic Recognition said the sketch was a remarkable image of what Madeleine is likely to look like now.

"Simone has done a super job. I think the family resemblance is very good.

"Now it's a case of getting the image out there to the public. We have to continue believing that Madeleine is still alive until we learn anything different. We do not know where Madeleine is so have to remain open-minded and hopeful."

https://www.thetelegraphandargus.co.uk/news/19777030.bradford-artist-simone-malik-creates-sketch-madeleine-mccann-help-search/
....................

Note: http://www.mccannpjfiles.co.uk/

PeterMac wrote:Sorry
There seem to be two threads running parallel.
There has been so little to talk about in the last years, that the Forum is getting cluttered with NON Madeleine 'stuff'

Forgiven but I'm surprised you missed the latest EXCLUSIVE, it's at the top of the forum widgets before member's login, thus..



The 'clutter' is there for purpose, if not for that CMOMM would have dried-up a very long time ago. The ultimate intention is to preserve all the hard work contributed over the years in the name of justice for Madeleine McCann and that is precisely why we are still here - no matter what it takes.

Members are at liberty to read and/or ignore anything that doesn't interest them.